Anamorphic vs wide angle

[Ergin Ozturk]

Hi,

I ve read several post about anamorphic but i think i am stupid. Because i could not understand the difference between the wide angle lens and the anomorphic in practical use. (I know that anamorpic lens squezze the image and etc..)

could you please anyone explain me what is the difference between a wide angle lets say 16mm lens and anamorphic lens diference?

thanks

ergin

 

[David Mullen ASC]

A "wide-angle" lens is any focal length that gives you a wider-than-normal perspective or field of view. An "anamorphic" lens is like a spherical lens with a wide-angle attachment (though it's more complicated than that actually), but that wide-angle attachment only increases the horizontal view, not the vertical.

So a 50mm anamorphic with a standard 2X squeeze "sees" the same horizontal view as a 25mm spherical lens, but it still only sees vertically what a 50mm spherical lens would see.

So generally any anamorphic lens seems to be more "wide-angle" in view than a spherical lens of the same focal length, although that is only in horizontal view. But this is one reason why people tend to pick longer focal lengths in anamorphic photography compared to spherical photography -- for example, in spherical 35mm photography cropped to 2.40, you may choose a 20mm lens to get a certain view, whereas in 35mm 2X anamorphic photography, you would choose a 40mm lens to get the same view -- and a 40mm lens has less depth of field than a 20mm lens, hence why anamorphic photography tends to be a little like larger format photography in terms of depth of field issues.

 

[Ergin Ozturk]

Hi David,

Thank you for your "practical" explanation. It seems more clear to me right now.

ergin