Questions about widescreen

[technicolour]

Hi all,

I was wondering why "flat" or "matted" widescreen is sometimes referred too as spherical widescreen, is this to do with the lens or aperture at all?

Also, whats the difference between 16:9 widescreen and 1.85.1, or are they the same thing?

Cheers

[blackangus1]

It's called "spherical" because the lenses you shoot it with are spherical, as opposed to anamorphic.

"Flat" is a term for 1.85:1 widescreen, which is just 1.33:1 film matted down to 1.85:1. "Scope" is roughly 2.35:1. It's accomplished by shooting 1.33:1 film using a 2:1 anamorphic lens, yielding a 2.66:1 image. Some is cropped off one side to make room for the soundtrack (talking about 35mm here) so what's left is roughly 2.35:1 (or, most recently, people are settling on a standard of 2.39:1).

As for 16:9 vs. 1.85:1, the ratios are extremely close: 16:9 is 1.78:1.

16:9 is an interesting ratio for S8 because if you use a 1.33x anamorphic adapter on Super8 you get an almost exact 16:9 image, perfect for widescreen TV's. 1.33x is a relatively uncommon anamorphic ratio, most film anamorphic lenses are 2x, and there are some 1.5x and even some 1.75x. But 1.33x is getting more common in video because it also takes video to the 16:9 aspect ratio. Optex and Century Precision Optics make 1.33x anamorphic adapters. Panasonic is going to be introducing a 1.33x anamorphic adapter with a massive 72mm rear element, designed for use with their AG-DVX100 24P video camera.