Anamorphic Lenses

Anamorphic lenses are used to squeeze an image in widescreen cinematography or un-squeeze the image for widescreen projection. Usually the image is squeezed horizontally during photography and un-squeezed horizontally during projection. The most recognized tradename for this process is Cinemascope?. Anamorphic lenses are constructed using cylindrically shaped lenses, instead of the spherically shaped lenses used in conventional lenses. While technically an anamorphic can be made to have more or less "squeeze," the most common "squeeze factor" is 2x, which is the factor used by the Cinemascope ? process. (Cinemascope is a registered trademark of 20th Century Fox.)