Simulator
AI generated demo imageYour photo stays on your device. This page opens it in your browser and works on it there.
Desqueezed ratio = sensor ratio × squeeze.
100% is a typical vintage-style lens.
How much of the frame around the focus point stays sharp.
Slides the wide frame up and down (or across) your photo.
What the sensor records
All three squeeze factors
Same photo, same settings. Select one to open it in the large frame.
What anamorphic characteristics are
An anamorphic lens squeezes a wide scene sideways onto the sensor, and the picture is stretched back out (desqueezed) in post. That trick leaves a recognisable set of fingerprints, described here. The simulator above shows all but the last, focus breathing, at 1.33×, 1.5× and 2× squeeze.
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Squeeze and a wider frame
The lens fits more horizontal view onto the sensor than its width implies. Desqueezing multiplies the sensor's aspect ratio by the squeeze factor, so a 4:3 sensor with a 2× lens gives a 2.66:1 frame.
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Oval bokeh
Out-of-focus points of light become vertical ovals instead of circles. At 1.33× they are gently oval, at 1.5× clearly tall, and at 2× they stretch into vertical streaks that fall through the background like a waterfall.
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Horizontal streak flares
The brightest light source throws one dominant horizontal line across the frame, often with a fainter echo of it lower down, reflected through the lens centre. Depending on the coatings the streak can be neutral, blue or amber.
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Barrel distortion and "mumps"
Straight lines bow outward toward the edges, mostly along the horizontal axis. At close focus some lenses also widen faces in the centre of the frame, an effect nicknamed the mumps.
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Shallower depth of field
To see as wide as a spherical lens, an anamorphic lens uses a focal length longer by the squeeze factor. Longer focal lengths blur the background faster and compress perspective, which makes subjects separate from their surroundings.
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Edge falloff and vignetting
Sharpness and brightness drop toward the borders, especially the left and right sides, which pulls the eye toward the centre.
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Chromatic aberration
Red and blue fringes appear along high-contrast edges near the frame borders, because colours focus at slightly different widths through the cylindrical elements.
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Focus breathing and field curvature
Framing visibly shifts as focus is pulled, and the plane of focus curves so frame edges and centre are not sharp at the same distance.