Squeeze
Simulator
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The whole open gate, as that camera reads it. Every figure below follows from this shape.
1× is a spherical lens. Anything above it is an anamorphic front compressing the scene sideways onto the same sensor.
What the finished picture has to be. Whatever the recording cannot match is cropped off.
Moves the picture in: 35 mm is the whole plate, 100 mm is as tight as this frame shape goes with her head still in it. Drag the picture to reframe.
Squeeze, sensor shape and what reaches the screen
An anamorphic lens does not make a wider picture. It makes a wider picture fit: the front compresses the scene sideways onto whatever sensor is behind it, and post stretches it back out. So the ratio you end up with is the shape of the sensor multiplied by the squeeze, and every combination worth arguing about is arithmetic you can do before the truck is loaded.
Sensor ratio × squeeze = recorded ratio
A 4:3 sensor behind a 2× lens desqueezes to 2.67. A 16:9 one behind 1.33× gives 2.37. A 17:9 one behind the same 1.33× gives 2.51. The sensor's own shape does the heavy lifting; the squeeze only finishes the sum.
Why 4:3 and 2× go together
Super 35 four-perf film is 4:3 and 2× was built for it: 1.33 × 2 is 2.67, trimmed at the sides to 2.39. Every later squeeze factor is the same trick aimed at a differently shaped sensor.
Why large format wants a smaller number
Full frame and large format are already near 3:2, and 1.5 × 1.5 is 2.25, nearly the delivery ratio, with little thrown away. Put a 2× in front of the same sensor and you record 3:1, then bin a fifth of the width.
Taller sensor, wider frame
This is the part that reads backwards. A taller sensor is a lower ratio, so it multiplies up to a wider finished frame, and it uses more of the sensor's height getting there. That is why anamorphic work wants the squarest open gate it can get rather than a 16:9 one.
Smaller gates, cropped from these
Every sensor here is its open gate, the most the camera can read. Pick a smaller gate in the menus, 16:9, 17:9, a window for a longer lens, and it is cropped out of this rectangle, so the numbers move the same way: narrower shape, higher ratio, less sensor and fewer pixels.
Field of view splits in two
An anamorphic is engraved by its vertical field of view, so on a 2× a 50 mm frames vertically like a 50 mm and horizontally like a 25 mm. Wide across, long through: that mismatch is most of what people mean by the anamorphic look.
Horizontal detail is what you pay with
The squeezed recording samples the scene with fewer pixels across than the finished shape needs. Desqueezing interpolates them back up, so the delivered file is wide but the sideways detail was never recorded at that width.
Crop at the sides or at the top
Record wider than you deliver and the sides go, costing horizontal field of view and nothing else. Record narrower and the top and bottom go, costing height and resolution. Knowing which one is coming is what the framing chart is for.
Mixing squeezes on one job
Two lenses of different squeeze on one sensor record two different ratios. Both can reach the delivery ratio, but only by cropping different amounts, so the match has to be planned into the gate and the framing chart rather than fixed in the grade.
Desqueeze is a monitoring setting too
A monitor fed the raw recording shows everyone tall and thin. The desqueeze lives in the monitor path, in the camera's own viewfinder and again in post: three places to set the same number, and three places to set it wrong.