Anamorphic Aircopies?

Post by **jpolzfuss** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 2:43 pm

Hi,

until now I thought that all anamorphic prints for Super8/16mm have been made for 2.0x Anamorphots. But I recently noticed that e.g. Kowa has released 1.75x Anamorphots - all (or nearly all) of them with an "INFLIGHT"-mark. So do I have to expect that those scope-"Aircopies"/"Airline prints" that show up on eBay from time to time require a 1.75x Anamorphot rather than the "standard" 2.0x one?! Or are the prints made for a 2.0x Anamorphot and have been shown "incorrectly" in the plane (due to the screen's size or other obscure technical reasons)?

JÃƒÂ¶rg

Post by **filmfan** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 3:03 am

I think you are right that the movies shown on board were actually a 2x compression, so therefore with a 1.75X lens the movies were a bit on the skinny looking side. I happen to have one of these lenses, by the way.

Post by **LastQuark** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 7:54 am

They also have the Kowa Inflight version in 1.5x. Got one of these.

Post by **jpolzfuss** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 11:45 am

filmfan wrote:I think you are right that the movies shown on board were actually a 2x compression

Are you sure? The 2.25 : 1 (Super8/16mm's 1.33 : 1 used with a 1.75 anamorphot) is much closer to the 70mm-standard and the 35mm-anamorphic-standard than the 2.66 : 1 (2x anamorphot). Hence it would be much easier to maintain the original's aspect ratio without wasting some width of the Super8/16mm-strip or without cropping the original' top / bottom...

Post by **jpolzfuss** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 12:20 pm

LastQuark wrote:They also have the Kowa Inflight version in 1.5x. Got one of these.

Arrrgggllll! This makes it even more confusing!

Number216 · Post by **Number216** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 11:30 pm

Well, quite possibly, they might have been using the 2.0x for scope-ratio films, and 1.5x for 1.85:1 films. They've probably pillarboxed the 2.35:1 image into the resulting 2.66:1 that comes out of 2.0x anamorphic. (back when CinemaScope was being invented, it was originally intended to be 2.66:1, but to accomodate the 4-track magnetic stereo, a little bit of the left side of the frame was reserved to one of the magnetic tracks. (where the soundtrack normally is) To reduce the cost of printing separate magnetic stereo (which was VERY expensive) and optical mono prints, they created magoptical prints (magnetic stripe on the left of the soundtrack portion, optical on the right), thinning it down to the current 2.35:1 ratio)

Then again, that's just my guess. I'm quite sure some other people here know much more than I do.