Narrow Gauge - Wide Screen
8MM and 16MM Lenses For The CinemaScope Effect
CinemaScope and Cinerama made a big impression on millions of people shooting amateur 8mm and 16mm movies. While it was almost impossible for the amateur to duplicate Cinerama's three lens photography and three projector presentation, CinemaScope was an entirely different matter. All that was needed was an anamorphic lens to squeeze wide images into the tiny frames of 8mm and 16mm film. The same lens would be used to expand the squeezed images into an undistorted wide screen image.
We'll begin this section with a POPULAR SCIENCE article from February, 1955 on Bell & Howell's FilmoRama and Delft's Vistascope lenses. (BELOW) Other small format anamorphic lenses were also offered for amateur and semiprofessional use.
Courtesy of Dave Thielking
VISTASCOPE magazine ads circa 1955. The little prism anamorphic lenses were offered by many of the countless camera stores in New York. Here we reproduce two different ads for the lens.
