You know anamorphic, right? It’s a way of getting super widescreen film onto the relatively squarish frame of 35mm film. It’s done by using a special lens on the camera that squeezes the image sideways, and then a reverse lens on the projector that stretches it back out again when you watch it. This is why, in the bad old days of non-letterboxed video, you’d sometimes see the end movie credits squished up to fit them onto your TV screen, all while the rest of the move had just been shown with it’s sides chopped off.
Which brings us to the Anamorphic Adapter Lens for the iPhone 5/S, from Moondog Labs.
The lens is pretty much exactly what you’d expect. A squared-off Olloclip-a-like which clips over the iPhone’s lens and squeezes the image coming in. De-squeezing is done in post, using any number of software tools to make the standard 1.33x anamorphic stretch to a 16:9 aspect ratio. And Moondog Labs is working with the folks behind the FiLMiC Pro app to add this feature to their app in the new year.
Delivery is estimated for March 2014 (it’s a Kickstarter), and I can’t wait. Yes, it’s $50, but this is something you most certainly can;t fake in software. Hell, you even get the cool flat anamorphic lens flare.
Source: Moondog Labs
Source: Kickstarter