Why the Star Trek IMAX isn't real IMAX

trek_enterpriseDidja catch Star Trek last weekend? Some people did ’cause the movie brought in an estimated $72.5 million. Anyway, one of Joel Johnson’s friends just so happens to be an IMAX engineer and offers up an explanation on why the new Star Trek isn’t a real IMAX film dispite being shown on IMAX screens. She goes into a bit more detail than “it isn’t IMAX ’cause it’s not film on IMAX.”

Just for future reference, ST was not shot in IMAX, and therefore is not a true imax film. imax is 65mm, 15-perf film, with an aspect ratio of 1:1.37 and a MASSIVE amount of image area, approximately 4x the size of VistaVision (VV is also the same format 35mm still cameras shoot, imagine a negative almost four times the surface area of one that was shot in your still camera.)

 

Star Trek was shot in cinemascope, an anamorphic format that squeezes the image on the film, but projects it through lenses that stretch it back out horizontally to its 1:2.35 aspect ratio. C-scope is run through a normal movie camera vertically, (90 degrees to a still camera) and exposes a frame taking up four perfs of film – about half the film area of a 35mm still camera.

 

Read the whole thing over on Boing Boing Gadgets.