eli5: Why are screens and video imagery rectangular, while camera lenses are round?
In: Technology
The sensor inside the camera is rectangular, so the image the camera creates is rectangular. The lens focuses light on the sensor, and could be any shape as long as the light ends up covering the sensor (think about eyeglass lenses: they often aren’t round). However, it’s easiest to make round lenses, so that’s what they use.
The lenses have to be round due to the nature of how they need to focus light.
The medium used to display the results aren’t restricted in that way so they can be whatever shape the designer decides.
Rectangles are easy shapes for screens and sensors; circles are natural shapes for lenses. It’s really not more complicated than that.
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