cinematography Cinematography (from ancient Greek κίνημα, ''kìnema'' "movement" and γράφειν, ''gràphein'' "to write") is the art of motion picture (and more recently, electronic video camera) photography. Cinematographers use a lens to foc ...

, full frame refers to the use of the full

film gate The film gate is the rectangular opening in the front of a motion picture camera where the film is exposed to light. The film gate can be seen by removing the lens and rotating the shutter out of the way. The film is held on a uniform plane at a c ...

at maximum width and height for 35 mm film

cameras A camera is an optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), with a ...

. It is sometimes also referred to as silent aperture, full gate, or a number of other similar word combinations. It is the original gate size pioneered by William Dickson and

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...

in 1892 and first used in the short film '' Blacksmithing Scene''. Full frame is generally used by all

4-perf Negative pulldown is the manner in which an image is exposed on a film stock, described in the number of film perforations spanned by an individual frame. It can also describe the orientation of the image on the negative, whether it is captured ho ...

films, whether silent, standard 35 ( Academy ratio width), or Super 35. The introduction of Academy ratio in 1932 required that the lens mount needed to be shifted slightly horizontally to re-center the lens at the new center of frame; however, the gate size did not change as the extra negative information would be cropped out by lab processes in post-production. 4-perf Super 35 is nearly identical to the original full frame standard, although the lens mount requires vertical re-centering when common topline extraction is used. Hard mattes for all common ratios exist and either replace the film gate itself or are inserted within it. However, these are usually not used in the event that any reframing needs to be done.

Technical specifications

''Standardized by

SMPTE The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) (, rarely ), founded in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is a global professional association of engineers, technologists, and executives working in the m ...

.'' as per 35 mm film, except: *''aspect ratio'': 4:3 *''camera aperture'': 0.980" by 0.735" *''projection aperture'' (silent): 0.931" by 0.698"

Technical specifications

See also