How comes a picture is square when the camera lens is circle?

Question: How comes a picture is square when the camera lens is circle!?
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

The lens actually projects a circular image!. In fact, for the typical lens used on a 35mm camera or DSLR, the lens projects a circle which is at least 43!.5mm in diameter!.

The reason that images are rectangular, though, is that film comes in rectangular sheets!. Projecting a round image onto a square piece of film would waste film!.

So, instead, the outer parts of the image circle are cropped off, so as to make a rectangular image on the film/image sensor!.

Besides that, definition is usually bad(awful) at the outer edges of the image circle, so only using a square out of the middle of the circle ensures that resolution is always the best!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Image behind the lens is round and almost double the size of what we see on the film, with adages showing barrel effects and distortion!. Image passes through a frame then towards shutter and then on the film or CCD!. This frame cuts the unwanted portion of the image through the lens!. Same size frame is in view finder!. There we decide what portion is our final view!. Which is possible in SLR but little tricky in TLR cameras!.

It is the quality of lens decides to keep minimum distortion then only the frame can make perfect rectangular image in 35 mm, 4 x 5 cm and 5" x 7" format, in 6 x 6 cm format the image is square!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

The image is a result of the sensor shape, not the lens shape!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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