I'm looking for the highest quality possible on my Canon GL2. I've noticed my camera shoots very well in fullscreen (4:3) But when I shoot in 16:9 mode I find the picture quality is worse. Is this just me or is the picture quality worse in 16:9 mode? What's this I hear about a anamorphic adapter? If I buy one will this produce widescreen in full res?

AFAIK the GL2's 16:9 mode simply crops the image, which is good and bad. Bad in the sense that you do lose vertical resolution, since less of the CCD's imaging area is used to record the image. Good because you don't have to deal with setting up your import program to re-adjust the pixel dimensions to bring it to a proper 16:9.

An anamorphic adapter will allow you to use the full vertical resolution when recording in 16:9, but you will lose a small amount of detail and sharpness by adding more glass, and possibly introduce chromatic aberration. High quality, coated optics minimize this effect.