A system model and its corresponding inversion for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging are presented. The system model incorporates the spherical nature of a radar's radiation pattern at far field. The inverse method based on this model performs a spatial Fourier transform (Doppler processing) on the recorded signals with respect to the available coordinates of a translational radar (SAR) or target (inverse SAR). It is shown that the transformed data provide samples of the spatial Fourier transform of the target's reflectivity function. The inverse method can be modified to incorporate deviations of the radar's motion from its prescribed straight line path. The effects of finite aperture on resolution, reconstruction, and sampling constraints for the imaging problem are discussed.