On the other hand, let's calculate the camera field of view for a typical telephoto lens set-up. We keep the same camera but mount a 200 mm200\ \text{mm}200 mm lens. Insert the values in the appropriate fields of our camera field of view calculator and calculate the angles of view in this case:

That is an extremely wide angle of view: it covers 170017001700 square degrees! However, you need almost 20 of these fields to capture a true 260°260\degree260° picture.

Here is the lack of absoluteness of the field of view: its value varies with the distance between the camera and the subject. That's why in the same angle of view, you can fit both the Moon and a passenger airplane.

The concept of field of view is not unique to photography: check how it differs for astronomers at our telescope field of view calculator. 🔭

The solid angle covered by this set-up is about 272727 square degrees for the vertical one! If you want to take a 360°360\degree360° picture, you'll need more than 150015001500 shots! But at a distance of 200 m200\ \text{m}200 m you would be able to picture an area of 45 m×30 m45\ \text{m}\times 30\ \text{m}45 m×30 m: good enough to take some exciting wildlife pictures without disturbing anyone!

Optical lens

The angle of view of a camera is an absolute measure of the horizontal and vertical angles captured by a combination of camera and lens. The field of view measures the same concept but uses lengths. Since the angles don't change, the field of view depends on the distance: specifically, it increases alongside it.

Telecentric lenses are used in innumerable vision applications, and in particular they form the critical component of the optical system when precise measurement is required. Non-contact measurement applications demand the use of such lenses which, thanks to their low distortion, can eliminate perspective errors (parallax effect) due to imprecise positioning or objects with strongly 3D geometries.

Even if angles are easy to visualize, they can be hard to estimate (how wide is 5°5\degree5°?). The field of view comes in handy to complement the idea of the angle of view.

This family includes: special remote controlled models with integrated liquid lenses for fast and precise focusing; lenses for SWIR and UV applications; lenses with Scheimpflug adjustment and variable magnification lenses.

In machine vision applications, choosing the right lens is essential to obtaining high quality images suited to efficient and accurate processing. In many cases, the lens is the starting point for the construction of a machine vision system, although the result also depends on the resolution of the camera and the pixel size.

You already know what the iii means and ddd is the distance at which the field of view is measured. Remember to use the correct dimension of your sensor: you want to use its length to calculate the horizontal field of view of your camera, not the vertical one... unless you are taking a portrait picture.

Why the tiny iii, you ask? This formula holds for all the three possible directions on the sensor: horizontal, vertical, and diagonal.

As a rule of thumb, the higher the magnification of the lens is, the smaller the angle of view. If you manage to fit the Moon in your picture, the vertical angle of view would be around half a degree, but this feat requires a pretty high magnification. On the other hand, a 55 mm55\ \text{mm}55 mm lens on an SLR (single-lens reflex) camera will give you a horizontal angle of view of about 20°20\degree20°.

Opto Engineering’s vast range of fixed focal length lenses includes lenses for small, medium and large sensors, with a variety of focal lengths, apertures and resolutions.

Physicist holding a 1st class degree and a member of the Institute of Physics. Creator of the UK vaccine queue calculator, and featured in many publications, including The Sun, Daily Mail, Express, and Independent. Tenacious in researching answers to questions and has an affection for coding. Hobbies include cycling, walking, and birdwatching. You can find him on Twitter @OmniSteve. See full profile

VAT IT02011230204 Fiscal code and registration number at Mantova Business Register 02011230204 Nr. REA: MN-216669 - Share Capital: 205.258,00 €

As for the angle of view, you can identify three quantities associated with the field of view: a horizontal length, a vertical length, and a diagonal length. To calculate the field of view fovi\text{fov}_ifovi​ of a camera in each of the three possible directions, use the following formula:

A rectilinear lens is a lens that preserves orthogonality: two straight, perpendicular lines in the real world are depicted as straight, perpendicular eyes by a rectilinear lens. A fisheye lens, on the other hand, distorts them — a small price to pay for an extremely wide field of view!

Refine your photographic knowledge with our dedicated tools like the depth of field calculator and our magnification of a lens calculator. Cheese! 📸

We define both quantities for three spatial directions, which allows us to calculate a vertical, diagonal, and horizontal field of view for a camera set-up, alongside the respective angles of view.

Opto Engineering offers a vast range of precision telecentric and bi-telecentric lenses for the most diverse requirements of the market: models for high and low resolution area and line scan sensors in a variety of magnifications and working distances; classic, compact and flat lenses, along with standard and custom solutions. The range also includes special telecentric lenses: lenses with integrated liquid lenses, zoom lenses, optical benches and other special products. Opto Engineering 360° view lenses are unique designs that make it possible to inspect an entire product while reducing the number of components in the vision system. Thanks to their special optical design, just one camera is needed to simultaneously inspect multiple surfaces of an object: the bottom and internal surfaces, or the top and external surfaces. The family includes multi-view lenses which give a single image of the object containing a variety of points of view. Many of these 360° view lenses represent an innovative way of resolving vision applications, previously considered impossible, in a simple and effective way: they are used in numerous industries, from food & beverage to pharmaceutics and automotive. Some of these extraordinary optical innovations are the fruit of Opto Engineering’s R&D, have been patented internationally, received numerous awards, and constitute an extremely valuable resource for our clients.

lenses中文

With our tool, you will be able to calculate the camera's field of view (any camera!), and not only that, there is more to it. Keep reading to discover:

Convex lens

⚠️ There is quite a bit of confusion online (and not only) on the matter, with various definitions and interpretations. Here we gave the one that makes the most sense for us, but feel free to disagree and let us know!

Whether you are planning a photoshoot or just a photography enthusiast, our camera field of view calculator will help you learn the whole picture.

What islenses

The basic concept underlying the entire matter is that cameras can capture a single, defined portion of the real-world at once. How significant this portion depends on the camera set-up, particularly on the type of lens and camera body used by the photographer.

📷 Cameras are our way to create memories — instants preserved forever — from what we can see. However, their electronic eyes have some limitations when it comes to how much of those memories they record. We may need to think beforehand about what we want to include in our pictures, and many photographers find it helpful to know their cameras' field of view.

Camera lens

Do you want to learn more about the fundamental of photography with a slight technical twist? We made the right calculators for you: the aspect ratio calculator and the crop factor calculator!

Think about the Moon for a second more. You managed to fit it into your picture — your sensor! We are talking of a 3,500 km3,500\ \text{km}3,500 km body. You can take a picture of a plane passing between you and our satellite with some luck and good timing. A B747 flying at 6.5 km6.5\ \text{km}6.5 km would almost eclipse the Moon, fitting perfectly in the picture together. Does it mean the jumbo jet is really that jumbo, or that the field of view can be a relative concept, too?

🙋 You can use our camera field of view calculator to find the values of the angles and fields of view and to calculate the needed focal length of the lens you need to mount to obtain a particular field of view. We locked the variables associated with the sensor's size: it's unlikely you will change it instead of the lens!

The concepts are used almost interchangeably, as they define the same concept. However, their definitions are different. Let's discover them in detail.

Convex lens imaging

It's impossible to define a typical field of view of a camera: it depends on the lens you are mounting at the moment. However, we can give you some practical examples.

When we use angles to define the dimensions of a picture, we talk of the angle of view. The angle of view is pretty easy to visualize: your camera lies at the center of a sphere, and connecting the angles of the scene you are capturing to its center gives you a set of three angles:

Physicist by education, scientist by vocation. He holds a master’s degree in complex systems physics with a specialization in quantum technologies. If he is not reading something, he is outdoors trying to enjoy every bit of nature around him. He uses his memory as an advantage, and everything you will read from him contains at least one “I read about this five years ago” moment! See full profile

The sensor size of your camera significantly affects the quality of your pictures. A camera with a larger sensor will give you a wider field of view for the same lens, maintaining the same magnification: your subject will be surrounded by more background. The advantages are relative, though: when printing the photograph in the same format, a larger field of view will necessarily translate to a lower magnification.

Tunable lens

What can you capture with this lens? For a distance d=200 md=200\ \text{m}d=200 m, the angle of view converts into the respective linear field of views:

That is more than enough to fit the whole Colosseum in Rome in a single picture. And all of this standing barely more than the diameter of the arena itself away!

Fresnel lens

🙋 To find the size of your sensor, search on Google "[your camera model] sensor size": you will easily find the correct values!

Using angles, it is 26.5° × 17.7°, vertical and horizontal angle of view, respectively. To calculate these values, input them in the angle of view formula:

Opto Engineering offers a wide range of macro lenses, designed for close working distance applications which demand very high precision and close to zero distortion.

The Canon EOS 550D has a sensor size 22.3×14.9 mm22.3\times14.9\ \text{mm}22.3×14.9 mm, which allows us to calculate both the horizontal and the vertical angle of view. Let's not be extreme and use the 24 mm24\ \text{mm}24 mm focal length.

Take the diverging lines from the sphere's center to the corner of the scene, and stop them at a certain distance ddd. Now, draw the corresponding rectangle: you will obtain a set of measurements we call the field of view at a distance ddd.

The two first ones define the width and height of the rectangle corresponding to our sensor. Notice that these quantities are absolute: you can place the "sphere" as far as you like (even at an infinite distance), and the angle of view will still be the same.

A camera captures a rectangular portion of the real world, projecting it onto its sensor. We identified two possible ways to measure the size of that portion:

Canon produces a rectilinear 11-24 mm\text{11-24 mm}11-24 mm lens — which is insane — that allows capturing sharp wide-angle images. How wide? Let's mount the lens on a Canon EOS 550D and calculate this camera field of view!