This is why I encourage people not to get all hung up on focal lengths, far better to try different lenses and find one that fits your goals.  Zoom lenses tend to be great places to start to solve this problem because by moving the elements in a zoom, we can obtain a range of angles of view across the zoom range.  In fairness we usually do not think in terms of angle of view, so the idea of focal length is a simple way to define a coverage angle.  We all know that an 11mm-24mm zoom has a range of wider angles of view, than a 70mm-200mm lens.

Angle of view allows the creative to manage what is in and what is not in frame in conjunction with other conscious actions such as framing and composition.  Understanding how focal length changes with sensor size can be helpful, but it may be simpler to not worry about the focal length and simply drive to the angle of view that you want.

What isfocal length of lens

Distributor of indoor and outdoor optical lenses. Available with 1 oz. capacity. Magnifying, speed glass lenses also offered. Suitable for both men and women. Stock items available.

We want to control what goes onto the sensor, and we use position, technique and different lenses to achieve our goals.  If we are in a small room and want to get the whole thing in, we would typically go to a wide-angle lens.  Does the focal length number really matter?  It does not, what matters is if we have enough angle of view to obtain our goal.

Manufacturer of glass aspheric, infrared, and plastic lenses. Specifications vary depending upon model, including 3 to 9 VAC power supply, 500 mA operating current, and 10 to 35 operating temperature. Capabilities include fabrication, milling, and turning. Prototype and low to large scale production runs available. Serves the life science, medical, semiconductor, military defense, precision agriculture, jewelry, and watchmaking industries. RoHS compliant. One year warranty.

Glass manufacturer and fabricator, specializing in pressed and custom molded, clear, and colored glass products. Products include par, convex and Fresnel lenses for traditional and LED lighting applications. Vapor proof, military, residential and industrial globes. Marine, airport and aircraft glass. Moulded lenses for landscape, fountain, pool, & outdoor lighting installation. Testing and engineering departments with glass composition advancements offering over 60 different types including tempering and annealing capabilities. Glasses include crystal, flat, clear or colored, heat resisting borosilicate, soda-lime, infrared, visible blocking, UV transmitting, and an open-stock catalog. ISO 9001:2015 certified. In-house mold shop offers custom design opportunities and proprietary project development. Additional finishing capabilities include coatings, cutting, drilling, and sandblasting. Serves the aircraft, defense, industrial, and marine industries in a variety of applications.

Custom manufacturer glass products include lenses. Made from soda lime, corning gorilla, quartz, and borosilicate materials. Prototypes and low to high volume production runs are available. Blanket orders are accepted. Emergency and rush services are also provided. Serves aerospace, architectural, automotive, marine, medical, military, lighting, solar, and optical industries. Meets military specifications and ASNI, ASME, and ASTM standards. DOT and RoHS compliant. FDA approved. Lean manufacturing capable.

This chart will not cover every possible angle of view, but it does provide some very common examples, and you will start to see why you may choose a full frame sensor if you want to go really wide, or maybe a micro four thirds for a super telephoto that doesn’t require the assistance of the Hulk to carry around. There are other factors that come to bear based on sensor size, but that’s a different conversation.

Distributor of optical, objective, and vision lenses. Suitable for pneumatics, hydraulics, and automation applications. 24/7 emergency services are provided.

It's really not about the numbers at all, they are just measurements that only matter when you use them as guides for defining the angle of view that you desire. A Bugatti Chiron delivers a maximum of 1500 brake horsepower, yet it doesn’t matter for a drive to the milk store. Choose your lens and angle of view range based on what you want to get out of your images and let the focal length numbers fall where they do.

If we use the Nikon/Sony crop sensor example we see that to get the same angle of view as is found on a 300mm lens on a full frame camera, we need only mount a lens labeled 200mm.  This lens will be likely physically smaller and perhaps lighter and less expensive. However, this lens which is stenciled for full frame but is built for crop sensor will not work completely on a full frame camera.

FOV tofocal lengthformula

What most of us are really looking for is control of what shows up on the image. For the vast majority, we could not care less about focal length numbers, what we really care about is what the sensor captures and how that communicates the image that we want to make and the story that we want to tell.

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Seller : “You are correct!  You have a crop sensor camera, so when you mount a 35mm lens, it’s not really a 35mm look, it looks like a 52.5mm lens”

Manufacturer of electro-optical ceramic lenses. Suitable for ultraviolet (UV) transmission and broadband sensing spectrum applications. Serves defense, aerospace and biomedical industries.

Custom Manufacturer*, Distributor, Finishing Service Company, Manufacturer, Service Company ⚫$1 - 4.9 Mil Revenue ⚫Est. 1961

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Customer : “I have a Nikon.  It has a crop factor of 1.5.  If I buy a lens that says it is 35mm, it doesn’t look the same as pictures that I took with my old Nikon film camera.  This is so confusing.”

What we learn from this chart is that with lenses on crop sensor bodies, the focal length numbers that are stenciled on the lens do not provide the same angle of view as on full frame.  So, if you have an 18-55mm lens on your crop sensor and set it at 18mm, the angle of view is actually much more like the angle of view of a 28mm on full frame. There are many reasons why makers did not modify the markings on their lenses for crop sensor cameras, very few of which are customer oriented.

Contrary to some tall tales, crop factor is simply a mathematical factor that describes the percentage change of a given sensor based against an established standard of full frame 35mm negative size.  Some cameras such as micro four thirds actually label their lenses properly for the sensor size in use, but all crop sensor cameras be they DSLR or Mirrorless do not.  Thus, we must apply crop factor math to achieve the angle of view that we desire.

Manufacturer of optical lenses including eyepieces. Specifications of optical lenses include 10x to 20x magnification power & 0.01 mm to 20 mm field view. Features of optical lenses include pointers, roll down pair & divisions with crossline.

Focal length of lensformula

Custom manufacturer of optical, mechanical, and electro-optical lenses. Types include spherical, aspherical, or cylindrical lenses. Prototypes and mid-volume production runs are available. Suitable for telescopes, collimators, beam expanders, microscopes, cameras, smartphones, imaging equipment, surveillance systems, and spectroscopic applications. Serves the medical, laboratory, military, commercial, research, defense, and aerospace industries.

Manufacturer of standard and custom precision prototype optical lenses. Types include plano and double convex, simple, condenser, gradient index, plastic, relay, surplus, projection, aspheric, Fresnel, achromats, ball, cone and rod lenses. Available in various shapes and sizes. Inspection services also offered. Suitable for alignment and scientific instruments, scanning and weapon systems, microfilm readers, refractometers, bar coders, photoelectric controls, telescopes and other applications. Food and medical industries served.

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Custom manufacturer of optical lenses for telecommunications, semiconductors, electronics, aerospace, defense, oil, and gas industries. Prototypes are offered. Suitable for analytical instrumentation, optomechanical, microwave or fiber optical windows, and x-ray applications.

Custom manufacturer of light emitting diode (LED) and optical lenses made from acrylic, polycarbonate, and polyethylene. Suitable for architectural facades, retail displays, or interior spaces. Serves the aerospace, agriculture, automotive, electronics, medical, military, food, and beverage industries. FDA and NSF approved. UL listed.

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In an article that I wrote on the fallacy of lens compression, I included an image with coverage frames overlaid on it to show the angle of view for a fixed shooting position and a fixed subject distance.  Here I will do the same thing, however this time, I will enhance the frames to include the angle of view and labeled focal length using 35mm full frame as a base line, and then you can use the chart above to find the stenciled focal length for your sensor.

28mmlens angle of view

What we can conclude from the chart is that to achieve the same angle of view, our actual focal length choices will vary by sensor size.  So are we really more concerned about a specific focal length number or the angle of view?  The answer, the majority of the time is the angle of view.

35mmlens angle of view

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Distributor of optical lenses made from plastic, acrylic and polycarbonate materials. Adhesive, snap-in and screw mounting types are available. Serves electronics, automotive, energy, medical and aerospace industries. RoHS compliant.

Manufacturer of optical lenses including audit lenses. Optical lenses are multi-element lenses that allow the user to test optical test system performance under extreme testing conditions. Optical lenses support a periodically verifying test system performance under less demanding conditions with focal length ranges up to 50 mm with spectral range of 546.1 nanometers at 10 nanometers FWHM. Visible audit lens are designed for validation & verification of MTF (modulation transfer function) testing systems.

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Custom optical glass fabrication & precision technical glass products, including filter glass. Fabricating a variety of glass types that include borosilicate, crown, soda lime, filters, quartz, fused silica, radiation shielding, X-ray, & other specialties. Applications include faceplates, prisms, filters, mirrors, lenses, circles, tubing, rods, micro sheets, conductive windows, molded blanks, sagged parts, & custom glass products. Capabilities include glass grinding, glass cutting, glass beveling & chamfering, glass drilling, glass filters, special fabricated glass.

Custom manufacturer of optical lenses including spherical plano concave or convex, aspherical, and cylindrical. Standard lenses are also offered. Additional services such as reverse engineering, rapid prototyping, clean room assembly, metrology, testing, and verification are provided. Low to high volume production available. Blanket orders accepted.

Lens focal length angle of viewcalculator

Some makers, such as Fujifilm, use the full frame numbering system even though they only make one sensor size.  So, when Fujifilm released their very fast and optically excellent 56mm, it was built to deliver the same angle of view as an 85mm on full frame.  This was necessary to get film camera shooters to embrace the idea of crop sensors, because they thought more about angle of view than they did focal length numbers or sensor size.

Custom manufacturer of precision optical lenses made from optical glasses, fused silica, quartz and Zerodur™. Types include aspherical, cylindrical, plano, spherical, wide field of view, fast and focus/zoom lenses, doublets, triplets and athermal lens systems. Available in 3 to 635 mm sizes. Capabilities include optical design, rapid prototyping, glass fabrication, thin-film coating, metrology, environmental testing and assembly. Suitable for cameras, night vision goggles, photography, projection, laser bar code readers and alignment tools, research laboratories and diagnostic clinics. Serves the aerospace, defense, life science, medical, automotive, semiconductor, entertainment and imaging industries. Prototype to volume production runs offered. Lean manufacturing capable. ITAR registered. RoHS compliant.

I wrote an article some months ago for the folks at Henry's on the subject of why angle of view might be more relevant to photographers than focal length.  It was well received, although one fellow got his shorts in a knot because he didn't like the approach, although he agreed that everything I wrote was true.  It's fair to disagree on approach, but when it gets coupled with insults, that's indicative of immaturity and a desperate need to get a life.  The internet enables people to trash others by hiding in anonymity.  So here's the deal.  You don't have to agree and if you really hate what I write, that's cool and move along.

Custom manufacturer of double concave, convex, spherical, and parabolic optical lenses made from calcium fluoride, germanium, silicon, zinc selenide, and zinc sulfide. Comes in aspheric, off-axis, and toric surface profiles. Prototype and low to high volume production runs are available. Serves the aerospace, automotive, commercial, defense, electronics, medical, pharmaceutical, and robotics industries. Blanket orders accepted. Meets Mil-Spec, AS9100D, ANSI, ASME, ASTM, AWS, DOT, QS, TS, and SAE standards. CSA, FAA, and FDA approved. RoHS and REACH compliant. NADCAP and CE certified.

The seller is accurate, but unfortunately not helping.  This kind of discussion goes on every day in the world of digital photography and breeds all kinds of back and forth about what’s better.  It applies less for folks shooting micro four-thirds because the focal length numbers are actually correct for the sensor size.

Custom manufacturer of precision optical lenses. Materials used include all glass types, stainless steel and aluminum. Lenses are available in various shapes including spherical, hemispherical, hyper hemispherical and flat. Specifications include dia. ranging from 1 mm to 30 mm, irregularity of 1/20 », wedge TIR (total indicator runout) and tolerances of +/- 2 microns. Capabilities include miniature optical system and component design, micro-optical fabrication, centering and cementing of optical components, optical component and system testing and small to medium prototype volume. Lenses can be used in aerospace, industrial, medical, military, astronomy, national laboratories, photographic, sensory technologies and universities.

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Ever since makers starting building cameras using the focal lengths from 35mm film attached to sensors that were not the same size as a 35mm negative we have had to deal with the silliness of crop factor.  Let's consider this real world situation that I heard in a store.

Anyhow back to the premise.  I meet lots of newer creatives, whether shooting stills or video and they are rarely concerned about the physical focal length of a lens, which is particularly irrelevant as an indicator when crop sensor cameras get involved as they always reference lenses as if they are full frame even when not.  What real creatives are concerned about is the image and what goes in it and what does not.  This is partially managed by angle of view.

Lens angle of viewchart

Custom manufacturer of precision lenses made from plastic material. Collimating, aspheric, imaging, and projection lenses are available. Capabilities include CNC machining, milling, turning, wire electrical discharge machining (EDM), and fabrication. Suitable for integrated optical systems, miniature projection, laser illumination, sensing, and instrumentation applications. Prototypes are offered.

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Custom manufacturer of optical lenses made from synthetic sapphire and glass materials such as borosilicate, soda-lime, fused quartz or silica and glass-ceramic. Flat, concave and convex surface lenses are offered. Used for transporting or distributing natural and artificial light for illumination or magnification purposes. Prototype and low to high volume production are available. Serves electronics, aerospace, architectural, biomedical, optical, semiconductor and fiber optic industries.

Nikonlens focal length angle of view

Manufacturer of standard and custom telecentric, zoom, spherical, F-theta, megapixel, projection, imaging, fixed focal length, fisheye, collimating, infrared and wide angle optical lenses. Made from acrylic, sapphire, magnesium fluoride, BK7, calcium fluoride and fused silica. Comes in regular, sphere, concave, convex, aspheric and cylindrical shapes. Suitable for imaging, surveillance, magnification and scanning applications. Serves the defense, security, aerospace, bioengineering and pharmaceutical industries.

Regular readers know that I am a big fan of Really Right Stuff products.  Their customer service is superb.  If you choose to purchase from them at their site, please let them know that I referred you.

Manufacturer of standard and custom ultraviolet quartz, imaging and barcode lens assemblies for optical applications. Available in 6 to 112 mm focal length. Most items available in stock.

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The combination of focal length and sensor size go together to define the diagonal angle of view, basically a measure of the angle between the two farthest separated points the in the frame, the diagonally opposite corners.