your FOV table is wrong. i think you took 36mm width instead of the diagonal. =2*ARCTAN(SQRT(24^2+36^2)/(2*”focallength”))*(180/PI())

As well as calculating the angle of view, we can also use the same trigonometry to calculate the field of view as a linear measurement, as long as you know the distance to your subject, or, if you know the size of your subject and the focal length you are going to use, it could tell you how far away from it you need to be to get it to fill the frame. The units of measurement will be constant in the equation, so if you use metres as your distance to subject, the linear field of view will also be in metres.

Thanks for the suggestion Kay. I like the idea, but there are many phone apps out there that offer this already, and they do a better job than I could ever do. I would suggest buying the app called “PhotoPills”, it has angle of view and depth of field calculators in it and it’s a great app for many things related to photography.

World-class Nikon objectives, including renowned CFI60 infinity optics, deliver brilliant images of breathtaking sharpness and clarity, from ultra-low to the highest magnifications.

CalculateFoVfrom image

It must be noted here that Canon has actually used difference sensor sizes for their APS-C cameras over the years. Since the sensor dimension does affect the field of view, this should be taken into account in order to be 100% accurate. For the data table below I have chosen to use the sensor width of 22.5mm because this is the one that Canon seem to have stuck with for their own calculations, and it is also the dimension that gives exactly a 1.6x crop factor. Whilst they do have 22.3mm and 22.4mm sensor widths on the market as well, this minuscule difference would not actually make any noticeable difference to your images, but if you ran your own calculations for your own camera and found they did not match my numbers, this will be the cause of the difference. It was the source of some head scratching for me when I was figuring all this out myself!

Since the equation for field of view contains the sensor width, which determines the crop factor of a sensor, this is another way to see the effect that the crop factor of a camera has on an image. The smaller the sensor, the larger the crop factor, and the smaller the field of view for a given focal length. Below I have included data for full frame field of view, as well as the three most common digital crop factors. If you want to learn more about crop factor, you can read my tutorial: How To Calculate a Camera’s Crop Factor.

I’ll be honest Michael, I don’t have time to do the math for you. The idea was to create a resource for people to calculate this themselves. All the equations you need are right here on the page. Just plug your numbers in 🙂

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Calculating fovcamera

I would check that your camera is in full output. If you use are using a smaller output resolution, your FoV will be cropped. The frame size input will be smaller.

Angle of view calculator

Note that this equation HSize/2=f*Tan(FoV/2) is inaccurate if your DSLR lens has >1% distortion. So, it shouldn’t be used for lenses like the Canon 11mm-22mm and most <15mm EFL 35mm-format type lenses. The G6 14mm has ~5% distortion.

Thanx for the math. Can the view angle and/ or field of view for fish-eye lenses both rectilinear and circular image types also be calculated? It is my understanding the formulas are more complicated. I am interested because I have two fisheye Zuiko lenses from OM-2 & 4 cameras which I would like to use with adapter on Panasonic G 85 or Canon M 50. Can you help? TIA

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FOVto mm calculator

The ordinary and extraordinary light waves generated when a beam of light traverses a birefringent crystal have plane-polarized electric vectors that are mutually perpendicular to each other. In addition, due to differences in electronic interaction that each component experiences during its journey through the crystal, a phase shift usually occurs between the two waves. This interactive tutorial explores the generation of linear, elliptical, and circularly polarized light by a pair of orthogonal light waves (as a function of the relative phase shift between the waves) when the electric field vectors are added together.

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The larger the field of view, the wider the lens is and the more of a scene you are going to see with your camera. Telephoto and super telephoto lenses have very small fields of view, just a few degrees, so they aren’t able to see very much of the scene in front of them, although the compensating virtue is that what they do see, is much larger in the frame. A wide angle lens for landscape photography has a very small focal length, and therefore a large field of view that lets you record broad landscapes in a single shot.

Dan, I’m a newbie to landscapes, and I’m not a professional. So, here’s a little feedback. Please understand that I don’t necessarily have the right language to ask the right questions. What I was really looking for is a way to know what general lens size to use to get a “how large a field of view. The math is helpful, but really not intuitive, especially if your last experience with higher math was 30+ years ago. What was a very useful visual for demonstrating angle of view is the first illustration you had, namely, the “topdown” view of the camera with cones coming forward in different colors. A visual chart or series of charts showing an object at say 200 yards, with the focal point in the center, and a second overlay on top of that showing how much distance to the front & back of the focal point remains in focus relative to the aperture would be ideal. I realize you are probably laughing out loud at this, & don’t have anywhere near enough time for a project of that size, & probably even less inclination to actually do it, but it would be enormously helpful, and a lot more visually intuitive. Thanks so much.

When the Phase Shift slider is set to zero, 180, and 360 degrees, the resultant vector (the black line surrounding the waves or the thick arrow in the gray box) creates a black sine wave positioned at a 45-degree angle between the orthogonal waves, or traces a straight line when the approaching waves are viewed end-on from the gray box. Between zero and 90 degrees, the resultant vector forms an ellipse (representing elliptically polarized light) around the waves and in the gray box. At 90 degrees, the ellipse becomes a circle (representing circularly polarized light). In both cases, the sweep of the resultant vector is counterclockwise, which indicates left-handed polarized light. As the slider is translated between 90 and 180 degrees, the ellipse slowly collapses to form linearly polarized light (at 180 degrees; in the opposite quadrant from the orientation at zero degrees), and then right-handed elliptically polarized light when the slider is moved past 180 degrees. At 270 degrees, right-handed circularly polarized light is produced, which folds into elliptically polarized light between 270 and 360 degrees and, finally, linearly polarized light is again formed at 360 degrees.

If you read lens specifications (yes, I’m that kind of guy) on manufacturer’s websites, they’ll often quote the field of view (F.O.V) of a lens as well as the focal length. When they do this in photographic terms, they’re talking about horizontal field of view in degrees, and whilst any lens will also have both a vertical and a diagonal field of view, they are rarely talked about in relation to photographic lenses.

As far as I can tell, it is correct. I just plugged some values into other online FOV calculators and the FOV calculator in the most popular photography iPhone app and all got the same answers that are in my table. 36mm is the width of a full frame sensor.

Matthew J. Parry-Hill and Michael W. Davidson - National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, 1800 East Paul Dirac Dr., The Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, 32310.

In order to view the sine waves from a variety of angles, use the mouse cursor to click and drag the waves anywhere within the boundaries of the tutorial window. The waves both terminate simultaneously in a gray box positioned at one end of the waves. Within the gray box, the undulating electric vector component from each wave is represented by a black square that vibrates in the same plane as the parent wave. In addition, the resultant of the electric vector summation between the two waves is represented by a thick black arrow that moves back and forth in the gray box to scribe either a line, ellipse, or circle, depending upon the phase relationship between the orthogonal waves. The gray box and resultant arrow can be eliminated from the window by removing the checkmark from the Show Resultant check box.

How to calculateFOVmicroscope

A special class of materials, known as compensation or retardation plates, are quite useful in producing elliptically and circularly polarized light for polarized light microscopes. These birefringent substances are chosen because, when their optical axis is positioned perpendicular to the incident light beam, the ordinary and extraordinary light rays follow identical trajectories and exhibit a phase difference that is dependent upon the degree of birefringence. Because the pair of orthogonal waves is superimposed, it can be considered a single wave having mutually perpendicular electrical vector components separated by a small difference in phase. When the vectors are combined by simple addition in three-dimensional space, the resulting wave becomes elliptically polarized.

CalculateFOVfrom focal length

In cases where the major and minor vectorial axes of the polarization ellipse are equal, then the light wave falls into the category of circularly polarized light, and can be either right-handed or left-handed in sense. Another case often occurs in which the minor axis of the electric vector component in elliptically polarized light goes to zero, and the light becomes linearly polarized. Although each of these polarization motifs can be achieved in the laboratory with the appropriate optical instrumentation, they also occur (to varying, but minor, degrees) in natural non-polarized light.

DiagonalFOVcalculator

The equation with distortion is quite a bit more complicated, so even apps like PhotoPills haven't modelled it. It has 4 variable coefficients and an additional SIN function. Here is a calculator which extends to lenses with distortion: https://commonlands.com/pages/fov-calculator

Douglas B. Murphy - Department of Cell Biology and Microscope Facility, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, 725 N. Wolfe Street, 107 WBSB, Baltimore, Maryland 21205.

I need to shoot down on a square card table, 35 inches on each side (including margins) at a distance of about 1 meter. I am using a Panasonic G6 with the 14-42mm kit lens set at 14mm. Online calculators using the formula FOV (rectilinear) = 2 * arctan (frame size/(focal length * 2) indicate that the 14mm focal length should cover 35.14 inches in the vertical dimension at a distance of 41 inches. When I actually tried it, I had to be at least 11 feet back from the table. What gives?

I am not at all sure which is the best way to quote, but it is important to know how the quoted numbers are defined. Thanks for your very useful discussion.

As I continue to build out the photographic knowledge base on the site with articles like Understanding Neutral Density Filter Names and Numbers, and Understanding Aperture, I thought I’d write a quick post about how to calculate field of view for a photographic lens. Lenses are usually described by their focal length, expressed in mm, but how does this translate to field of view?

CCTV field of view calculator

Nikon specs their 10-24mm DX lens as having AoV of 109 degrees at 10 mm and 61 degrees at 24 mm when used on a DX camera. This does not agree with your table above. However, using their two numbers, you can easily calculate the sensor size from your formula–it is 28.4 mm. This is exactly the diagonal of the cropped sensor size of 23.5 x 15.7 mm.. Thus, Nikon uses the diagonal for quoting their specs, not the width of the sensor.

Note: If your calculator is working in radians, you need the (180/π) part at the end. if your calculator is working in degrees, you do not need that bit! If you aren’t sure… it will become pretty obvious when you run the equation as results will be wildly wrong.

This concept is illustrated in Figure 1, where the resultant electric vector does not vibrate in a single plane, but progressively rotates around the axis of light wave propagation, sweeping out an elliptical trajectory that appears as a spiral when the wave is viewed at an angle. The size of the phase difference between the ordinary and extraordinary waves (of equal amplitude) determines whether the vector sweeps an elliptical or circular pathway when the wave is viewed end-on from the direction of propagation. If the phase shift is either one-quarter or three-quarters of a wavelength, then a circular spiral is scribed by the resultant vector. However, phase shifts of one-half or a full wavelength produce linearly polarized light, and all other phase shifts produce sweeps having various degrees of ellipticity.

Elliptical polarization, unlike plane-polarized and non-polarized light, has a rotational "sense" that refers to the direction of electric vector rotation around the propagation (incident) axis of the light beam. When approaching waves are viewed end-on, the direction of polarization can be either left-handed or right-handed, a property that is termed the handedness of the elliptical polarization. Clockwise rotational sweeps of the vector are referred to as right-handed polarization, and counterclockwise rotational sweeps represent left-handed polarization.

When the ordinary and extraordinary waves emerge from a birefringent crystal, they are vibrating in mutually perpendicular planes having a total intensity that is the sum of their individual intensities. Because the polarized waves have electric vectors that vibrate in perpendicular planes, the waves are not capable of undergoing interference. This fact has consequences in the ability of birefringent substances to produce an image. Interference can only occur when the electric vectors of two waves vibrate in the same plane during intersection to produce a change in amplitude of the resultant wave (a requirement for image formation). Therefore, transparent specimens that are birefringent will remain invisible unless they are examined between crossed polarizers, which pass only the components of the elliptically and circularly polarized waves that are parallel to the axis of the polarizer closest to the observer. These components are able to produce amplitude fluctuations to generate contrast and emerge from the polarizer as linearly polarized light.

If you want to use the field of view equation on this page to calculate the field of view for a sensor size other than the four that have been provided, you’ll need to refer to use this list of common sensor sizes and their crop factor.

The tutorial initializes with two orthogonal sine waves (the electric vector components of the waves are colored red and blue) traveling from left to right in the window, and having a 90-degree (one-quarter wavelength) out-of-phase relationship. Circumscribing the mutually perpendicular waves is a helical black line (resultant vector) that is generated by calculating the sum of the electric vector components from each wave. The relative phase shift between the two waves can be altered with the Phase Shift slider through a range of zero to 360 degrees. As this slider is translated to the left or right, one wave moves in relation to the other along the propagation axis (shifting the phase), and the black line representing the vector sum changes from elliptical to circular or linear, depending upon the value of the phase relationship between the waves. Translation of the sine wave across the tutorial window can be paused at any point by clicking on the Pause button, and the tutorial is re-initialized by clicking on the Reset button. The Speed slider controls the rate of translation by the sine waves across the tutorial window.

Field of View. How many feet both horizontally and vertically in FOV using a 2000mm lens at 800 yards? I am trying to decide if I want to spend the money on a Nikon that comes with that lens.

In linearly polarized light, the electric vector is vibrating in a plane that is perpendicular to the direction of propagation, as discussed above. Natural light sources, such as sunlight, and artificial sources, including incandescent and fluorescent light, all emit light with orientations of the electric vector that are random in space and time. Light of this type is termed non-polarized. In addition, there exist several states of elliptically polarized light that lie between linear and non-polarized, in which the electric field vector transcribes the shape of an ellipse in all planes perpendicular to the direction of light wave propagation.