Field of View Calculator
Find the angle of view for a sensor and focal length, and how much it covers.
Results
- Horizontal angle of view
- 39.6°
- Vertical angle of view
- 27.0°
- Diagonal angle of view
- 46.8°
- Frame width at subject distance
- 7.20 m
How wide a slice of the scene the frame captures left to right.
How tall a slice of the scene the frame captures, top to bottom.
The angle of view measured corner to corner, often used to compare lenses across formats.
How wide a scene the frame covers at the subject distance you entered.
How it works
Field of view describes how much of the world lands in the frame. It depends on two things only: the focal length of the lens and the physical size of the sensor behind it. A 50mm lens is a normal lens on full frame, a short telephoto on APS-C, and a wide angle on medium format, because the sensor crops a different slice of the same projected image.
The frame width figure turns the angle into something you can act on. If you need to photograph a three-metre-wide group from five metres back, that tells you directly whether your lens covers it.
Manufacturers usually quote the diagonal angle, which is the largest of the three and sounds the most impressive. The horizontal figure is closer to what people mean when they describe how wide a shot feels.
The formula
angle = 2 × arctan(sensor dimension / (2 × f))
Applied separately to the sensor width, height, and diagonal. Frame width at a distance d is 2 × d × tan(horizontal angle / 2).
Frequently asked questions
- Why does my 50mm look different on two cameras?
- The lens projects the same image either way; the sensor decides how much of it gets recorded. A smaller sensor keeps a smaller central portion, which reads as a narrower, more telephoto view.
- Does field of view change when I focus closer?
- Slightly, yes. The standard formula assumes focus at infinity. Focusing close extends the lens and narrows the angle a little, an effect called focus breathing, which is pronounced on some lenses and negligible on others.
- Which angle should I use when comparing lenses?
- The diagonal if you are comparing across different aspect ratios, since it is least affected by frame shape. The horizontal if you are thinking about how a scene will actually be framed.
Read more about this
- Crop factor and equivalence, without the argumentsEveryone agrees crop factor multiplies focal length. The argument starts one line later, at aperture, and it is mostly people answering different questions.
- The 500 rule is broken, and the NPF rule is whyA rule of thumb from the film era, applied to a 45 megapixel sensor, will reliably give you trailed stars and a confident explanation of why they are fine.