Measuring Lens Field of View (FOV)
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The Challenge: If you know a lot of information about a particular camera
and lens, calculating the rated lens field of view is straightforward. However, can we
measure actual lens field of view with no prior knowledge about a particular camera
and lens?
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Warning: Since field of view for a lens changes depending upon
the focal length and focus distance, you must
first decide what focal length and focus distance to test.
Hyperfocal Distance Information
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FOV Measurement Setup
x = DistanceFromWall
y = WallDistance/2
α = FOV° / 2
α = tan-1(y/x)
x = y / tan(α)
y = tan(α) * x
FOV° = 2 * tan-1(y/x)
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The Solution:
Accurately measuring lens FOV requires the setup like you see to the right.
It requires two separate sets of measurements (one near and one far).
Repeat these steps, one near, with the camera close to the wall (like 3 feet),
and another far, with the camera farther away from the wall (like 8 feet or more):
- Place your tripod in a large room, level and centered facing a wall (and perfectly square with
the wall). Take note of the height to the center of the lens.
- Print out two registration grids and tape them to the wall with the
center of the grid at exactly the same height as your lens. Adjust the left/right of the grids
by looking in your camera viewfinder attempting to see just the very edge of the grid.
- Take a test digital photo and examine the image. The registration grids must be perfectly centered
vertically on the left and right sides of the image (like the 'dotted outline photo on the wall
in the setup example). If not, your tripod was not perfectly level. Adjust your tripod and repeat until level.
- Take a digital photo and closely examine where in each grid the digital picture edge is located. Do
this on a computer by zooming into the image. Mark a red spot representing the photo edge on each
grid on the wall.
- Note that the distance from both red points on the grids to the lens (front/center) must be the same
distance. If not, your tripod was not 'square' with the wall. Adjust the tripod and try again.
- The distance between the two red dots on the wall is the "WallDistance".
- The distance from the wall the front of the lens is the "DistanceFromWall".
The angular origin is somewhere inside the lens, but we actually don't have to know where!
Instead, take measurments to the front of the lens. And take measurments from two
distances away from the wall (one near, one far). We then know that there must be some unknown
constant 'k' which needs to be added to both lens measurments Because the FOV angle is constant,
the 'tan(y/x)' must be the same for both near and far measurements. Namely:
tan(near-measurement) = tan(far-measurement)
or more specifically:
and solving for 'k' yields the following:
After finding 'k', adjust both 'x' (Distance From Wall) values by this amount and use the formulas above
to solve for the FOV°.
Here is a script that does all of that computation for you:
Clicking on one of these links will fill in the table above with actual test data:
Measure FOV at the Mall: Really super size things! Go to the local mall and find a wall that
is fairly 'in-line'. Take a picture, similar to the image below, where on each left/right side of the image
you have windows to help you pinpoint exact edges. Remember to be 'square' with the mall wall (in my case,
I just used the parking lot grid to help, which appeared fairly 'square' with the mall).
Then simply count walking paces. Remember to start counting paces from directly under the camera lens.
Mall image (with top/bottom cropped) with vertical FOV center line
In my case, I was 81 paces from the mall, and the mall wall distance was
109 paces. Plugging these figures into the FOV formula above results in a FOV
measurement of 67.87°. Remarkably close to the 67.66° calculated above
considering the measuring tape is 'walking paces' and that the test was performed
in about five minutes!
Optional: Take a friend and a 100-foot measuring tape with you and instead of counting
paces, actually measure distances to the nearest inch. The resulting FOV measurement will be about as
precise as you could ever get.
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