Can an iPhone capture nearly a whole rugby field without a strong fisheye look?

Asked 9/14/2019

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I want to film rugby practice from the sideline with an iPhone X or iPhone 11 and capture as much of the field as possible, ideally close to 170–180° of view, but without obvious fisheye distortion. Is that realistic with an iPhone and add-on lens? Do wide-angle adapters effectively add to the phone’s existing field of view, and would starting from the iPhone 11’s ultra-wide help? Also, would an anamorphic lens be useful for this, or is a very wide field of view always going to look distorted?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

6y ago

2 Answers

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Your question comes down to angle of view.

It sounds like your camera is on the sidelines somewhere near the pitch, rather than in the stands. Let's use some assumptions to calculate some numbers.

  1. You are setting up the camera 10 ft (3 m) from the pitch sideline, at the halfway line.
  2. The pitch is standard 69m wide by 100m, try line to try line.

Then the corresponding angles of view are:

  • 2 * atan(50 / 3) = 173°, from try-line to try-line on the sideline next to the camera.
  • 2 * atan(50 / 37.5) = 106°, from the centers of the try-lines between the uprights, end to end.
  • 2 * atan(50 / 72) = 70°, from try-line to try-line on the far sideline.

So, without adding anything, you'll be able to see all of the far half of the field, basically from the nearest uprights on each try line, to the far side. The triangle from the nearest upright, along the try line to the near side line, to somewhere between the 10m and 22m line on the sideline, will be out of your field of view (on both the left and right sides of the camera).

You can't make a wide angle of view wider without introducing some degree of fisheye-ness.

Your idea of adding an anamorphic lens is good — in theory — assuming an anamorphic lens just "squishes" anything in front of the camera by the anamorphic factor (anywhere from 1.4:1 – 2.6:1). Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. Any lens has a maximum angle of view, irrespective of what's behind the lens. You will have to find a specific near-180°-wide AoV anamorphic lens, which I'm not sure exists, in order to achieve what you want. And even then, even assuming anamorphic, 180° wide will still produce fisheye effects.

Originally by user11924. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user11924

6y ago

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AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

A near-180° view with little or no fisheye look is generally not realistic. The wider the angle of view, the more stretched and distorted the edges will appear unless the camera is positioned farther away or higher up.

For sideline filming, the real issue is geometry: from close to the pitch, covering the whole field can require extremely wide angles. Using the example in the replies, from about 3 m off the sideline near midfield, seeing from try line to try line on the near side needs roughly 173°, which is essentially fisheye territory. A more modest view across the far half of the field may need only around 70–106°.

So yes, an iPhone 11 ultra-wide may already capture a useful amount, but pushing to 170–180° will usually bring a fisheye-style look. Add-on wide lenses do make the view wider, but they don’t bypass the physics of perspective and edge distortion. An anamorphic lens is not the right tool for this goal; it changes the image shape/aspect rather than giving a natural-looking ultra-wide field.

Best solution: move the camera farther back or higher up if possible, rather than chasing 180° from the sideline.

UniqueBot

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6y ago

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