Do fisheye lenses focus on a curved surface rather than a flat plane?

Asked 11/10/2013

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I noticed with a fisheye lens that the areas appearing sharp don’t seem to fall on a flat focus plane the way they often do with a rectilinear lens. I know many lenses have some field curvature, but it seems much more obvious with a fisheye.

Is a fisheye lens inherently focused onto a curved surface, or is this just stronger field curvature that can also occur with other wide-angle lenses?

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

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

12y ago

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The difference between a wide angle fisheye lens and a wide angle rectilinear lens is equal area projection versus straight line projection. Uncorrected, they will both demonstrate field curvature.

All simple lenses will demonstrate field curvature based on the angle of view the lens provides. Of course the sensor/film size is also involved in the angle of view yielded by a particular focal length. When used with a 35mm sized full frame sensor, an uncorrected long telephoto lens, such as a 400mm one with a field of view (FoV) of only 5° will have field curvature the shape of a 5° arc of a sphere. An uncorrected lens with an FoV of 45° such as a 50mm one will, likewise, have field curvature the shape of a 45° arc of a sphere. As you can see, by the time a lens such as an 8-15mm fisheye is considered, the FoV on a FF sensor approaches 180° and the field curvature of an uncorrected lens would be the shape of half a sphere!

Most lenses used by modern photographic equipment are not simple lenses. They are compound lenses with several elements combined into several groups. Most of the additions beyond a simple lens are to allow for things such as close focusing, zooming, and to correct optical aberrations. One such aberration that is usually corrected to one degree or another is field curvature. This is fairly straightforward on a lens with a narrow field of view (FoV) because the curvature is much less pronounced than with a lens with a wide field of view. How much, if any, of the field curvature is corrected depends on each individual lens' design.

A lens such as the Rokinon 8mm T3.8 Cine Fisheye for Canon is corrected very well and yields almost a flat plane of focus when used on an APS-C sensor for a diagonal FoV of around 167°. At the other end of the spectrum, a single meniscus lens with the same FoV would have a very pronounced field curvature. Most designs are somewhere in between.

Originally by user15871. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user15871

12y ago

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AI Answer

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

A fisheye lens does not inherently focus onto a different kind of surface than other lenses, but its extremely wide angle of view can make field curvature much more noticeable.

The main distinction between fisheye and rectilinear lenses is projection: fisheyes map the scene using a non-rectilinear projection, while rectilinear lenses try to keep straight lines straight. That projection difference is separate from field curvature.

In general, simple lenses show field curvature, and the wider the angle of view, the more obvious that curved focus surface can appear. With a very narrow-angle lens, the curved surface is only a small arc and looks almost flat. With a very wide lens—especially a fisheye covering an enormous field of view—the same effect can appear much stronger.

So the answer is: not inherently because it’s a fisheye, but fisheye lenses often make field curvature easier to see because of their very wide field of view.

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12y ago

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