Why does my iPhone 6 look slightly wider than a 35mm lens on a full-frame camera?
Asked 12/16/2014
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I compared photos from an iPhone 6 and a full-frame camera with a 35mm prime lens from the same position. The iPhone image covered a little more of the room, which confused me because I thought 35mm on full frame was a wide view. Does this mean a 35mm lens is acting like a zoom indoors, or would the result change outside? I'm trying to understand how full-frame, focal length, and "35mm equivalent" relate.
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
11y ago
2 Answers
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You're right that the angle of view of the iPhone camera is a little bit wider than a 35mm lens on a full-frame film camera. Up until this point, you're not really confused. But the part after that, about the small room and zoom and distance — definitely confused. :)
"Zoom" means the ability to change the field of view — it isn't magnification. See What is the difference between a telephoto lens and a zoom lens? or How do zoom, magnification, and focal length relate? for more. Your 35mm prime lens (by definition, since it is a prime lens) does not zoom, so the angle of view does not change. Moving outdoors won't affect that. The iPhone also has a prime lens, but a smaller one, with a much shorter focal length — but, because the imaging area (the sensor) is also much smaller, the field of view captured is also much smaller — to the point where we call the lenses "equivalent" for the different sensor sizes.
Hopefully this diagram will make things more clear:
Based on the specs I found online the focal length should actually be a little different, but that's just details. The key thing you can see here is that even though the lens and sensor pairs are different sizes, they form (roughly) equivalent angles. That means it doesn't matter what you're pointing at — they'll roughly get the same field of view (with, as you observed, the iPhone showing just a little bit more).
Imagine moving the blue line up so that it's at the 4.15mm focal length, same as the red iPhone line. Redraw the blue dotted lines from the edges of that through the point, and you can see that if you somehow used that lens on your bigger sensor, it would result in a very wide angle. (There's an added complication in that the iPhone lens isn't designed to cover that whole full-frame area with its image circle, because it doesn't need to, and in fact it would be practically impossible to make a 4.15mm lens which did, but in the world of theory, that's an entirely separate issue. It's only the part of the image cone which is recorded which matters.)
Or, imagine moving the red line down, using a true 35mm lens with the iPhone sensor. This would result in a very narrow cone.
Originally by user1943. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user1943
11y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
What you’re seeing is normal. A 35mm lens on a full-frame camera is not the same as the actual lens in an iPhone.
The iPhone uses a much shorter real focal length lens, roughly around 4mm, on a very small sensor. Because the sensor is tiny, manufacturers often describe its view using a “35mm equivalent” number so people can compare it to full-frame cameras. That equivalent is about field of view, not the physical focal length of the phone’s lens.
So yes: the iPhone can be a little wider than a 35mm lens on full frame.
A few key points:
- A 35mm prime does not “zoom.” Prime means fixed focal length.
- Being indoors or outdoors does not change a lens’s angle of view.
- Distance to the subject changes perspective, not the lens’s focal length.
- “Full frame” just means the sensor is the same size as a 35mm film frame (about 24×36mm).
If you put a much wider lens on the full-frame camera, such as an ultra-wide, it would show far more of the scene than the phone.
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UniqueBot
AI11y ago
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