Lense Comparison

[Guest Dor Sinai]

Im thinking of shooting a short film in 16mm.

After a short research i discovered that the 35mm stills camera i have has a complete different ratio then a Cinematography 16mm camera, (change of film size etc).

 

i just wanted to know what the ratio is, for example:

 

28mm Lense in a "35mm stills camera" equals to what kind of Lense in a "16mm cinematography camera"?

if any of you know a correct scale for this subject, like the change between meters and feet if you like, ill be happy to know of it.

 

thanx.

[Guest Ian Marks]

The ratio of the height to the width of the frame (i.e., aspect ratio) is different for the two formats, so you can't make a perfect comparison. Subjectively, I tend to equate a 10mm lens for 16mm with a 30mm lens for 35mm stills, and a 16mm lens with a 45mm-ish "normal," if that's any help.

[Guest Dor Sinai]

Yeah, Thanx. that helped a lot.

 

and lets say i wanna use mostly -in 35mm scale- lenses that go from 16 to 35 (really wide).

what kind of lenses do i need to rent for a 16mm camera? im guessing 5 to 10?

comparatively what's 5 in 35mm camera scale?

 

I thought that the aspect reatio's between the 35 and 16 cameras is not accurate but all i need is some relativity between them so ill know what lenses to rent pre-shooting. so if anyone has any idea for some kind of scale on the net, that will be really good.

for example, whats the equivalent for the 35mm camera in 16mm camera lenses:

 

(35mm - 16mm)

16 -

20 -

24 -

28 -

35 -

50 -

80 -

105 -

120 -

180 -

250 -

300 -

 

hope this is not too much hassle. feel free to add numbers to the above.

 

Thanx :)

[David Mullen ASC]

Trouble is that there are slight variations in 35mm size, and aspect ratio, so are you trying to compare the horizontal view of, let's say, standard 35mm 1.85, versus Super-16 framed for 1.85?

 

If so, it's roughly 1.7X, I believe... i.e. the equivalent of a 25mm lens in 35mm would be something like a 14mm to 15mm in Super-16. For a 50mm lens in 35mm, you'd use a 29mm lens (if it exists) in Super-16. More or less.

 

Most people just divide by half for simplicity's sake.

 

Easiest thing is to just look at the horizontal field of view of the lens on a chart and find something similar in the Super-16 chart. And there are calculators for this sort of conversion too.

[Ilmari Reitmaa]

And there are calculators for this sort of conversion too.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I find this one particularly handy: http://www.mat.uc.pt/~rps/photos/angles.html

[Adam Frisch FSF]

The old "rule" I learned from God knows where, is that twice the diagional of the format you're shooting in mm is the normal lens for that format. In 35mm the diagonal is roughly 25-28mm. 2x 25mm equals 50mm - hence a "normal" lens is 50mm for 35mm. This is all just a bit funky of course, but as a rough guide it's quite useful.

[Guest Dor Sinai]

You Guys Helped me a lot.

 

if anyone here knows some kind of a FAQ on the net that covers the diffrences for different aspect ratio's in diffrent cameras, and showing lense diffrences ill be more then happy to know of it.

 

you said that theres a diffrent aspect ratio between 35mm and 16mm. now 35 is like 1.85, then what is 16mm or super 16mm, is it 4X3 regular full screen?

or maybe 16 and S16 are diffrent too?

 

the lense comparison was meant to know about whats wide and whats 50mm and above in 16mm camera. how is that connected to the diffrence in the aspect ratio?

[Sam Wells]

if anyone here knows some kind of a FAQ on the net that covers the diffrences for different aspect ratio's in diffrent cameras, and showing lense diffrences ill be more then happy to know of it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

http://www.panavision.co.nz/Main/kbase.asp?cat=13

 

Someone should get this link onto the FAQ for cinematography.com, this question comes up again and again

 

-Sam

[David Mullen ASC]

The 4-perf 35mm Full Aperture is 1.33 : 1. When sound-on-film came along, the width of the projector gate was reduced slightly to 1.20 : 1 to make room for a soundtrack on the side, and lenses on cameras started being optically recentered for this new gate. Then the height was reduced slightly to make the 1.37 : 1 Academy format. Then later, projector gates were reduced in height even more with the 1.85 mask.

 

So obviously the image projected by 50mm lens onto a 4-perf 35mm Full Aperture gate (Super-35) will be trimmed by smaller projection formats like matted 1.85. And while 1.37, 1.66, and 1.85 all share the same width in the projector gate, they share different heights so the same lens will obviously create different vertical views.

 

So the issue is not just what the negative sees, but what aspect ratio you are framing for. Full Aperture Super-16 is about 1.66 : 1 or 1.69 : 1 and Full Aperture regular 16mm is either 1.33 : 1 or 1.37 : 1 depending on what you read. Again, the main issue is that since Super-16 uses a slightly wider gate, you will see "more" of the image projected by the lens (perhaps even to the point of having vignetting problems.) In other words, a 50mm lens looks slightly more wide-angle on a Super-16 camera than on a regular 16mm camera. And I'm just talking about Full Aperture. You may end up composing the image for some widescreen aspect ratio.

 

There are charts that show you the field of view of different lenses for different formats and aspect ratios.

 

For example, for a 50mm lens, the horizontal field of view is:

1.33 Full Aperture: 28 degrees

1.37 Academy / 1.66 / 1.85: 23.7 degrees

2.39 Anamorphic: 46.2 degrees

Super-35 (nearly the same as Full Aperture): 27 degrees

Super-16: 13.4 degrees

Regular-16: 11.0 degrees

 

Understanding that the larger number of degrees, the more wide-angle the view is.

 

So if you are trying to match the view in standard 35mm sound (1.37 / 1.66 / 1.85) when using a 50mm lens (23.7 degrees), the closest match is probably a 25mm lens in regular 16mm (21.9 degrees) -- but of course if you could use a zoom, you could get to 23.7 degrees by zooming out slightly. Now on a Super-16 camera, a 25mm lens is 26.5 degrees and you'd slightly zoom in to get to 23.7.

 

So you can see that for the most part, you simply divide in half to get the equivalent lens in 16mm compared to standard 35mm. However, they don't always make primes lens for 16mm that are exactly half the focal length of the prime lenses they make for 35mm, but you can get close enough.