Horizontal Angle Of View -1/2″ Chip Professional Video camera 16:9 Format

I am frequently shifting from still photography to professional/broadcast video cameras, like a pendulum. Even in the video format I keep using either 1/3″ , 1/2″ or 2/3″ CCD cameras. The focal length in different formats gives entirely different horizontal angle of view. 50 mm lens, considered NORMAL LENS in 35mm Still Photography is Telephoto in Video formats.

In still photography, a normal lens is a lens whose focal length is roughly equivalent to the diagonal of the image projected within the camera.
For a 35 mm camera with a diagonal of 43 mm, the most commonly used normal lens is 50 mm, but focal lengths between about 40 and 58 mm are also considered normal.

The 50 mm focal length was chosen by Oskar Barnack, the creator of the Leica camera, as a compromise between the theoretical value and good sharpness, as lens technology at the time was such that slightly longer focal lengths were able to achieve optimum sharpness

Ideally what I would do is to mask the Focal Length of the lens with a White tape and write the Horizontal Angle of view.

Horizontal Dimension of 1/2″ Chip Professional Video camera 16:9 Format is 7.58 mm.
Horizontal Dimension of  35mm Format Still Camera is 36 mm; 5.41 times longer than 1/2″ Chip Camera in 16:9 format.

Sony cameras that fall in this category will be XDCAM EX3.

The Normal Lens will be close to 9 mm as it gives a horizontal angle of view of 40 degrees.

1/2″ Lens (mm) ……….HAV 1/2″ Camera ……….35 mm Still Camera Equivalent

3.2…………………………….. 87.27…………………………17.3
5.8…………………………….. 57.50…………………………31.3
9…………………………………39.11…………………………48.6
12……………………………….29.85…………………………64.9
15……………………………….24.08…………………………81.1
20……………………………….18.18……………………….108.2
25……………………………….14.59……………………….135.2
28……………………………….13.04……………………….151.5
35……………………………….10.45……………………….189.3
40…………………………………9.15……………………….216.4
50…………………………………7.32……………………….270.5
81.2………………………………4.51……………………….439.3
93……………………………….. 3.67……………………….503.1

3.2 mm and 5.8 mm lens are considered wide angle lens as it gives a Horizontal angle of view of more than 50 Degrees.
Focal Length above 15 degrees will be considered telephoto lens.

The simplest and fastest way to calculate 40 degrees angle of view ( Normal Lens) in field condition, is to spread out your hand with your arm stretched out in front of you, the tip from the left little finger to right little finger.

It is possible to view images at flickr