How To Measure FOV On Your Camera

How to measure FOV on your camera
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MaxIcon
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Topic: How to measure FOV on your camera (Read 17297 times)

How to measure FOV on your
camera
on: September 29, 2013, 12:21:56 am
Field of view (FOV) specs are an important part of selecting a camera. Many
vendors don't do a very good job of measuring or defining FOV, and
traditional FOV calculators don't work well with M12 lenses. The important
number with FOV is the angle, which lets you calculate the width and height
of the image at any distance.
More detail later, but for now, here's a simple, inexpensive way to measure
actual FOV on any camera you can get to. The math sounds a little
complicated, but it's really not if you do it step by step.
Overview:
To calculate FOV, you need to measure the width of the image and the
distance from the camera's sensor to the measuring point. By holding a
ruler a fixed distance from the camera and taking a snapshot, you can get
both of these numbers at once.
Here are the basic steps:
1. Assemble the ruler
2. Hold the ruler against the camera's face, just below the lens
3. Rotate the ruler slowly to make sure you get a straight horizontal
alignment in some frames.
4. Repeat with the ruler to the side of the lens and oriented up and down to
get vertical FOV, if you want it.
5. Play back the camera's recording, choose a frame with a clear, straight
image of the ruler, and capture the image if you want.
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6. Read the ruler markings at the edges of the image.

7. Calculate the FOV angle using this formula: 2 * arctan
(width/(distance*2))
Details:
Parts used:
1 36" or 48" ruler (mine uses a 48" ruler)
1 12" or 24" threaded rod, 1/4"-20 thread
2 1/4-20 nuts
1 1/4-20 wing nut (lets you take it apart quickly for storage)
1 plastic cap for the threaded rod
Any size ruler or threaded rod can be used. Longer threaded rods are easier
to reach the camera with, but give less FOV range with a particular ruler.
You can also put labels on the ruler for the angles, so you can read a
ballpark number off immediately. I used 2 x 12" rods with a coupling so I
could test both styles.
Here are the FOVs you can measure with these setups:
36" ruler - 108 degrees with a 12" threaded rod, 71 degrees with a 24" rod.
48" ruler - 123 degrees with a 12" threaded rod, 87 degrees with a 24" rod.
The shorter rod gives a greater FOV range, but requires you to get closer to
the camera, while the 2' rod gives you a bit more reach and requires a 48"
ruler to get above 70 degrees.
The plastic cap protects the camera from the ends of the threaded rod, and
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adds a little extra length to make up for the length that the wing nut grabs.
The rod will often be 1/2" short because of the length that goes through the
ruler, but this doesn't make a big difference in the numbers. You can
measure the rod length to get more accurate number. I assume the sensor is
about 1" behind the front glass, but it's probably a little more, and may be
different for your camera.
To assemble it:
- Drill a 1/4" hole in the center of the ruler (18" on a 36" ruler, 24" on a 48"
ruler).
- Turn the 2 nuts about an inch onto the threaded rod.
- Insert the rod into the hole in the ruler, with the long part on the number
side of the ruler.
- Turn the wing nut onto the rod on the back side of the ruler until the rod is
flush with the wing nut. You want this side to be as short as possible but
still secure.
Turn the first nut to hold the ruler tight against the wing nut.
Turn the second nut to lock against the first nut and keep it from moving.
Turn a plastic cap on the other end of the rod. Anything that will fit, not
move a lot, and protect the camera from the threaded rod will work.
Here's the assembled device, laid out on a flat surface with a Dahua 2100N.
The vertical FOV can be measured by turning the camera sideways:
Once it's assembled, you can get the numbers a couple of ways:
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- Unmounted camera (super easy)

Put the camera and FOV ruler on a smooth, level surface
Push the end of the rod against the camera glass right below or beside the
lens.
Read off the numbers and make the calculations.
- Mounted camera (depends on the mount location)
Have the camera recording
Push the rod against the camera glass right below or beside the lens.
Hold the rod straight out from the camera's face
Hold the ruler straight side to side or up and down
Slowly rotate the ruler around the center. This gives lots of frames to
choose from.
Play back the recording, find the frame with the best centered and clearest
view of the ruler
Read the numbers at the ends of the ruler. Within a quarter inch is fine, and
it's easiest if you keep them as decimals (like 8.75 for 8 3/4).
Take a screen shot if you want.
Plug these numbers into the formula.
It's important to have the ruler close to level side to side or up and down.
Having it centered is good too, but not critical. Once you've done it a few
times, it gets easy.
Here are some examples of how this looks:
Dahua 2100N, 3.6mm lens, on the patio floor with a 12" threaded rod.
This is half-size, but still easily readable because of the good lighting:
Hik 3MP DS-2CD2032 bullet, 4mm lens, mounted out front. Lighting was
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not good and the numbers are harder to read, but it's still easy to tell where
it ends:
Here's a close-up of the ends from the full-size image:
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From these pics, we can see the high and low end of the yardstick, and
figure the width. Once we know that, we plug the numbers into this
formula:
2 * arctan (width/(distance*2))
Width = (highest ruler number) - (lowest ruler number)
Distance = threaded rod length plus 1 (assuming the sensor is about 1"
behind the faceplate or dome). These can be measured more accurately to
get better numbers.
Hik calculations:
If you use the Hik pic above, it uses a 24" threaded rod, so the numbers
become:
2 * arctan ((highest-lowest)/((distance + 1) * 2)
2 * arctan (45.25 - 5.5)/(25 * 2)
2* arctan (39.75/50)
2 * arctan 0.795
2 * 38.5
77 degrees horizontal FOV for the Hik 3MP bullet with the 4mm
lens.
The Hik spec is 75.8 degrees, and this is pretty close. They don't say which
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resolution this is for, but it matches 1080p spec pretty well, and the 3MP
image calculates up at about 69 degrees.
Dahua 2100N calculations:
The Dahua version uses a 12" rod, so the numbers work out like this:
2 * arctan ((highest-lowest)/((distance + 1) * 2)
2 * arctan ((32.75-15.25)/((12 + 1) * 2)
2 * arctan 17.5/26
2 * arctan 0.67
2 * 33.9 degrees
67.8 degrees, but we'll just call it 68 degrees, because we don't really have
1/10 degree accuracy here.
68 degrees horizontal FOV for the Dahua 2100N with the 3.6mm
lens
The Dahua spec is 70 degrees, so they're not too far off.
Arctan!
It's easy until you get to the arctan part, because who messes with trig?
Luckily, there are a bunch of ways of getting this number, and the easy ones
are google or your phone.
Google will calculate it if you put this in the search field (I copy and paste
the x number from the Windows calculator):
arctan x in degrees
where x is the results above. In this case:
arctan 0.795 in degrees
and it gives you 38.48... Multiply that times 2, and that's your FOV - 77
degrees. We're not that precise, so you can round off the decimal points,
and you're done.
One you know this, you can calculate coverage for any distance using an
FOV calculators. If you change the lens, just measure it again, and you'll
know the new FOV.
Other options for the arctan calculations:
Smartphone scientific calculators will also give you the arctan. The Iphone
calculator goes into scientific mode if you turn it sideways, and hitting the
"2nd" button switches from tan to arctan, which they show as tan-1.
You can also create an Excel spreadsheet that will calculate it, or give you a
table of FOV vs distance numbers. The Excel formula is this:
=(180/PI())*2*(ATAN(width/(2*distance))), where width and distance would
point to the cells with those numbers.
You can also set up a formula to go backwards and calculate what width
equals what angle, like so:
=(TAN((width*(PI()/180))/2))*2*angle, where width and angle would
contain the cell numbers that have that info.
This will give you the place to mark angles on the ruler, say for every 10
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degrees. I'll post a table on that later.

FOV calculators:
FOV calculators were standard in old-school CCTV, where C and CS mount
lenses were standard, and the calculators were fairly reliable. M12 lenses
don't have the same standards, and FOV calculators don't work well with
them.
Now, you can use an FOV calculator accurately, because you know the actual
FOV in degrees. Ignore the parts about sensor size, lens size, etc. Just put
in the FOV angle and the distance, and it will give you the width for your
camera and lens at that distance.
Angle vs inches table:
Here's a table of what angles line up with what marks on a 36" ruler, using a
12" or 24" threaded rod. To mark the ruler, you'd put a degrees label at the
inches marks on the ruler.
For instance, to mark 60 degrees on the 12" rod version, you'd put 60
degree labels at 25.5" and 10.5"; same for 70, 80, whatever. This would
help eyeball the numbers without any math. Where the marker numbers go
negative, it's off the ruler, and you'd either need a longer ruler or a longer
rod.
I'll post more on the background later for the tech geeks out there, but this
is the starting point to measure your own FOVs.
Last Edit: September 29, 2013, 05:31:31 am by MaxIcon
MoridinTX
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Re: How to measure FOV on your
06/01/2017 23:20
9 of 15
Newbie
Posts: 20
camera
Wow, awesome
information
Reply #1 on:
September MaxIcon.
29, 2013, Thanks for all the effort!
01:13:44 am
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Array]
[1-Acti E44] [2-Hikvision DS2132i]
Re: How to measure FOV on

your camera
Outsync
Global Moderator
Hero Member
Reply #2 on: September 29, 2013, 04:07:08

am
Sticky! Keep it up!

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3 Acti D32 / 2 Y-Cam Cube HD 1080p / 1 Foscam 9821w

your camera
MaxIcon
Hero Member
Reply #3 on: September 30, 2013, 09:18:16

pm
Posts: 2129
Here's another useful way of looking at this info with pixels per foot (ppf)
calculations.
By doing the measurement above, you are measuring the average pixels per
foot (or whatever), as well as the FOV angle. With this, you can extrapolate
the ppf for any distance, which helps with things like license plate capture or
face recognition, and deciding if your lens size will work for you.
You can use meters or whatever for this as well; whatever works for you is
good.
Using the Hik 1080p example above:
Hik Pixels per Foot (ppf):
Hik horizontal pixels: 1920
Distance to ruler: 25"
Width of FOV: 39.75"
Dividing the resolution by the width gives pixels per inch, and multiplying
that times 12 gives pixels per foot 25 inches away from the camera:
1920/39.75 = 48.3 ppi
48.3 * 12 = 579.6 ppf; let's call it 580 ppf for simplicity.
That's quite a lot of pixels per foot, but we're only 25" away from the
camera, so now we need to figure out how many ppf at different distances.
Each time we double the distance, we cut the ppf in half. To make it simple,
we'll calculate the ppf one foot away from the camera.
To get the ppf at 12":
Divide the distance to the ruler (25") by 12" to give the distance in feet.
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Multiply the ppf at 25" by this.

(580 ppf at 25") * (25/12) = 580 * 2.08 = 1208 ppf at 12".
To get the ppf at any distance:
With this number, you can calculate the ppf at any distance easily, without
using an FOV calculator, by dividing ppf at 1' by the number of feet away
you need resolution for.
(PPF at distance X) = (PPF at 1')/(distance X)
10': 1208/10 = 121 ppf
25': 1208/25 = 48 ppf
And so on.
Or the distance for a certain ppf:
To reverse it, and calculate the distance a certain ppf comes in at:
(Distance X) = (ppf at 1') / (ppf at distance X)
For 80 ppf:
X = 1208/80 = 15.1'
So at 15' you get 80 ppf
License plate example:
Let's say you want to know how far away you can expect to read a license
plate. The most important part of this is the ppf at the plate, though
compression, lighting, lens quality, plate angle, exposure speed, etc, all play
a part as well.
US license plate width: 1' or 12"
California license plate character stroke width: 0.3"
Pixels needed to see a stroke: 1 (probably more in real life, but let's go with
this)
PPF needed to read this plate: 12" / 0.3" = 40 ppf (this gives you 1 pixel per
vertical character stroke)
The example above shows the Hik in 1080p with the 4mm lens gives 48 ppf
at 25', and that's probably a good number to work with, depending on the
setup, but to find it more precisely:
X = 1208 pixels / 40 PPF = 30'
This gives the theoretical maximum distance. The real maximum may be
somewhat closer, depending on the lens quality, compression settings, and
where in the FOV the plate is.
Real-world differences:
Theoretical calculations are a great starting place, but the real world has
different ideas. For instance, your lens resolution is better at the center than
at the edges, so it takes more ppf at the edges to get the same results as the
center.
Also, wide-angle lenses like these cams use have the classic "fish-eye"
distortion that can be seen in the ruler images above, and that results in the
ppf changing across the view. In the center of the lens, you get a certain
number of ppf, but at the edges, you get a lot less.
The ppf calculations above all give an average ppf - lower than the center
resolution and higher than the ends. You can fix this with fish-eye
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correcting lenses, but these tend to be expensive. By using a longer lens,

like you would for plate capture on a dedicated camera, the distortion goes
away due to higher zoom lenses not having fish-eye distortion.
Another important factor is the camera's video compression. The theoretical
estimate above assumes perfect compression, but many cams lose detail in
compression, especially in poor light. For instance, the Dahuas tend to have
blurry images in the shadow when other parts of the image are well lit, so
you'd need more ppf to resolve this in tricky lighting.
I have some images in this thread that show the Dahua effect. I calculated
FOV in this post using a less accurate method and haven't corrected them
yet, but the images are good examples:
http://www.cam-it.org/index.php?topic=4925.msg26343#msg26343
It's important to actually test the results, but being able to estimate what you
need, and being aware of what problems go along with it, will give a good
starting point for camera coverage.
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mikebaxa
Newbie
Reply #4 on: October 13, 2013, 03:32:34 am
Posts: 20
Thanks for this information. It really helps us newbies know what to look
for in cameras, and even more importantly, what we can expect to to get out
of the camera before buying it.
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bp2008
Hero Member
Reply #5 on: October 13, 2013, 08:22:57 pm
Posts: 1247
06/01/2017 23:20
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A google docs spreadsheet with all this prepared (FOV and PPF calculations)
and some measurements from various common cameras would be a great
resource.
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videocheez
Full Member
Reply #6 on: November 12, 2013, 10:44:17

pm
Posts: 156
This is great info for noob like me.

I thought I would never see an arctan as long as I lived after high school
trig.
In your fourth pictureof the Hik 3MP DS-2CD2032 bullet, would a 12mm lens
instead of the 4mm, be more affective at reading the license plate on that
mini-van in front of the pile of leaves? I have a Dahua 2100 set-up in my
front yard in the same position pointing in the same direction and I would
love to be able to read a plate in front of my neighbors house. I'm getting
ready to upgrade my cameras and am trying to figure out what will work.
Thx,VC
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@2.4GHz 2GB RAM w/4 Logitech 700e POE cameras & 2 3 Dahua ESC-HFW2100N cameras
and 1 Dahua IPC-HFW3300C

your camera
MaxIcon
Hero Member

pm
Posts: 2129
License plate capture is all about pixels per foot, so figuring out about what
you'd get with a 12mm lens is important. Here's a thread that discusses
plate capture and distances, and if you search on license plate, you'll find
others. I got some longer lenses to test recently, but haven't had time to do
anything with them yet.
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videocheez
Full Member

am
Posts: 156
Quote from: MaxIcon on November 13, 2013, 11:08:15 pm
License plate capture is all about pixels per foot, so figuring out about what you'd get with a
12mm lens is important. Here's a thread that discusses plate capture and distances, and if
you search on license plate, you'll find others. I got some longer lenses to test recently, but
haven't had time to do anything with them yet.
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Good info. I think I live without capturing the plates for now. I like the
recommendation of getting a long lens dedicated to capturing license plates.
I just think it would be cool to see the plates of any one who parks in front
of my house. The MO of the crooks in my town has not been to park in front
of the house and then break in. They have usually been on foot, hop the
fence and break down the back door.
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Dell Server PE840 Windows 2003 Server R@ Standard Editions SP2 Intel Xeon X3220
@2.4GHz 2GB RAM w/4 Logitech 700e POE cameras & 2 3 Dahua ESC-HFW2100N cameras
and 1 Dahua IPC-HFW3300C

your camera
MaxIcon
Hero Member
Reply #9 on: February 17, 2014, 03:15:41

am
Posts: 2129
I'll roll up all the camera measurements in this post to make them easier to
find and compare. If it has a ?, it means I haven't measured that part yet.
Hikvision DS-2CD2032-I Resolutions:
3MP = 2048 x 1536
1080P = 1920 x 1080
720P = 1280 x 720
OEM 4.0mm lens - Hik's original lens
3MP = 69 degrees H, ? degrees V
1080P = 77 degrees H, ? degrees V
720P = ? degrees H, ? degrees V
Dahua HFW4300S Resolutions:

3MP = 2048 x 1536
1080P = 1920 x 1080
SXGA = 1280 x 1024
1.3MP = 1280 x 960
720P = 1280 x 720
D1 = 704 x 480
OEM 3.6mm lens - Dahua's original lens
3MP, 1.3MP, D1 = 70 degrees H, 51 degrees V
1080P, 720P = 65 degrees H, 36 degrees V
SXGA = 65 degrees H, 51 degrees V
Dahua 2100 Resolutions:

1.3MP = 1280 x 960
720P = 1280 x 720
D1 = 704 x 480
OEM 3.6mm lens - Dahua's original lens
1.3MP = 68 degrees H, 50 degrees V
720P = 68 degrees H, 38 degrees V
D1 = 56 degrees H, 38 degrees V
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DX 3.6mm lens, from this set:

http://dx.com/p/2-8mm-16mm-fixed-iris-lens-set-for-webcamsand-security-cctv-cameras-6-lens-pack-15774#.UvgOOGJLXTo
M12Lenses 6.0mm lens
http://www.m12lenses.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=PT-0618MP
M12Lenses 16.0mm lens
http://www.m12lenses.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=PT-1618MP
1.3MP = 15.2 degrees H, 11.9 degrees V
720P = 15.2 degrees H, 9.0 degrees V
D1 = 12.7 degrees H, 9.0 degrees V
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cqxiaozhao
Newbie
Reply #10 on: August 23, 2016, 02:26:01

am
Posts: 1
It is really a useful way. but for me to understand the resolution of one

camera, i would like to use a camera test chart. you can know the TV line of
your camera.
I just get one from here.
http://www.cctvopticallens.com/product/camera-test-chart.html
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Topic: How to measure FOV on your camera (Read 17297 times)