How Does Crop Factor Affect Raspberry Pi Camera Lenses?
Introduction
The most anticipated Raspberry Pi Camera of the year which is the Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera got released a few weeks ago and the Raspberry Pi community is already loving it! This 12-megapixel camera is able to offer great image and video quality with the support of additional lenses as well. The inclusion of the screw connector allows various different lenses to be easily screwed onto this camera and expand your creativity!
Along with this camera, two additional camera lenses also got released: a 6mm wide-angle lens and a 16mm telephoto lens.
However, we did not want to stop you from there. We wanted to give you even more options and today we are very excited to bring you five more camera lenses for your Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera!
These include:
Before talking about these camera lenses, let’s talk about something very important to note when choosing a camera lens for your Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera and that is the Crop Factor. Don’t worry, we will not go into very technical details, but help you understand this concept.
What is Crop Factor?
When using digital cameras, each camera has a different image sensor. The size of this image sensor can affect the effective focal length of the lens which is connected to the camera. Generally, a 1-inch sensor gives you the exact focal length of the lens which is connected to a camera. However, when the image sensor size gets smaller, the effective focal of the lens also gets smaller. The amount by which the image got smaller compared to the original size is known as the “crop factor”.
How Does It Affect the Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera Lenses?
Raspberry pi High Quality Camera is equipped with a 1/2.3-inch image sensor and this is equivalent to a crop factor of 5.6. Let’s understand this from the image below.
As you can see from the image above, the image from Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera gets cropped from the original image.
For example, if you use a 10mm lens on your Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera, the effective focal length of the lens will be:
10mm x 5.6 = 56mm
So, when you connect this 10mm lens on to your High Quality Camera, it will give the same result as using a 56mm lens on your 1-inch sensor camera.
Therefore, let’s have a look at all our lenses with their effective focal lengths when using the Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera.
| Original Focal Length | Effective Focal Length = (Original Focal Length x 5.6) |
|---|---|
| 6mm | 33.6mm |
| 16mm | 89.6mm |
| 25mm | 140mm |
| 35mm | 196mm |
| 50mm | 280mm |
| 8-50mm | 44.8 – 280mm |
Categorizing the Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera Lenses
The lenses that we offer can be categorized into wide-angle, telephoto, and macro lenses.
Wide Angle Lens: This type of lens allows your camera to capture more of the scene than a normal lens and ideal for landscape photography.
Lens options: 6mm
Telephoto Lens: This type of lens has a long reach and allows you to shoot a subject that is far away.
Lens options: 16mm, 25mm, 35mm, 50mm, 8-50mm
Macro Lens: This type of lens is ideal for closeup photography to get high details images of tiny objects (this is ideal for microscopic application as well)
Lens Options: 300x
We have also released two different tripods so that you can mount your Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera and have a better experience.
Conclusion
We hope you got a clear understanding of what you need to consider when choosing your Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera and we hope these cameras will help you to take your photography and videography projects to the next level.
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