Can a mobile phone camera be considered equivalent to 10-20mm wide angle lens on a crop body?

Question

I want to see the perspective we get from an 10-20mm wide angle lens on a crop body DSLR.

Can a mobile phone camera be considered equivalent to 10-20mm wide lens on a crop body?

Means I want to see the perespective of that wide angle lens without renting it. can i use the phone camera? @PhilipKendall — Aquarius_Girl, Sep 21 '18 at 08:51
@flolilolilo The page on the link in that answer is broken... seems the website have gone defunct. — MichaelK, Sep 21 '18 at 08:54
@flolilolilo Doesn't mean the question isn't a duplicate, we can put a new answer there, or fix up the old one. — Philip Kendall, Sep 21 '18 at 08:56
@PhilipKendall answer there talks about full frame. I have a cropped body. — Aquarius_Girl, Sep 21 '18 at 08:57
Multiply by 1.6 or 1.5, respectively, then. That can easily be brought into that answer, as it is not part of the question. — flolilo, Sep 21 '18 at 09:04
@flolilolilo Yes but the content of the page does not contain an answer to the question and there is no comparison available. — MichaelK, Sep 21 '18 at 09:10
This question is presumably linked to my comment on https://photo.stackexchange.com/q/101596/57929 as I suggested a quick test would be to compare to a phone. — Tetsujin, Sep 21 '18 at 10:02

mattdm · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-21T12:16:00.127

2

Generally no. The camera on most cell phones provides a field of view equivalent to a 28mm lens on full frame, give or take. That's roughly like the field of view of the long end of 10-20mm on an APS-C camera (15-30mm-e, or a little narrower for Canon). But it doesn't give you a good sense of the wide end, which I assume is most interesting.

There are a few phones on the market with wider lenses, usually as an entirely second camera module — the LG VG35 ThinQ is one such current example. This has a roughly 16mm-equivalent lens.

If you're just trying to get an idea of what a wider field of view will look like, you might try supplemental lenses designed for smartphones. These are terrible in terms of quality so I don't generally recommend them, but they might get you what you want. These usually come in the form of "0.45×" converters — they'll make 28mm into about 13mm. So, if you're just trying to get an idea of what this field of view looks like, that might be a very cheap option.

edited Sep 21 '18 at 12:16

answered Sep 21 '18 at 11:48

mattdm

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But she asked about 10-20mm on a crop cam, so your answer should be yes. – jps Sep 21 '18 at 12:09
@jps Only at the long end, though. I'll clarify. – mattdm Sep 21 '18 at 12:10
yes, about 18mm then, quite far from the FOV of a 10mm – jps Sep 21 '18 at 12:13
I didn't understand this "field of view of the long end of 10-20mm". What is long end here? – Aquarius_Girl Sep 21 '18 at 14:07

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 21 '18 at 09:31

If the smartphone you want to buy offers a field of view that is equivalent to that of a 15-32mm full frame lens, then: yes. As there are tens of thousands of different phones out there, we cannot say for sure if phone A or phone B offers a feature without doing the same research that you would have to do - over and over again, because phone C will most likely differ in relevant ways.

If you want to know about the average field of view of a smartphone, I recommend reading What is the focal length on your typical cell phone camera?. The answers also include the necessary equations of you want to do it on your own.

Can a mobile phone camera be considered equivalent to 10-20mm wide angle lens on a crop body?

2 Answers2