Wide angle lens - Definition and Overview

In photography and cinematography, a wide-angle lens is a lens whose focal length is shorter than the focal length of a normal lens. For a 35 mm camera with a 24 by 36 mm format, the normal lens is 50 mm. A lens of focal length 35 mm or less is considered wide-angle.

In addition to giving a wider angle of view, the resulting image can also have perspective distortion.

Extreme wide-angle lenses normally do not give a geometric projection, and are called fisheye lenses.

See angle of view for an example of an image taken by a wide-angle lens.

See also: film format, normal lens