Wierd Camera Image Sensor Size: Even for an image Sensor Size

Hi folks. I want to composite recorded footage from my video camera with objects rendered in Blender. I saw that,when rendering the objects that are to be composited, the most important things to get right are the focal length and sensor size settings for Blender’s virtual camera; to ensure the settings of the virtual camera in Blender match those of the camera with which the original video footage was shot.

I’m fairly sure I’ve got the correct value for the focal length, but the image sensor size is wierd, even for an image sensor size. Here’s a photo of the information from the instruction manual that came with the video camera.


I tried reading about image sensor sizes on the internet for a couple of hours yesterday before making this post, but none of them look like this. Obviously they have the fraction of an inch style formatting that turns out not to have anything at all to do with an actual measurement, but I can’t find any mention of all that other guff.

I did try to enter the fraction of an inch as millimetres (comes out at ~ 4.4mm) but it’s abviously not even close to the correct size because a render using these settings just gives an insanely zoomed in tiny little portion of what it should be rendering.

I guess this is a bit of a long-shot, but can anyone help me figure out what this is supposed to mean? The camera model is a Panasonic HC-V180, but almost every search result brings up information about some other variant of the model and I have no idea whether or not it’ll even be relevant.

I’m pretty sure your focal length is wrong, you are using a 35mm equivalent, but this not correct for your sensor size. To make things better, the 1/5.8" size is most probably not exact. You are better off if you let the solver solve the fov for you automatically.

I’ve switched to using the focal length of 2.06mm when trying to use the sensor size of 1/5.8 inches, which has given me reasonable proportionality, but the it still seems considerably more zoomed out than it should be. When you say “solver”, do you mean the camera tracking solver? I didn’t think to use that because I thought it only worked on footage where the camera is moving and I thought you had to have this camera information already entered correctly for it to work anyway.

How would you suggest I go about getting better data for the camera settings? I was about to try using a tiny bit of trigonometry in the sensor size input, 'cause I read the size is usually the diagonal across the sensor and it’s for a 16:9 camera, so I figured I could work it out from that. If, however, I can just record some footage that’s specifically intended to be super easy to track, would that give me better numbers I could copy & paste into the camera settings in files for rendering backgrounds and stuff like that?

Oh, and this is the info relating to the lens (just in case it might be useful).


Yes, by solver I meant the camera tracker solver. It was not clear from your post that it was a static shot.

In this case where camera is not moving, you have a bit more freedom with the fov because perspective has to so-so match in only one certain position. Unless there are some clear straight lines and flat surfaces in your shot (in which case you could use the BLAM addon), just match the perspective by eye.

To calculate the correct fov, one way is to film an object of known size (tape a ruler to wall etc), measure the width seen through the lens and distance from optical center of lens (not front element) to that object. Then use some simple trigonometry to find the fov.

Why not try using Blam addon to get an alternate estimate of the camera and field of view. Then plug that into the solve?

Yeah, sorry about not making it clear that most of my footage will be stationary, Kesonmis. The vast majority of my footage will be with the camera being stationary, but I was thinking I might have some other motion shots depending on how the stationary stuff goes. I’m going to try to learn a bit more about tracking and mixing footage before I try and proceed any further, but thanks for the help guys.

I don’t see Blam in any of the addons, by the way. Do I need to download it from somewhere? How do I install external addons?

Heres Blamon the github. I think that its up to date. There isanother addon that allows you to use rectangles for determining camera view.

Awesome, thanks.

This documentlists an equivalent Sony sensor (which may be the same…) as having dimensions of 4.245mm x 2.783mm. Might be worth a try too.