Lens Illumination

Making sure that the lenses match your camera's sensor.

When choosing the right lens for the job, one of the essential questions to answer is if this lens will optically work with the camera you want to shoot on.

Will the lenses cover the camera's sensor or sensor mode? In this case we talk about lens illumination or sensor coverage.

Let’s keep in mind that a lens has a circular coverage area – the image circle – while the sensor area is a rectangle.

If the circle goes around the edges of the rectangles, that means the lens covers the respective sensor.

This of course also means that if a lens covers a larger sensor (e.g., Sony Venice), it will also cover the smaller Super 35 sensors or sensor modes.

As you can see, the angle of view of a lens changes depending on the size of the sensor – and not on the lens illumination. You can get an even better understanding with the help of below comparison tool. Just click on the different focal lengths to see the difference in angle of view for different sensor sizes.

Full Frame

(1.85:1)

Supreme Prime 15 mm / T1.8

Supreme Prime 21 mm / T1.5

Supreme Prime 35 mm / T1.5

Supreme Prime 50 mm / T1.5

Supreme Prime 85 mm / T1.5

Supreme Prime 135 mm / T1.5

Super 35

(1.85:1)

Supreme Prime 15 mm / T1.8

Supreme Prime 21 mm / T1.5

Supreme Prime 35 mm / T1.5

Supreme Prime 50 mm / T1.5

Supreme Prime 85 mm / T1.5

Supreme Prime 135 mm / T1.5

What happens when you use a lens with an image circle smaller than the respective sensor? You will see a so-called vignette – shading of the outer edges of the image.

The intensity of the vignette will differ from focal length to focal length. As a rule of thumb, one can say that the wider the lens, the stronger the vignette.

To avoid these kinds of aberrations, you should know, which lenses cover which sensor.

ZEISS Cinematography lenses and their coverage

For you to choose the right ZEISS lens for the camera you want to use, we implemented three small icons that will show you at a glance, what cameras and their sensors are covered by which lens.