Why can't consumer camcorders come with in-built wide angle lens?

[Andreq]

This point has been baffling me a lot.

Technology in compact digital cams has been improving in a mere few years. I remember such cams used to come in 36-38mm focal length. Then 28mm is rather common. Now we even have 24 or 25mm.

But for so many years, consumer videocams are stuck with a minimum focal length of about 42mm. It makes getting many wide angle video shots impossible.

Is it a shortcoming manufacturers find hard to improve? Anyone any idea?

 

[daxdigital]

They won't sell consumer cameras with wide angle lenses, that's what you call capitalism.

The point of not including wide lenses is that you'll have to buy one from the shop.

It's like you're asking for large batteries and shotgun mics for free as well.

 

[jaegersing]

The problem is that the image sensors have gotten smaller and smaller, which means the field of view becomes very narrow. So even when the lens is what you would normally consider to be very wide, by the time you take into account the crop factor of the tiny sensor, you get the equivalent image of a mid lens instead of a wide angle.

For example, the focal length of the XH-A1 at full wide is around 4.5mm which would be super-mega-shark-fish-eye-wide on a 35mm camera, but on the A1 is actually only equivalent to a 32.5mm lens in terms of field of view. And the A1 has 1/3" sensors. When you consider the sensor size on the small consumer cams it becomes very difficult to make a really wide lens at a consumer price.

 

[daxdigital]

Manufacturers have overcome this limitation before regarding small sensors. Unfortunately, there wasn't quite a demand for it in the consumer market (as opposed to the pro market where wide lenses are a must.) So they reverted to conventional ways of making camcorders.

I do remember in the days of analog video, Sharp and Mitsubishi Electric came out with cameras equivalent to 28mm or wider on a film camera (and that's on a 1/3" CCD sensor.) Then again, the demand wasn't quite as expected.

Only recently did manufacturers went on to create cameras with wide-angle lenses, fueled by the sales of widescreen cameras in the market.