Pro Tip: Sensor Crop Feature in CineD Lens Coverage Tool

How To

by Florian MilzMay 27^th, 2025

Subscribe to How To

The CineD Lens Coverage Tool has a very handy little feature that can help you visualize how much a recording format crops into the sensor. With this little trick, you can find out if a camera adds video crop when switching frame rates or resolutions. Let me show you how to use it!

Regular CineD readers might already be familiar with the CineD Lens Coverage Tool. You can use it to visualize which lenses can cover your camera sensor and recording formats without vignetting. It is integrated into the highly popular Camera Database and the extensive Lens Database.

Crop factor feature

Using the Lens Coverage Tool, you can easily find out if filming with your camera in 4K has a different crop factor compared to filming in 6K or 8K.

In the camera section of the Lens Coverage Tool, just select your camera (purple square) and then cycle through the different available recording modes (blue square). The preview will adapt to show you the difference in recording area.

Many cameras behave differently when it comes to movie cropping, so you can also use this trick to quickly see if your image will look the same in 120fps, compared to 60fps, 30fps, or 24fps.

Lens coverage

Of course, the Lens Coverage Tool was designed to show you even more information, specifically about lens and expander/reducer coverage and compatibility. But since it holds all the camera and lens information, maybe you can uncover other tricks where this tool can help you.

Quick explanation: what is vignetting?

Since we’ve already discussed vignetting, here’s a brief recap of the topic. A lens projects a circle of light (image circle) onto a camera sensor in order to capture images. If the image circle of the lens is smaller than the sensor, then the corners will be darker than the center of your image. This is called vignetting.

The Lens Coverage Tool can show you if a lens covers your chosen recording mode (green image circle) or if vignetting might/will occur (orange image circle).

Did you like this tip about a not-so-obvious feature of the CineD website? What do you mostly use the CineD Databases for? Drop us a line in the comments!