A film plane is the area inside any camera or image taking device with a lens and film or digital sensor. The film plane varies in distance from the lens focal point in each manufacturer. Thus each lens used has to be chosen carefully to assure that the image from the lens is focused on the exact place where the individual frame of film or digital sensor is positioned during exposure, the film plane is the location in which the lens creates the focused image which must be exactly upon the light-sensitive material. It is sometimes marked on a camera body with the 'Φ' symbol where the vertical bar represents the exact location.
Movie cameras often also have small focus hooks where the focus puller can attach one side of a tape measure to quickly gauge the distance to objects that he intends to bring into focus. The measurement is taken from the film plane to the subject.
Due to Petzval field curvature, the film plane upon which a lens focuses may not be a literal plane. Cameras may bend the film stock or even plate stock slightly to compensate, improving the area of critical focus and sharpness. Nevertheless, the general concept of a focal plane is understood to refer to this position in the camera sensor relative to the lens.
Famous quotes containing the words film and/or plane:
“Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.”
—Ingmar Bergman (b. 1918)
“Even though I had let them choose their own socks since babyhood, I was only beginning to learn to trust their adult judgment.. . . I had a sensation very much like the moment in an airplane when you realize that even if you stop holding the plane up by gripping the arms of your seat until your knuckles show white, the plane will stay up by itself. . . . To detach myself from my children . . . I had to achieve a condition which might be called loving objectivity.”
—Anonymous Parent of Adult Children. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Womens Health Book Collective, ch. 5 (1978)