Matching a Horizontal Nikon D200 to a Maya Lens

A Nikon D200 uses a standard DX size sensor. (23.6 x 15.8 mm)

Maya's 'film' is described by two measurement: Horizontal Film Aperture and Vertical Film Aperture

According to Nikon's online documentation:

Horizontal Film Aperture and Vertical Film Aperture are the height and width of the camera's aperture or film back, measured in inches. The Camera Aperture attribute determines the relationship between the Focal Length attribute and the Angle of View attribute. The default values are 1.417 and 0.945.

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Now, why Maya uses the word 'aperture' to describe this should have been my first clue that something was wrong, but I always assumed that Maya's default camera mimicked 4-perf movie film, just like most people shoot and project. It would have been the obvious thing for them to have done.

Turns out I was wrong.

All these years Maya masked its values by expressing them in inches, and all these years I never bothered to check the math, but it turns out that Maya's default width, the mysterious 1.417 works out to be 36mm.

All these years Maya has been modeling an 8-perf camera as its default. As if it were an SLR still camera

...or as if it were Vistavision.

So to match a horizontal D200 to a Maya camera, set the

Horizontal Film Aperture = 0.929133858, which is 23.6 mm in inches

Vertical Film Aperture = 0.622047244, which is 15.8 mm in inches

Then your Nikon D200 lens should match your Maya lens.

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A 'full frame' Nikon D700 has a chip size of 36 mm x 23.9 mm.

At 1.417" x 0.945" Maya's default camera back equates to 36 mm x 24 mm. So Maya default cameras equate directly to Nikon D700 lenses.