Lenses in degrees

One lens per shot, written as a diagonal field of view from one ladder.

One lens per shot [official guidance]. A shot gets bigger or smaller only by moving the camera; no zooms (a planned crash zoom is the one exception; see Camera and lens → Whip pans, devices, the observed hidden-camera feel). In multi-shot clips, give each shot its own field of view and say that the lens does not drift during the shot.

Lenses are written in degrees, as a diagonal field of view, using only the eight steps of the ladder in the table below. A true fisheye, and nothing else, gets 180°. Say "diagonal" once in OPTICS (block 6).

Degrees or millimetres [best available, not yet validated]: one strong lineage of creators writes degrees, another writes millimetres, mostly as a look word ("50 mm anamorphic") rather than to control framing. Degrees stay in every prompt.

Planning conversions, for your plan only (full-frame equivalents, never in a prompt):

The range 29–84° has the most published evidence.

Describe what only that lens would show: how big the foreground looks, how far the depth stretches, how much the distance compresses. Seedance reads the lens from what you describe as much as from the degrees. With an unusual lens, defend it in one short line: "a long lens: the far buildings stacked tight behind her and out of focus, only her eyes sharp". Don't ask one lens beat to hold a portrait, a wide view of the place and a macro detail at once; cut between them.

If the lens slides toward a medium field of view, see Video with Seedance → The failure table and Camera and lens → Extreme lenses and same-lens sequences.

Sources

• Higgsfield's Seedance 2.5 prompt builder (the degree ladder); CINEDANCE, Higgsfield's studio prompt writer (planning distances); VARMINTS by Outreal Production (project) (degrees per shot); JOEY, @joeysnoisygroup (the lens defence).