lasikdenver
Well-known member
It finally, finally makes sense to me. Another way to think of this is that the 50mm lens projects the same size image regardless of the size of the sensor. A smaller sensor only sees the central portion of the field (crop) compared to larger sensor, and that part of the image is taking up a larger portion of the sensor. Where the magnification comes in is that the image on a smaller sensor has to be magnified more to end up with the same dimension as a larger sensor. In photography the APS-C sensor is about the same size as the F3 sensor and also has a "crop factor" of 1.5. I did not understand this until today, but if I use a full 35 mm lens on the smaller sensor camera, it appears to magnify the image, which is due to the central cropped area being magnified more when it is viewed at the same final image size as from a full frame camera (which captures more in the periphery). Since both cameras have the same number of photosites, I can get a relatively greater magnification of the central portion of the field with the same resolution as a longer throw lens on the full frame camera.
At the end of the day this means two things to me: first that the Nikon full frame lens of 50mm is the same field of view as the kit lens and more importantly, for someone used to shooting full frame in a camera, you need wider lenses than I am used to using with a full frame camera. So an 11-16 would be too wide to be practical for my full frame camera (D3s), it would be equivalent to a 16-24 field of view as it would on a cropped image sensor (D300s) which is very useful.
At the end of the day this means two things to me: first that the Nikon full frame lens of 50mm is the same field of view as the kit lens and more importantly, for someone used to shooting full frame in a camera, you need wider lenses than I am used to using with a full frame camera. So an 11-16 would be too wide to be practical for my full frame camera (D3s), it would be equivalent to a 16-24 field of view as it would on a cropped image sensor (D300s) which is very useful.