Charles Robinson wrote:
On Jan 15, 2009, at 9:32, Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote:
I absolutely despise all this "crop factor" nonsense. It's so ridiculous.
There's no such thing as a crop factor. Field of view is a property of
a focal length combined with a format. Normal on 35 film is 50mm,
normal on FourThirds is 25mm, normal on 645 is 75mm, etc. That's all.
It's just people's shorthand for understanding at a glance what the FOV
will be for a particular lens, after so many years of the "standard" of
35mm film cameras. I agree that it's not 100% necessary to think of
lenses that way, but some people (myself included, but I'm adjusting)
are used to thinking of a particular field-of-view as "28mm=wide" or
"50mm=normal" and that gets changed when you shift down to a smaller
camera.
The "crop-factor" terminology looked as if it was going away for a while
but now, with the boom in full-frame cameras and the resurgence of the
Four Thirds format due to Micro Four Thirds, it's coming back. It's a
convenient way of using a common reference (24mm x 36mm) to compare
different formats on relatively equal footing.
At least it's more accurate than saying "this 50mm lens is a 100mm on a
Four Thirds camera"! ;-)
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