Frank, I'm no expert, but I'll take a crack at an explanation...
You know the picture inside your camera is upside down and reversed. The left edge of your field of view is recorded on the right edge of your film. The lens changes direction of the light falling on it to focus an image onto the film Now think about a telephoto lens. The light is like raindrops falling down onto a camera pointed straight up. With a big telephoto, the raindrops are falling almost straight down and onto the film. Not much of an angle here, just straight in and onto the film. Now think about a wide angle lens. The light here is coming in at a big angle, like raindrops in a 40 mile per hour wind falling onto that camera. The raindrops are falling as much sideways as they are falling downward onto the film. Think of the 'digital film' as a bunch of tiny water glasses arranged in rows and columns 1,000 glasses high by 2,000 glasses wide sitting on the back of the camera. When you use your telephoto lens, it 'rains light' mainly straight down and into the glasses. Your digital camera is happy as your electronics reads each glass as filling up and creating a picture. When you use your wide angle lens, it 'rains light' like on a windy day. The rain blows across the top of the glasses and not much gets in any one glass. Your digital camera doesn't read much or any 'rain' in the edge glasses and you have unsatisfactory pictures. The difference between film and digital is in the array of glasses that the digital uses. Film has tiny grains, not an array of 'glasses' and the grains are more sensitive to recording light striking at an angle. If this has made sense to you so far, remember that the light from a wide angle lens will fall 'straight down' on the film for objects in the center of the field of view, but will strike at a big angle for objects at the edge of the film... So it becomes difficult to get a good digital picture. Some glasses are filling up properly with a 'rain of light' falling straight into them and other glasses are not getting much as the 'rain' is blowing sideways. Regards, Bob S. [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << No doubt the response will require techno-babble which will fly way over my head, but I'll ask anyway: Why is digital less-than-proficient at wide angles? Thanks in advance. >>
