Are you losing your edge?

[Xyloz]

For simplicity sake I am using Canon as a reference but your crop factors are universal depending on your camera.

Depending on your preference Wide-angle or Telephoto you will need to know what your sensor crop is.

The standard full frame, 35mm (film) is the reference before crop.

This means that when using a 70-300mm lens, your getting what is essentially written on the tin. However, when buying for example a EOS 7D or variant APS-C you are getting 1.6X crop this crop factor affects how your lens interacts with your picture.

1.6x means that you are only getting roughly 62% of the full image that a full frame sensor 35mm would give.

How does this affect your photography.
For a start crop reduces the edges of the frame down 62% so shooting a 100m track with a wide angle at full frame if you were to take the photo from the same spot with both sensor types, you would get about 62m verses the full frame 100m of track, that’s a lot of edge to lose!

However, for telephoto this crop becomes an advantage for simplicity sake
2x crop verses full 35mm Lenses Full frame 18-55mm 50mm 70-300mm 400-1200mm 2x crop 36-110mm 100mm 140-600mm 800-2400mm For a crappy cheap Tamron 70-300mm your saving about £400 for a 200-600mm because your sensor is cropped.

Not only that but if you think you can crop in editing to match the crop sensor your mistaken...

To match a crop sensor for zoom you need a better lens!
As on a cropped sensor your getting your full megapixel range on a smaller area than a full frame.

So if you went out of your way to buy a 5D MK2 for Telephoto shots you have wasted your money. As the 5D's 22mpxl to match lets say the 60D 18mpxl 1.6x crop taking tele shots to make the exact same photo size has this many mega pixels of detail.

Full frame = 13mpxl : 70-300mm
1.6x Crop = full 18mpxl : 70-300mm

For the full frame to match the photo at maximum zoom with at the 60D at 300mm and beat it out for mega pixels you would need a 480mm lens to do it and that’s a lot more money.
The longer the range the more extreme the crop effects the range
1000mm is an extra 600mm of zoom on 60D's crop verses full frame.

In closing I would recommend choosing the kind of range and style you prefer shooting from to get the maximum effectiveness out of your lenses,

Longer ranges then crop will be best even for wide angle at long range.
Close range you may as well be full frame all the way.

This is the first consideration to make when buying a camera and is often overlooked in exchange for the total mega pixel count but as you can see full frame loses out massively on tele shots to a much cheaper camera and if like me you shoot at range this is a massive difference to your wallet.