I was looking at new lenses and I know that with my sony i have a 1.6X multiplier cause its a aps-c sized sensor. What I dont understand is why when I put my kit lens at 50mm it look like what humans or us see. Shouldnt I have the camera at roughly 30mm to have what a 35mm camera sees at 50mm? If im looking at lenses even the digital ones do I still mulitply it by 1.6X to find the actualy zoom I will have?
Yes, that 50mm (or any other lens) is multiplied by 1.6 to get your effective range. Even though you perceive that the 50mm has the same coverage on your Sony as your eye, it really doesn't.
The only thing that changes is the field of view...the perspective and magnification of a 50mm lens will always be the same. Try to picture it this way. The lens projects an image circle into a camera (any camera). If it's a 35mm film camera, pretty much the whole image is captured on the film. But if you swap the camera for yours (or any 'crop factor' camera)...the image projected by the lens is still the same...but the smaller sensor only captures the middle portion of the image. The rest is just 'cropped' off...which is why we call it a crop factor.
Some people say 'normal perspective is when you have both eyes open, one thru the viewfinder and it looks normal' But this doesn't make sense, because different viewfinders have different magnifications, and give us different 'sized' perceptions of the frame, right?
When you say 'like humans see' do you mean that objects in the viewfinder appear to be the same size as they are in reality? If so, then the viewfinder magnification comes into effect as well as the focal length of the lens. The lower the viewfinder magnification, the longer the focal length of the lens needs to be to get an overall magnification of 1x. For example with my D40x and the zoom set to about 60 mm if I keep both eyes open objects in the viewfinder are the same size as I see them with my naked eye. This has nothing to do with the focal length required to give a natural perspective. Best, Helen
ok so if I understand right no matter what crop factor a 50mm should still look like what i see without my camera its just that with a crop factor it only takes part of the image. I always thought the corp factor was zooming in on the image more.
IMO the viewfinder magnification is stupid I mean as a photographer your hoping that what you see is what you get but when you hit the shutter release whats captured on the CCD or CMOS could be different than what ur eye saw in the viewfinder
