@character_stops wrote:
Yes. I'm pretty sure the camera I have is smaller format. That's why I think I should experiment with more lenses to find out how each one responds. I think the format for my camera is 2x3 but I'm not completely sure. After putting in my cameras largest image size in Ps, I selected a photo preset, and it converted it to 2x3 inches. Would that mean a crop factor much more than 7.5?
Don't confuse "cropping" in Photoshop with "lens/sensor crop factors" with respect to your camera.
Photoshop (and many other image softwares) have a number of preset common image aspectg ratios for cropping purposes. Choosing 2:3 in Photoshop will render the entire image area that's produced by your camera. You can then resize to a number of common paper sizes.... 4x6 inches, 6x9 inches, 8x12 inches, 12x18 (or 13x19) inches... that all share the same image aspect ratio.
If you instead choose 4:5 aspect ratio in the software cropping tool, some of the longer axis of the image will be trimmed off, but you can then resize the image to fit other common paper sizes such as 4x5 inches, 8x10 inches, 16x20 inches.
There are also some common paper sizes that don't exactly conform to any of the preset aspect ratios, such as 5x7 inches and 11x14 inches. These are somewhere in-between.
Your camera has a 2:3 (not 2x3) aspect ratio. This has been fairly standard among 35mm film SLRs and has been carried over to digital, too (for the large part... there are a few exceptions). The actual size of the sensor in your camera is approx. 15x22mm. So-called "full frame" cameras also have a 2:3 aspect ratio... the actual size of their sensor is approx. 24x36mm.
In other words, the same aspect ratio (i.e "short side vs long side") is possible in different sizes (both in the sensor or film format... and in printing paper sizes). Don't worry too much about reference to large format... That appeared to have been mentioned just to demonstrate that there are all sorts of "lens factors" that you can get caught up in calculating, but it really doesn't solve much.
Lens focal length doesn't change. 50mm is 50mm no matter what.
But a 50mm lens on one format will behave differently than it does on another format. On your camera with it's 15x22mm sensor a lens with 50mm focal lenghts acts as a nice "short telephoto". Put the exact same focal length on a point-n-shoot digital which has a really small sensor and it can behave as a very powerful, long telephoto. Or, put that same 50mm on a "full frame" digital camera and it will act as a "standard" lens (i.e., not wide or telephoto). Or, put that same 50mm on a medium format film camera that has a 60x70mm image area and it will be a wide angle lens. Finally, put it on a large format film camera such as a 4x5 (inches... equal to approx 100x125mm) and the same 50mm lens focal length behaves as an extreme wide angle.
You say you have a kit lens.... I would assume it's a zoom. Probably an EF-S 18-55mm or an EF-S 18-135mm. You also have an EF 50mm "prime" (not a zoom) lens. If you set the EF-S zoom to 50mm it will give exactly the same angle of view as the EF 50mm prime lens. The only difference is that the EF-S lens is designed specifically for smaller sensor cameras, while the EF lens is designed to give a large enough image circle to cover the area of a full frame sensoe camera.
Yes, it's true, because they don't need to produce as large an image circle EF-S or "crop only" lenses made for use on smaller sensor cameras can be smaller in size, lighter weight and less expensive than lenses made to cover a full frame sensor's image area.
If your kit lens is an 18-55mm, on your camera that provides a variable angle of view ranging from moderate wide angle to standard to short telephoto. If it's an 18-135mm kit lens, that gives a little more tele range, to a moderate telephoto.
I hope this makes sense!
