1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
Here's an image taken with a 50mm lens on a full-frame camera. I then applied the 1.6 crop on what would happen if using that same 50mm on a crop-sensor camera (same shooting location). I lightened the areas around the crop.
As stated above, the lens is still the same focal length. It would have the same distortions/compression effects*
* On a crop-sensor camera with an EF lens, the outer edges of the lens would not contribute at all; you're using just the center area. So any distortions or other effects around the edges of such a lens (e.g. softness) on a full-frame would not be there (or be far less) when on a crop-sensor camera.
Other notes:
This 50mm would have the field of view of an 80mm lens on the crop-sensor. With full-frame gear, I could of course crop my images in post to achieve the same 80mm angle-of-view. However, the images in my case would go from 30 MP down to 12 MP due to the crop. One advantage of the crop-camera bodies is that you often get 20 MP plus. Thus, even though you're not zoomed in any more than what the 50mm gives you, you'd end up with more pixels on the crop-camera for this particular example.
There's a downside though too... if you want to have extremely wide angles of view, you're better off with a full-frame camera with those wide EF lenses as you get no cropping. So a 14mm gives a 14mm angle of view. On a crop-sensor camera, that lens would be less field of view of around 22mm.
