Questions About Nature Photography? I'm Here to Help!

[Tim]

Hi Everyone! I'm Tim, a senior technician here at Canon. I'm going to be here on the Canon Forum, live later today, from 3:30-4:00pm EST to kick off a community discussion on Nature Photography! I'll be here to answer your questions, provide tips and bounce ideas around, so drop on by and join in on our conversation!

I'm a long time photographer with over fifteen years of technical and photographic experience with Canon and the imaging industry. I particularly enjoy working with full-frame cameras and Canon's Cinema EOS gear, and take every opportunity I can to capture the beauty of the Atlantic Ocean near my home.

[Skirball]

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@ebiggs1 wrote:
No matter how many pretty pictures you show with colored lines on it, no crop takes place.

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Evidently the concept of something being relative to something else is beyond you.

The Nikon D800, their mega megapixel full frame camera offers a crop mode that does, literally, crop out part of the image.  While you can argue the usefulness of such a feature, it exists.  The camera also allows you to use DX lenses ("APS-C lenses") on a full frame camera when in one of those crop modes.  I would hope that when Canon enters the 35+ MP arena that they offer something similar.

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@ebiggs1 wrote:
 Nobody tries to claim P&S's are crop cameras. Are 4x5's considered enlargement cameras? No. Because this is all photographic jargon to try and explain the relationship of the focal length of the lens. You are entering a time where lot's of people never used a film camera so "crop camera" is actually meaningless to them.

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P&S, MF, and LF cameras don't share lenses.  FF and Crop do.  It's relative.  It has nothing to do with using film, and there are thousands if not millions of new camera users that never shot film that aren't having a difficult time understanding the concept.

[ebiggs1]

Boy I feel like I am teaching Photography 101 to you. But here goes, again.

Smaller, non-DSLR, P&S, can also be characterized as having a crop factor relative to 35 mm format, even though they do not share interchangeable lenses. Example, the so-called "1/1.8-inch" format with a 9 mm sensor diagonal has a crop factor of almost 5 relative to the 43mm diagonal of 35 mm film. These cameras are equipped with lenses that are about 1/5th the focal lengths that would be on a 35 mm P&S film camera. Sometimes manufacturers label their cameras and lenses with their actual focal lengths, but not always. Some have chosen to instead use the crop factor and label the 35 mm equivalent focal length.

This same procedure stands for larger format camera except in the reverse.

[Skirball]

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@ebiggs1 wrote:

Boy I feel like I am teaching Photography 101 to you. But here goes, again.

 

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A quick jab, and then go on a tangent that has little to do with the discussion and something I already know.  Obviously we're not going to come to any sort of agreement.

I'm sorry you don't like the term, but unfortunately it's not going anywhere so long as 35mm and APS sized sensors rule the market.  And even then, it'll probably stick around.  I still carbon copy people on emails...

[Tim]

Hello Again Clars,

If we look at the subject objectively, then there are two answers which I feel are equally considerable.  Firstly, when shooting with an APS-C camera and an EF series lens, the magnification you're seeing is a true optical effect; it's not a "crop" in the normal sense [as would be with a “digital zoom”].  That being said, the optical effect of magnification is the result of using a lens which is designed to cover a 35mm [technically 36 x 24 mm] format on a sensor which is of a smaller dimension [22.3 x 14.9 mm].  The end result manifests as the 1.6x magnification ratio. 

The second part of my answer is open to interpretation of sorts, and does not address APS-C cameras specifically in a physical attribute sense.  So, if you took a photograph with a full frame camera  then cropped , maintaining the aspect ratio of APS-C, then the end crop would be a similar image but only because you’re cropping, not because the lens is actually capturing a more telephoto image.  Sometimes APS-C sensor cameras are referred to as "crop" frame cameras for this association to cropping an image in post-production.

So as you see, there are two ways to look at it.  I mention both because I think it's important to understand why the effect occurs.  The base answer to your question however, as I mentioned earlier, is that this magnification is a true optical principle and does indeed change the focal length of the lens. 

Thanks for the great question by the way; I really appreciate you taking advantage of this chat.  Did you have any other questions or was there anything else I can help with?