Canon EF 50mm Lens - Crop Factor

Crop Factor

When used with a Canon APS-C (1.6x crop) DSLR camera or APS-H (1.3x crop), the field of view of this lens is similar to an 80mm or 65mm on full frame camera. There will be an apparent magnification of approximately 1.6x (or 1.3x) in the final image, since the "cropped" image will fill up the sensor. This is due to the crop factor inherent with APS-C or APS-H (crop) sensor digital SLR cameras.

An example would be taking an image of a rock using two cameras with the same lens. The first camera an 18mp full frame and the second an 18mp APS-C, both shooting the same composition in a stationary position. The first image will be more "wide" while the second image will be more "magnified". After bringing the results into an image editing program and enlarging the first image so that the rock is the same size in both images, one will see that the enlarged image is approximately 160% (1.6x) of the original. Simply put, the field of view of the APS-C will be 1.6 times smaller the original giving an appearance of magnification. (A smaller field of view is similar to a larger zoom.)

The major advantage to this extra "reach" would be the utilizing of the full sensor space for a cropped image rather than having to crop afterwards, thus utilizing parts of the sensor that would have otherwise been wasted. The major disadvantage is the change in perspective; since the focal length has not actually changed, it will be like shooting an 80mm (APS-C) or 65mm (APS-H) shot with the perspective of a 50mm lens. The resulting image will appear to have a less pleasing background blur and unlike using a real 80mm lens for the same framing.