50mm=35mm on film?

Joined: 18 Nov 2006 Posts: 288

den9 wrote:

ok i came across this, still confused a little

if i got a 50mm lens on a dslr and a 50mm lens on a film slr, took the same exact picture with both of them from the same distance, would they look the same, or would one be zoomed closer

No. The subject would be the same size but there would be a difference in the overall coverage. You would see more or less of the subject depending on the format to which the focal length was applied.

Joined: 11 Oct 2005 Posts: 176 Location: philly

thats what i thought, so wat one would have more coverage the film or digital

Joined: 18 Nov 2006 Posts: 288

den9 wrote:

thats what i thought, so wat one would have more coverage the film or digital

It is the lens that has "coverage." The digital crops the image so that the angle of view is smaller.

Joined: 31 Jul 2005 Posts: 131 Location: Boulder, Colorado

Your best bet to understand this is to look at a photography book where they explain the differences among "angles of view" for various lenses or cameras....I believe the calumet catalogs used to have a table that compared lens focals lengths, film formats and angle of view.

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 5:15 pm

just to make things a little bit easier
the 50mm lens whether film or digital with a crop factor are 50mm lens in focal lenght
the lens perspective never changes just the POV (Point of View) or the angle coverage

Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 2:35 pm

Here's an example of the effect:

Fit a 50mm fixed focal length lens (not a zoom lens) to a 35mm FILM camera and take a walk down the street until you find a nice row of fence posts. Step back from the fence - make sure it's square on to you - until you see exactly 10 posts in your viewfinder. Now, without moving you feet, fit the same lens to a Nikon DSLR camera. Instead of 10 fence posts you will now see only 7 fence posts in the viewfinder and each post will look slightly taller than it did on the film camera. It's as if you had "zoomed" in slightly, making the fence look closer than it did before. To get the same view with your film camera you would have to use a 75mm focal length lens. This is the effect of the "crop factor".