Does a medium format 50mm lens give a wider field of view than 50mm on full frame?
Asked 7/19/2019
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I know focal length is marked on the lens, but angle of view changes with sensor size. On APS-C, a 50mm lens gives a narrower field of view than it does on full frame.
How does this work with medium format? If I use a 50mm lens designed for a medium format camera, will it give a wider field of view than a 50mm lens on full frame because the sensor is larger? In other words, is the difference caused by the lens, or by the sensor/film size?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
6y ago
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Crop factor is a characteristic of the camera, not the lens. A 50mm lens is 50mm no matter what you attach it to. The bigger or smaller sensor is what leads to crop factor, which is the ratio of the area of a full frame sensor to the area of the sensor in question. Smaller sensors will have a ratio > 1, and medium format sensors (or other larger sensors) would have a ratio < 1. It may seem a bit odd to call it a crop factor when it's less than one, though, at least semantically, since the result is a wider angle of view than what you'd get on a full frame, so it's more of an anti-crop factor.
Originally by user68706. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user68706
6y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Yes: a 50mm lens on a larger medium format sensor gives a wider field of view than a 50mm lens on full frame.
The key point is that focal length is a property of the lens, not the sensor. A 50mm lens is always 50mm. What changes is how much of the lens’s image circle the sensor captures.
A smaller sensor crops the image more, giving a narrower angle of view. A larger sensor crops less, so you see more of the image and get a wider angle of view.
That’s why “crop factor” really belongs to the camera format, not the lens. APS-C has a crop factor greater than 1 relative to full frame, while medium format is effectively less than 1, so the same focal length appears wider.
So a 50mm medium format lens does not become a different focal length; it just covers a larger format, and on that larger sensor it behaves as a wider-angle view than 50mm on full frame.
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