Originally Posted By: mlord
The "crop-factor" has little or nothing to do with the lenses. It's about the sensor geometry --> putting a sensor smaller than 35mm film into a 35mm body with a 35mm lens mount.

Both makers have "format specific" lenses that one can opt for to gain wider angle coverage than with legacy 35mm lenses.


And in fact that's the only way you are going to get a true wide-angle lens with a smaller sensor- a specially designed lens for that smaller sensor. Unless you start using semi-Fisheye designed full frame lenses, which are expensive.

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I'm really happy to "deal with" a "crop factor" --> my camera is smaller and more versatile than a "full frame" behemoth, not to mention much much cheaper. smile


Sure it works fine, but a Micro 4/3rds camera with Micro 4/3rd designed lenses would be smaller and lighter still...

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And when I do use "full size" lenses, the sensor uses the "sweet spot" middle area, giving better image quality than normal for a given grade of lens.


The sweet spot is true for Wide Angles but not really for Telephotos so much, see the graphs regarding aberations in this article. A cropped telephoto lens is fine but telephotos is also where saving on the size and bulk of the lens would really be nice. So it's arguable that the advantages of the sweet spot are really enough to justify carrying a bigger lens.