Who Pays Photographers? Full-frame vs crop-sensor comparison : depth-of-field & perspective. When the differences between full-frame and crop-sensor cameras are discussed, there is an inevitable question about whether the crop sensor multiplies the focal length. Whether a 50mm lens on a crop-sensor acts like a 75mm lens (on a 1.5x crop sensor) or 80mm lens (on a 1.6x crop sensor). The answers given on the photography forums are confusing – yes, the focal length effectively increases. No, it doesn’t. Two polar opposite answers. The discussion (which tend to devolve into arguments) are convincingly made for both sides.
The reason is because the topic is a complex one … and therefore the answer is (kinda) complex too. One argument goes along the lines that the crop sensor is just that, a crop. With this article, I want to help analyze what happens when you change lenses between a full-frame camera and a crop-sensor camera. Since this article ended up being a long meandering discussion, I thought it best that we start with the final summary. Summary: notes on depth-of-field / DoF 1. Small pixel sensors do not have worse performance. The understated utility of smaller pixels. Most statements about megapixels understate their usefulness. For example, it is often stated that when you're only printing an 8x12, it's impossible to tell the difference between an 8 MP camera and a 15 MP camera. But in many common circumstances, the difference is striking. That is not to say that high MP is necessarily a requirement for a good photo.
I have enjoyed beautiful 20x30 prints that were made with less than 2 MP. At what point does additional resolution contributes no discernible improvement to the displayed photograph? Given the same resolution per area, a larger display can benefit from more megapixels than a small display (e.g. 20x30 vs 4x6). Given the same display size, a high resolution display can benefit from more megapixels than a low-resolution display (e.g. 300 ppi vs 72 ppi). An 8x10 at 360ppi is 10.37 MP.
Most photographers cannot afford a DSLR viewfinder that is 100% accurate. The OLPF (optical low pass filter) reduces aliasing artifacts. Barrel distortion. Photography - Stack Exchange.