About Wide Angle
 

My little Canon Ixus 700 has a focal length stated to be 7.7 - 23mm - seems pretty wide. Yet in practise I get more in shot with my 18-55 Nikon kit lens. Any thoughts/advice folks? Forgive me if it's a stupid question.

The Canon Ixus 700 has an equivalent focal length of 37mm to 111mm.

It is all to do with the very small sensor in the Ixus compared to your DSLR sensor size.

The crop factor for the Ixus is 4.8 were as the Nikon will be 1.5. You multiply the the real lens focal length by the crop factor to get the equivalent 35mm camera focal lenght.

Peter, it is probably due to the Canon's small sensor and its crop factor, which could be in the range of 5 to six times those stated above. This would give a focal length of 35 - 45 mm. I can understand crop factor, but I'll be blowed if I can explain it in simple terms (or even complicated terms). I'm sure that there are web sites that can explain it with diagrams.

Rob posted his reply whilst I was writing mine - good explanation, Rob.

Thank you both. I'm enlightened. I thought the Canon should be a good bet for this month's challenge but now I'm beginning to understand why it wont.:)

16mm is the best 1200 canon brand if not 10-20mm cheap $500.00 sigma

I do most of my landscape with a wide

Peter I think Robski birdsnapper are right.Full Sensor (FF) 1:1 as 35mm used to be, cropped on DSLR 1.5 or 1.6 X the focal length on small sensor the factor is much larger giving a multiplying factor of more than 3 they used to mark Focal Length equiv to 35mm so this misunderstanding whould not happen but more recently with some manufacturers they give actual mm . I hope thats not to long winded.

Thanks Paul. That's a useful explanation.

This link might help, as long as you can dig through the waffle - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_sensor_format

Thanks, I did look - but maybe I'll save that for a winter's day.:)