From the course: Photo Gear Weekly

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What makes a lens digital?

What makes a lens digital?

From the course: Photo Gear Weekly

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What makes a lens digital?

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- You may hear of certain lenses being described as digital lenses or with some other term that describes that they're not your average lens, not your normal lens essentially, and what that refers to is a lens that's designed for a camera with a smaller sensor. Now of course, different cameras have different sensor sizes to begin with, but for many photographers, the standard, a digital SLR, is based on a 35 millimeter frame size. In other words, from 35 millimeter film. And so a full frame digital SLR has a frame size that is the same as a 35 millimeter piece of film, but some sensors are smaller. This digital SLR, for example, has a smaller sensor and so it's essentially cropping part of that image circle so if I use this 70 to 200 millimeter lens for example, because this sensor is smaller than what this lens was designed for, I'm cropping that field of view and at 200 millimeters, I'm actually getting the equivalent field of view of what would have been 320 millimeters on a 35…

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