Ken Rockwell is big on "the photographer makes the photo, not the camera" way of thinking. It's so true.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/150-vs-5000-dollar-camera.htm

zane wrote:Ravi-

I believe all of the current DSLR's perform a crop, given the fact that the sensor is smaller in size than a full 35mm frame. The result in effectively a zooming effect, and you lose some of the edges of the wide angle capture. This means that with these DSLR's you have to run an even wider angle shorter focal length lens to get the same capture.

I think the effect is something like 1.6x.

Today when discussing crop, it is something completely different from what your thinking... The new high end nikons and canons perform faster (write to the memory card) when in crop mode, which in simple terms is just a smaller image being saved at a predetermined cropped down size smaller than the original...

For what your considering using the camera for I would suggest the new canon rebel or 30d(former 20d with couple upgrades) or nikon 200... These are excellent cameras that will exceed your photography needs for years... couple them with a couple quality lens and you'll have a setup you can shoot professional quality images with...

One suggestion I'd make is attending one of the classes offered at your local camera shop for the brand of camera you purchase and also make sure whatever brand camera you choose, it has the ability to shoot and save "RAW" images... This will allow you to go back after you've shot the photos and change each digital negative in an effort to create a stunning photo that might of been slightly off otherwise...

Hope this helps... If you have any other questions just let me know I've been doing this for about 30 years and am a member of the following...

Professional Sports Shooters...
http://www.sportsshooter.com

A couple great photo equipment sites are ...
http://www.samys.com
http://www.calumetphoto.com

Great informational site...
http://www.fredmiranda.com

sector15 wrote:Today when discussing crop, it is something completely different from what your thinking...

It's pretty much exactly what I said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_factor

If the sensor frame doesn't extend to the edges of your lens area, then it's cropping. You still get X megapixels, but a sensor the dimensions of a 35mm frame would have captured more area.

That's the reason a photo taken with a 30D with a 14mm super wide angle will appear less "wide angle" than the same photo taken with a 35mm film or full sensor camera. You're losing the outer area of the frame where the distortion is most apparent.

However, what you see though the viewfinder in any of these SLR cameras is the full frame. Your capture with a less-than-full frame sensor is going to crop that.

If what you're saying though is that the manufacturers have chosen to make the sensor crop for performance reasons, due to hardware limitations, that could be...

Zane, we're discussing two different crop factors here... You're pointing out the sensors crop factor of 1.5-1.6x that prevents the full potential of the lenses from being utilized... Canon addresses this issue with the 5d which is the first full sized digital sensor made for the digital slr camera...

I'm discussing the high-speed crop function of Nikons high-end d2xs which I own, it allows you to crop the outer edges of the image on the fly while shooting... This feature provides faster image processing (saving to the card) due to smaller file size, because of not only producing an image thats smaller in height and width, but also a smaller pixel per square inch image... This mode shoots at 6.8meg vs 12.4meg standard and is used mainly by photojournalist for newspapers and magazines using smaller images... For those that are confused by pixel sizes, a 5meg camera will produce a quality 8x10 that will make pretty much anyone happy...

I would suggest anyone looking to get into photography purchase a nice canon rebel, 30d/20d or nikon 80 or 200 and put the other money towards good quality lenses, two total, a short and long lens.. with these cameras you have the ability to shoot anything you could ever want or imagine... Keep in mind the camera doesn't take the photo, it's only the tool that allows you to capture the image, it's your vision and lots of practice that creates a quality image... I've shot many commercially used photos and one of the most suprising was a cover photo for Ford Motorsports and the image was shot with an old Nikon 950 coolpix last year...

Have fun and if you have any other questions just let me know...