We use the term “cropped sensor” only due to the desire to describe a sensor in terms of the 35mm standard. It is a relative term which compares two different types of sensor, but it isn’t really that meaningful. Knowing that a 24mm MFT lens “behaves” like a 48mm full-frame lens is pointless if you don’t understand how a 48mm lens behaves on a full-frame camera. All sensors could be considered “full-frame” in the context of their environment, i.e. a MFT camera has a full-frame sensor as it relates to the MFT standard.
As mentioned in a previous post, the “35mm equivalence” is used to relate a crop-factor lens to its full-frame equivalent. The biggest problem with this is the amount of confusion it creates for novice photographers. Especially as focal lengths on lenses are always the same, yet the angle-of-view changes according to the sensor. However there is a solution to the problem, and that is to stop using the focal length to define a lens, and instead use AOV. This would allow people to pick a lens based on its angle-of view, both in degrees, but also from a descriptive point of view. For example, a wide angle lens in full-frame is 28mm – its equivalent in APS-C in 18mm, and MFT is 14mm. It would be easier just to label these by the AOV as “wide-74°”.
It would be easy to categorize lenses into six core groups based on horizontal AOV (diagonal AOV in []) :
- Ultra-wide angle: 73-104° [84-114°]
- Wide-angle: 54-73° [63-84°]
- Normal (standard): 28-54° [34-63°]
- Medium telephoto: 20-28° [24-34°]
- Telephoto: 6-20° [8-24°]
- Super-telephoto: 3-6° [4-8°]

They are still loosely based on how AOV related to 35mm focal lengths. For example 63° relates to the AOV of a 35mm lens, however it no longer really relates to the focal length directly. A “normal-40°” lens would be 40° no matter the sensor size, even though the focal lengths would be different (see table below). The only lenses left out of this are fish-eye lenses, which in reality are not that common, and could be put into a
specialty lens category, along with tilt-shift etc.

I know most lens manufacturers describe AOV using diagonal AOV, but this is actually more challenging for people to perceive, likely because looking through a camera we generally look at a scene from side-to-side, not corner-to-corner.
AOV | 98° | 84° | 65° |
---|---|---|---|
MFT | 8mm | 10mm | 14mm |
APS-C | 10mm | 14mm | 20mm |
FF | 16mm | 20mm | 28mm |
AOV | 54° | 49° | 40° |
---|---|---|---|
MFT | 17mm | 20mm | 25mm |
APS-C | 24mm | 28mm | 35mm |
FF | 35mm | 40mm | 50mm |
AOV | 28° | 15° | 10° |
---|---|---|---|
MFT | 35mm | 70mm | 100mm |
APS-C | 45mm | 90mm | 135mm |
FF | 70mm | 135mm | 200mm |