For anybody who is curious about the Canon EOS Digital Rebel's 1.6 magnification factor "ruining" any chance for wide angle shots, it really doesn't... if you spend the money to make it happen. I seem to have caused a bit of confusion yesterday when I posted shots with a "wide angle lens" that were not very "wide." The reason for this is that I limit photos on Blogography to a 425 pixel width in order to save bandwidth, which makes any detail in wide shots drop out quite badly. Keeping that in mind, here are a few shots at 16mm, cropped out of the middle of the full-frame...

Pretty sweet, I know. It was very tempting to "accidentally" forget to return the lens! Ordinarily I would attempt to correct some of the barrel distortion in Photoshop, but I didn't do that here because it actually isn't too bad.

The truth is that even with the 1.6 magnification, 16mm still gives you about 25mm, which is still a respectable wide angle. I was pretty happy to finally be able to shoot an image that came closer to capturing my field of vision with this camera... but at the same time dismayed that it's going to cost $1400 to get it (that's more than the camera!). Sure there are cheaper alternatives out there, but if I decide to spend that kind of money, I'd rather pay the extra and be assured of quality.

Decisions, decisions... buy the lens and starve to death or don't by the lens and forever be stuck with a narrow view of the world?