I've always been confused about the 1.6x, 1.5x, etc., crop factors of today's DSLRs. I found this monster explanation about crop factor here:

http://www.photocamel.com/index.php/topic,355.0.html

But I'm still confused. Is it essentially a magnification of a normal subject with an old-fashioned 35mm film camera?

Are you a DSLR user?

Jim, look at it like this:

Film camera's have a 'sensor' of 35mm, since film is the 'sensor' and film is 35mm. Still with me?

Ok, so there are dSLR's out there that are 'full-frame', ie the prosumer camera's from Canon. Those camera's have a sensor that is just as big as the 35mm 'sensor' as a film camera. This all has nothing to do with MP btw, you can have a 16MP full frame camera and a 8MP full frame camera, there would be a different pixel-density, that's all. Now, there are also a lot of camera's that don't have the same sensor size as a 35mm film slide. Those camera's have what is called a 'crop factor'. What this means is that their sensor is 35mm/1.6 or 35mm/1.5 or whatever the factor is.

Its a crop, you just get lesser than what you would get on a film camera or a DSLR with a full frame sensor. No magnification.

I found this link informative. For years I used a film SLR and did everything manually. Only for the past year have I been using a digital camera, and I am just learning about many of the differences. Thanks for the link.