Which statement about sensor size and angle of view is true?

• A. A smaller sensor increases the angle of view.
• B. A smaller sensor decreases the angle of view.
• C. Sensor size has no effect on angle of view.
• D. Only the lens focal length affects angle of view.

Answer: (B)

Angle of view comes from both the lens and the sensor. For a fixed focal length, a larger sensor captures a wider portion of the scene, while a smaller sensor captures a narrower portion. This is why a smaller sensor decreases the angle of view: the image is effectively cropped, making the scene appear more zoomed in compared to a larger sensor using the same lens. A handy way to think about it is the crop factor—on an APS-C sensor, a 50mm lens behaves more like a longer focal length on full-frame in terms of framing, giving a narrower field of view.

The other statements don’t fit because they either flip the relationship (smaller sensor increasing the angle of view), claim there’s no effect from sensor size (which ignores the crop factor), or say that only focal length matters (sensor size also changes the angle of view).