Lens perspective distortion and DSLR crop factor

writes:
I attended the Rocky Mountain School of Photography last week and
their equipment guru made a claim that is inconsistent with my
earlier understanding of an issue related to Crop Sensor
DSLRs. Maybe someone out there could clarify for me.

I have always been under the understanding that if I took a Canon
24-70mm f/2.8 zoom and took photos with the following two bodies, the
resulting images would be exactly the same if we were to ignore pixel
density and quality differences of the zoom at different focal
lengths:

Canon 30D @ 31.25mm focal length, 5 feet from subject
Canon 5D @ 50mm focal length, 5 feet from subject

According to the individual at Rocky Mountain, the lens
(perspective) distortion normally associated with wide-angle shots
(traditional 35mm film) would be evident on the 30D example above
because this perspective distortion is inherent to the wide angle
lens. My understanding was that this was false and that the
distortion is a result of distance to subject. Could somebody please
clarify this issue for me?

As others have already pointed out - he's wrong.

The only reason I chime in is to point a link to a pair of
photos that I took to dispel this myth:
http://hannemyr.com/photo/crop.html#per

It is comparing a 135mm on a "full frame" with a 28mm on a 4.8x
crop sensor.
--
- gisle hannemyr [ gisle{at}hannemyr.no - http://hannemyr.com/photo/ ]
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