Quote Originally Posted by littleblue
I'm confused
You're confusing two separate and different things. "Wide angle" and "aspect ratio" are completely different things. The 16:9 aspect ratio is a proportion, a dimension, if you will. Wide angle is something completely different. I can make a 16:9 telephoto image or a 16:9 wide angle image. It's just the proportions of the image. I can crop an image to get those proportions. But wide angle is an optical function. It requires a lens that sees at a wide angle. Think of the way you see when you look at something in front of you. And then think about adding what's in your peripheral vision into the image. The first image would be something like a 50mm lens view (in 35mm). Adding your peripheral vision makes it wide angle. But neither view is 16:9. It only becomes 16:9 when you crop the image.

This is hard to explain. I've never tried before. Is it starting to make sense? The best example of wide angle is a fisheye lens. It's distorted as hell because of the super-wide angle of view. But it's not 16:9. That only happens when you apply an artificial frame to the view the lens captures. Actually, all lenses capture what's called an "image circle." The film or sensor size and proportions determine the aspect ratio. The LX2 can only capture in 28mm when it's in the 16:9 mode. Otherwise it isn't use the farther edges of the image circle and is probably only shooting at 35mm.