Originally posted by djayvo Thanks Marc Sabatella for answering without any cynicism I have read maybe to many forums and posts on this and that is what got my thinking mixed up. Just needed someone re-pointing me in the right direction again.
The key thing to remember is that the focal length is a property of the lens itself. The lens will bend light at the same angles whether the sensor is full frame, crop, or your eye. The whole "equivalency" thing is confusing, because it's mostly for those photographers who are used to the image size of film. It's a context held over (I'm guessing) from the days when digital was young and film still held sway (some call those the halcyon days), and full-frame sensors were a silicon manufacturer's nightmare. I guess it's a decent context to keep, as inconvenient as it may be for the moment: I really do think that in 10-20 years all D-SLRs will be full frame, which will bring us round-about to 35mm again. (Yes, even Olympus. Then we can convince them to make Zukikos in a K-mount.)
I just looked this up, wikipedia has a great article on the subject:
Focal length - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (warning, past the first paragraph there will be math)