Why go full frame?

Go FF for pure IQ, you have the budget (body+lenses) and you're making money on your photography. I don't get people dropping a mortgage payment on a camera just to have nice pics

Great thread, am trying to keep up.

I could make the case that full frame cameras are not even relevant today. Crop-sensors are the new 35mm.

crop sensors are not even relevant today. micro four thirds is the new 35mm.

Man I am throwing my 5d and shooting with p&s now. Sorry that is too big a sensor, I will use iPhone only.

I shoot in AI Servo almost exclusively and need to capture moments. No time to focus and recompose. Almost nothing I shoot is inanimate. And as clarified earlier, the "odd" OOF shot. It's pretty rare. I don't suffer any anxiety when I open Bridge/ACR thnking I may have missed a shot.

gorby wrote in post #13198850
crop sensors are not even relevant today. micro four thirds is the new 35mm.

forget micro four thirds, androids are the new 35mm

agreed

Dang it, I just bought a 5DII and I could have just waited another day and got the Iphone 4S.

Cell cameras are way more convenient, and offer instant pp. It's the way to go.

I haven't read the last load of pages but all this (sarcastic) talk about tiny sensors is just getting pathetic now. For one it's not just about the size of the sensor but what comes with it, in Canon's case that's a higher resolution and more speed with the smaller sensors. The only time the actual size of the sensor comes in to play is when discussing crop's telephoto advantage, but even that isn't strictly the size but the pixel density (with the size determining the field of view). The reason why ridiculously tiny sensors are, well, ridiculous is because they cross the border with noise performance and sharpness due to very few lenses being able to resolve that sort of resolution.

Razeus wrote in post #13198621
I could make the case that full frame cameras are not even relevant today. Crop-sensors are the new 35mm.

I would love to hear it...please continue.

gorby wrote in post #13198850
crop sensors are not even relevant today. micro four thirds is the new 35mm.

What do think a micro 4/3 sensor is ? it's a has a 2x crop factor based off what format again?

Oh how did we cope before AF was invented eh...

The article from Thom Hogan from his site:


Lack of Equivalence is a Tool
Sept 29 (commentary)--Just as in the film world, we have a lot of people not fully understanding how format choice impacts photography. The usual way to get to understanding this is a notion called "equivalence." We're going to short cut the full description of equivalence with this one: essentially the same shot visually.

To get equivalence you need:

Same position relative to the subject (i.e. not closer or further away)

Same angle of view captured

Same DOF captured
You'll also hear people talking about photons in equivalence. Smaller sensors need faster lenses to capture the same number of photons and have the same signal-to-noise ratio as larger sensors. But I'm going to skip past this notion for this discussion and just assume that we're shooting at base ISO with very good sensors for their size (i.e. noise and dynamic range aren't going to really impact our image).

So, we take five photographers all shooting with different formats: FX, DX, m4/3, Nikon 1, Coolpix P7100. I'm going to round the numbers a bit in values, so don't get all picky on me here--I don't think the small amount of rounding is anywhere near as important as the basic concept. Again, we want equivalent photos as I've defined it above. So:

FX shooter is at 300mm f/8

DX shooter is at 200mm f/5.6

m4/3 shooter is at 150mm f/4

Nikon 1 shooter is at 110mm f/2.8

Coolpix P7100 shooter is at 64mm f/1.8
Of course, we already have our first casualty: the Coolpix shooter doesn't have 64mm or f/1.8, their fixed lens only goes to 42mm and f/5.6.

As we try to increase the angle of view, we start losing other formats:

FX shooter is at 50mm f/8

DX shooter is at 35mm f/5.6

m4/3 shooter is at 25mm f/4

Nikon 1 shooter is at 18mm f/2.8
The Nikon 1 shooter is down to some strange lens choices (14-24mm f/2.8 on the adapter, for example). Let's go into a lower light situation and even wider:

FX shooter is at 24mm f/2.8

DX shooter is at 16mm f/2

m4/3 shooter is at 12mm f/1.4

Nikon 1 shooter is at 9mm f/1
We've now completely lost the Nikon 1 shooter and we're losing the m4/3 and DX shooters, as they don't really have the lenses to come close.

So, if our goal is to take pictures "that look just like we took them with 35mm film," then the equivalence notion starts putting restrictions on us, especially as we go wider and faster. We just can't get to equivalent (and again, I'm not trying to bring photons and dynamic range into this discussion).

But the opposite is true, too. Let's turn things around and say that we want lots of depth of field:

Coolpix shooter is at 6mm f/2.8

Nikon 1 shooter is at 10mm f/4

m4/3 shooter is at 14mm f/5.6

DX shooter is at 18mm f/8

FX shooter is at 28mm f/11
Narrow the angle of view and try to keep a large DOF:

Coolpix shooter is at 11mm f/5.6

Nikon 1 shooter is at 19mm f/8

m4/3 shooter is at 25mm f/11

DX shooter is at 35mm f/16

FX shooter is at 50mm f/22
Hmm, the Nikkor 50mm lens only goes to f/16, so we're starting to lose the FX shooter.

The simple fact is that there are looks you can't get with small formats that you can with large formats, and vice versa. The trick is to pick the right tool for the right job, and therefore to understand the underlying differences of your tools. I don't use m4/3 to replace my FX equipment; I use m4/3 to supplement my FX equipment. Yes, there's sometimes overlap, in which case I can pick small/light or phenomenal dynamic range/noise properties (but not both ;~).

Today a lot of Nikon users are getting upset over a statement Nikon made on their Facebook page: "A photographer is only as good as the equipment he uses," which they subsequently apologized for with a further statement that included "...the right equipment can help you capture amazing images." That second quote isn't far from what I'm trying to say here: you choose equipment based upon what you want to do.

Everything in photography is about balancing decisions. Everything. You may make hundreds of decisions to get a single good photograph, and one of them is to choose the right tool for the job. I see the Nikon 1 as just another tool. I wish the tool were better targeted towards me (more direct control, for example), but it does potentially offer me some options I didn't have before, so it's welcome.

I think a lot of the heat in the discussions about mirrorless cameras is the "I want something that can do everything" notion. People want small, light, inexpensive, high image quality, flexible, robust, and a few other things all in one package. But there's a simple fact of life: the more things you require from a tool, the more compromised and/or expensive it is. Moreover, some combinations are impossible (or at least improbable): small, inexpensive, and high quality, for example.

nvm

I think that these discussions are on the verge of becoming irrelevant. Discussing full-frame vs crop sensors can have some meaningful things put out in technical areas, but when they boil down to pitting the 5D2 against the 7D, well, the fact is the 5D2 had out-dated technology as soon as it was released, it just wasn't apparent while it was in the long process of being developed.

So, Nikon went aggressive, redefining the DSLR, right in the same timeframe. Canon hasn't released a ff body since then. The 7D was the Canon answer in a crop body, but the 7D is not a challenge to the full-frame lines. Don't pit it against the 3-year-old 5D2, or even the 3-year-old 1Ds3, because both of these bodies are due to be replaced!

Before we have more of these discussions, let's see what the coming months bring us, with the 5D3 and the 1Ds4! Then the ff vs crop debates should have new "teeth" to chew with!