Why go full frame?

rhys216 wrote in post #13209303
Why else would they spend more?

To make more money.

stsva wrote in post #13209294
That wasn't the assumption I was questioning; the assumption in question was that camera manufacturers intentionally spend more to produce better IQ.

They have little choice when it comes to manufacturing FF sensors from what I understand.

stsva wrote in post #13209321
To make more money.

Not really as it just increases their costs. I'm they would actually rather use crop sensors and just charge more. Nikon obviously wanted to do this, otherwise they wouldn't have taken so long to release a FF camera. Their hand was likely forced by Canon swiping market share with their FF offerings.

rhys216 wrote in post #13209350
Not really as it just increases their costs. I'm they would actually rather use crop sensors and just charge more. Nikon obviously wanted to do this, otherwise they wouldn't have taken so long to release a FF camera. Their hand was likely forced by Canon swiping market share with their FF offerings.

It would be interesting to have insight into the relative profit margins for full frame and crop camera lines, but I don't think we're likely to get that. Canon seems to have two primary business goals - to outsell Nikon and other competitors, and to keep sales of higher end cameras up by limiting the feature sets of lower end cameras. The second goal seems to imply that there is a significant profit margin advantage for their higher end cameras, but that's speculation without more information. Note that neither goal necessarily has anything to do with full frame versus crop, demonstrated by Canon having both higher end and lower end cameras in both the full frame and crop lines. I suspect that, to Canon, full frame versus crop is largely irrelevant with regard to their business model and profit structure.

stsva wrote in post #13209373
It would be interesting to have insight into the relative profit margins for full frame and crop camera lines, but I don't think we're likely to get that. Canon seems to have two primary business goals - to outsell Nikon, and to keep sales of higher end cameras up by limiting the feature sets of lower end cameras. Note that neither goal necessarily has anything to do with full frame versus crop, demonstrated by Canon having both higher end and lower end cameras in both the full frame and crop lines. I suspect that, to Canon, full frame versus crop is largely irrelevant with regard to their business model.

I would be willing to bet there is a much higher profit margin on the 5Dmk2 compared to any of the APS-C sensored models currently being produced.

Think about it..... The 5Dmk2 has been dropped 500 bucks in price over the last couple weeks. 500 will almost buy a T2i body. My guess is they have at least another 750 dollars to play with before they start breaking even < total guess on my part, but it's just a feeling.

davidc502 wrote in post #13209396
I would be willing to bet there is a much higher profit margin on the 5Dmk2 compared to any of the APS-C sensored models currently being produced.

Think about it..... The 5Dmk2 has been dropped 500 bucks in price over the last couple weeks. 500 will almost buy a T2i body. My guess is they have at least another 750 dollars to play with before they start breaking even < total guess on my part, but it's just a feeling.

It also could be completely the opposite like many car brands that offer a wide range of automobiles. They don;t make money on the high end stuff - they make it on the cheap stuff.

Lexus, Toyota, BMW, Mercedes, and Audi come to mind.

eskimochaos wrote in post #13209430
It also could be completely the opposite like many car brands that offer a wide range of automobiles. They don;t make money on the high end stuff - they make it on the cheap stuff.

Lexus, Toyota, BMW, Mercedes, and Audi come to mind.

I do know about Chevy, Ford and Chrysler vehicles.... They make 2, 3 even 4 times as much profit on the high end vehicles, and that goes especially for the SUV models.

davidc502 wrote in post #13209447
I do know about Chevy, Ford and Chrysler vehicles.... They make 2, 3 even 4 times as much profit on the high end vehicles, and that goes especially for the SUV models.

They're really not competitors in the markets of the manufacturers that I listed. IMO.

davidc502 wrote in post #13209396
I would be willing to bet there is a much higher profit margin on the 5Dmk2 compared to any of the APS-C sensored models currently being produced.

Think about it..... The 5Dmk2 has been dropped 500 bucks in price over the last couple weeks. 500 will almost buy a T2i body. My guess is they have at least another 750 dollars to play with before they start breaking even < total guess on my part, but it's just a feeling.

Well it mostly depends on how much the sensors cost.
FF sensors actually costs 2.5x more than a 1.6x sensor if every die candidate is successful. However yields decrease exponentially as you increase die sizes, so I'm guessing a FF sensor alone probably cost's around 3-4x more than 1.6x chips.
Then you have a little extra cost in terms of better shutters and viewfinders etc.

rhys216 wrote in post #13209458
Well it mostly depends on how much the sensors cost.
FF sensor costs 2.5x more than a 1.6x sensor, if every die candidate is successful. However yields decrease exponentially as you increase die sizes, so I'm guessing a FF sensor alone probably cost's around 3-4x more than 1.6x chips.
Then you have a little extra cost in terms of larger shutters and viewfinders etc.

Sorry, I agree with you on most points but do you have any data to back it up?

^^^
No specific data relating to camera sensors, but companies buy silicon in wafers, it doesn't matter how many dies you put on that wafer or if they are large or small, the wafers cost the same (assuming your buying the same sized wafers).
A FF sensor has 2.5x the surface area of a 1.6x sensor, so that alone will account for a 2.5x higher silicon cost.

Like virtually everything else under discussion in this thread, everything is relative. In this case, it would be the sales price relative to the cost of production. Since we don't know the cost of production for any of Canon's cameras, we can't calculate the profit margin, and therefore have no way of knowing whether "better quality" is intrinsically more expensive or whether Canon is charging more for better quality because they can, not that they must to cover the costs of production. I'm sure some of the higher price for full frame is attributable to higher production costs, but that doesn't explain, for example, the very large difference in list price between a 5Dii and a 1DSiii.

This thread is really going down the pooper.

eskimochaos wrote in post #13209514
This thread is really going down the pooper.

Au contraire - it's just now starting to get interesting. We're getting into the money side now!

eskimochaos wrote in post #13209464
Sorry, I agree with you on most points but do you have any data to back it up?

Looks like I underestimated.

"While full-frame DSLRs offer advantages for wide-angle photography, smaller-sensor DSLRs offer some advantages for telephoto photography because the smaller angle of view of small-sensor DSLRs enhances the telephoto effect of the lenses. For example, a 200 mm lens on a camera with a crop factor of 1.5 has the same angle of view as a 300 mm lens on a full-frame camera. The extra "reach", for a given number of pixels, can be helpful in specific areas of photography such as wildlife or sports.[6]
Production costs for a full-frame sensor can exceed twenty times the costs for an APS-C sensor. Only 20 full-frame sensors will fit on an 8-inch (200 mm) silicon wafer, and yield is comparatively low because the sensor's large area makes it very vulnerable to contaminants—20 evenly distributed defects could theoretically ruin an entire wafer. Additionally, the full-frame sensor requires three separate exposures during the photolithography stage, tripling the number of masks and exposure processes."

http://en.wikipedia.or​g/wiki/Full-frame_digital_SLR