A few questions regarding FF vs 1.6

Thank you for the link SimonG! Most interesting read and I am begining to understand and appreciate the FF sensor more than ever before. I never knew there were so much benefits to FF apart from the little I knew... I'm sure I'll be upgrading to FF not too far in the future

As reading other members post I do agree that if majority of users are satisfied with crop sensor and its obviously cheaper to produce, it will be silly to phase it out and force customer into something else. Probably more realistic expectaion is better product hopefully with lower prices and 1.6 crop is here to stay for very long time.

tomhide wrote in post #2375157
My uderstanding is that FF sensor has been introduced fairly recently and 5D is the product that offeres FF at lower price compared to your other option FF bodies. Isn't this the result of technology advancement and perhaps due to lower cost of producing FF sensor to what it was when it was first produced? I Don't know why you are comapring 20D and 5D... 1.6 crop body vs FF body... It should be compared with other FF cameras if any and if you do that its probably more than 2.5 times less than 1DS...

Why do you think its important that I should of mentioned sensor size development when I was only merely trying to make a point that there has been technology advancement and prices has come down lower in our DSLRs.

I just wanted to point out sensor size is the big cost factor.
SimonG did a much better job.
5D is really a cheap body with an very expensive sensor.

If you really NEED image quality, get a full frame medium format system. That will easily outperform any 35 mm based system.

The reason NEED is in block letters is that you also have to be prepared to really PAY.

The cheapest way to get full frame digital images is to shoot 35mm and scan. There are film scanners for $400 that can pull a 15-20 megapixel image out of a 35mm frame. Extremely high resolution films, like Velvia, Provia, and B+W films, will have low grain and a ton of image information. Or you could get a medium format film setup cheaply too -- there are a lot of cheap 6x4.5 systems (more than 3 times the film area of FF 35mm), a number of cheap 6x7 systems (nearly 5 times the area of FF 35mm), and if you're interested in fixed lens cameras the Fuji 6x9 is reasonably priced too (more than 6 times the film area of FF 35mm).

No system or format is perfect, so you need to think about your output needs. But if you've got a 35mm SLR collecting dust in your closet, for a mere $400 for the scanner and the very reasonable cost of small format film, you could already have a full frame hybrid digital system.

Whether or not to buy a 5D for more than $2500 is a big question, one that I faced last year and chose the film / scanner solution instead. But it's not the only solution out there; and some day maybe FF digital will indeed drop considerably in price. Remember that you can't get much more than 12 megapixels onto an APS-C sensor without really affecting performance, but for the same pixel density you could get 24 megapixels on full frame. So long as the megapixel arms race is still meaningful, Canon effectively has the coffin lid for companies that don't make FF. So I'd imagine a price war in which there is either FF competition that drives down the price of FF cameras, or Canon gets forced to drop the price anyway in order to compete against cheaper APS-C competitors.

DrPablo wrote in post #2376710
The cheapest way to get full frame digital images is to shoot 35mm and scan. There are film scanners for $400 that can pull a 15-20 megapixel image out of a 35mm frame. ...

Personally, I think that this statement is pure folly. I've shot approximately 5000 photos in the past twelve months, which equates to say 200 x 24 exposure rolls. Even if you go with budget film, I would still have paid more for film and processing this past year than I paid for my new digital body, nevermind the additional cost of the film scanner, and the additional time that would have been required. Sure, I would probablly have shot (much) less if I were still using film, but for this comparison that's hardly relevant.

SimonG wrote in post #2376810
Personally, I think that this statement is pure folly. I've shot approximately 5000 photos in the past twelve months, which equates to say 200 x 24 exposure rolls. Even if you go with budget film, I would still have paid more for film and processing this past year than I paid for my new digital body, nevermind the additional cost of the film scanner, and the additional time that would have been required. Sure, I would probablly have shot (much) less if I were still using film, but for this comparison that's hardly relevant.

Pure folly? Did your mom teach you how to talk nicely to people? I'm trying to make helpful suggestions here. There's no need for you to be condescending.

I'm not making absolute statements -- I acknowledge the caveats, and I'm just making an alternative suggestion. The cost effectiveness of shooting film vs digital depends on your volume of shooting and your profit margins. Cost aside, I wasn't sufficiently impressed with the 5D to pay the price for it -- so I'm using a perfectly acceptable alternative until what I consider an acceptable full frame DSLR comes out.

As you say yourself you'd be shooting less if you were using film. And that is relevant if we're talking about cost effectiveness -- and if you read your own post you brought it up yourself.

Technology change is always possible. FD mount is gone for instance with technology changes. It happens. Sometimes you just got to bite the bullet. Glass hasn't changed much though. And you can do so much right now. Hard to argue against the current format if it does stuff that makes you happy.

Sorry Paul, I was not trying to be condescending. If you had said that scanning is the cheapest up to a point (i.e. if the photog only needs a limited number of full-frame digital files) then I would have been in agreement; however, to suggest that scanning is the cheapest method of obtaining full frame digital files without qualifier is not particularly well thought out or helpful IMHO.

You're right that it needs to be qualified further. It may not be the cheapest in the end, but it also depends on the vantage point. From my own point of view, for one who shot a lot of APS-C pics and was interested in FF, dabbling in full frame by scanning negatives would have been a nice and reasonably cheap alternative to buying a whole new system. It depends on volume, as you say. It also depends on how long one is willing to wait for a new FF body -- as a temporizing measure until the next FF phenom is released it's actually a reasonable thing to consider.

IMO, by the time FF is cheap enough to reach mainstream volumes, it'll be too late to expand it beyond its niche and thats no bad thing. Theres a need for it for some but its not some holy grail thats needed or wanted by most.
APS-C is already the expected norm for most photographers and technological advances in sensor quality to reduce the gap in outright image quality will continue. For the overwhelming majority of print and screen uses, the difference is already indistinguishable to most.
Its nice to have the choice.

By the time FF is cheap enough to reach mainstream volumes, so will full frame medium format. The choice between users who need very high quality results will still be between high end 35 mm and medium formats, just as it was with film. I expect that medium format will still win.

Currently we have a transitional market where Canon has managed to reduce the price of the 5D, but medium format manufacturers have not yet managed to produce a similarly priced product.

When prices get reasonable, most people who shot 6x4.5 or 6x7 cm film will shoot medium format digital and most of the people who shot 35 mm film will shoot APS-C sized digital cameras. There will always be a small FF 35 mm sized sensor market for those caught in the middle or in the transition from APS-C to medium format.

http://www.tylermerric​k.com …l_length_compar​ison&cat=4 quick example I did with a 1.6 crop vs full frame.

Scott, I'm not so sure that's true. There still remains to be a single true medium format digital sensor -- all of them are smaller than 60x45, which is the smallest format size considered MF. The Leaf Aptus 22 MP is 48x32mm, the Hasselblad H3D is 39 MP /48x36, the Phase One is 49x37 / 39 MP, and the Mamiya ZD is 48x36 / 22 MP.

So all of these are just over half the size of the smallest MF film format. The 645 format is 3 times the size of 35mm, and these digital MF backs and bodies are only twice the size of 35mm (~1800 mm^2 vs 864 mm^2). This is almost identical to the difference between 35mm and APS-C (864 mm^2 vs 360 mm^2).

Taking the square root of this area difference, you'll find a roughly 1.5x crop factor when going from full frame 35mm to the current generation of digital MF bodies. If we're able to debate the merits of 35mm vs APS-C, this distinction will be considerably less important when debating 35mm vs 48x36.

In other words, we're still a ways off from getting our first digital MF sensor that actually is medium format in size. If you look at the extra cost for these cameras, all well over $10,000 and some considerably higher than that, it seems like a true digital 645 (let alone 6x7) camera is far away. Furthermore, all the conveniences of small format (like higher framerates, high quality zoom lenses, and a lot of competition to drive down prices and drive up quality), you're still going to be looking at a huge competitive advantage for high end 35mm DSLRs.

So I think mainstream FF is a lot closer to us than digital MF, which in all honsesty doesn't really exist yet. These MF cameras are some sort of intermediate for people who want to continue using their great CZ-Hassy and Mamiya lenses.

I dont think the size of a digital MF sensor not being the same as the old film negative is in the least bit important. Like APS-C, its a re-evaluation for an image-capturing technology that has bugger all in common with film. I'd say 48x36 is about as big as anybody really needs to get in practical terms and that size will benefit from the same advances in sensor-tech that apply to all other sizes.
The MF market is a complete mess to be honest. They've gone for ultra-high profit, ultra low volume and I don't see that changing. I think FF 35mm serves a useful niche of its own and a much bigger one that MF.

Sure it's important, because the main argument for a larger format is to get increased detail capture, improved tonal and color gradations (because transitions occur over a larger physical area), and increased enlargeability. There's a pretty big difference between 6x4.5 and 6x7 even within medium format. While these are true for any given increase in sensor size, it's pretty small for these digiMF choices.

When it comes down to what your $15,000 are going for, and you find that the digital MF sensors have only 2/3 the area of a 6x4.5 frame and less than half that of a 6x7 frame, you're not gaining a ton of sensor area for all that extra money you're spending.

That aside, you're right on two fronts -- FF digital serves many of the roles that film MF once did, and in terms of one's output needs the specific advantages of a DSLR outweigh the specific advantages of film MF. You're also right that the MF market is a mess, and they're mainly competing for people who already have a $30,000 collection of MF lenses.