A few questions regarding FF vs 1.6

I know of some commercial photographers who switched to the 1Ds from medium format film, claiming they could get the same quality of product. They have now acquired medium format digital backs for their commercial work, but they don't seem to want to give away their 1Ds'.

There is a reason many digital sensors are a smaller size than the film for the camera bodies they are designed for. Film records light striking its surface, regardless of the angle of incidence. Digital sensors require an anti-aliasing filter so they work better when light arives in closer to a perpendicular orientation. The design of film camera film to lens distance was determined to optimize the angle of incidence of wide angle lenses. If you want to keep the same lens mount and keep the light in the corners more perpendicular, the easiest way is to use a smaller sensor. This holds true for digital sensors designed for 35 mm or medium format bodies. Making a full frame sensor that produces an image without softness or vignetting in the corners requires a combination of very high quality lens, optical manipulation in front of the sensor and computer processing of the data received from the sensor. Although I am not a fan of full frame sensors, I have to admit that Canon has done an excellent job of meeting these challenges.

SimonG's point about the number of sensors per wafer is a good one, although he omitted another aspect: the probability of a defect goes up in proportion to the area. So not only do you get far fewer full-frame sensors out of a wafer, each sensor is about 2.5 times more likely to be unusable.

The other thing that strikes me is the history of film size in photography. I learned on a 4x5 Speed Graphic (a wonderful camera, as long as you only need one shot every 10-20 seconds and 16 in the whole session). At the time, the really mobile news photographers were using 2-1/4 inch film, and 35mm was mostly for hobbyists. Over time, everybody migrated downward. By the time digital came in, 35mm was the standard, a few specialists used 2-1/4, and anything bigger was for the really unusual or fanatical. The choice was driven almost entirely by film grain.

As digital technology continues to improve, I predict that the same thing will happen. The 1.6 crop will become the standard for news and "workhorse" photography, primarily because it makes the equipment smaller and lighter. So-called "full frame" will continue to be important for art, fashion, and advertising, primarily because of depth of field but also for resolution and diffraction purposes. The bigger formats will always remain a niche market, even if somebody figures out a way to make an 8x10 digital sensor for $30.

At least, that's the way I see it. Now that I've precisely predicted the future, I think it's time for me to go play the stock market.

Lenses would need to get a heck of a lot cheaper before they could phase out the EF-S lens mount. A 300 f/2.8 on a 5D is slightly wider than a 200 f/2.8 on a 20D, so on top of the cost of an FF camera you have to plunk down a heck of a lot more cash to get the same reach out of your lens. Nikon is 100% commited to the 1.5 crop, so it would make owning the same range of lenses for a Nikon body much cheaper if all Canon offered were FF cameras. Granted you can crop into a 1Ds image to obtain the same FOV as a 20D image, but composing and focusing becomes a real problem. The next generation of lens development will bring us cheaper wider lenses designed around crop sensors, not cheaper longer lenses designed to do what lenses that allready exist do on a smaller chip. To get the same type of shot that you can make on a 20D with a 600 f/4 would require a 960 f/4 on a ff sensor, not going to happen.

I hope that we are nearing the end of the megapixel race and entering the noise reduction age. I would be stoked to have a 4mpx camera that can be set anywhere from ISO 5 to 6400 without noise, and 12800 with the amount we currently see at 3200, that would make me buy a $10,000 body, 12mpx at 12fps won't.

maxyedor wrote in post #2383529
A 300 f/2.8 on a 5D is slightly wider than a 200 f/2.8 on a 20D, so on top of the cost of an FF camera you have to plunk down a heck of a lot more cash to get the same reach out of your lens.

That is a very important point.

And before everyone starts to argue that this is not a valid comparison (NO!!! You are only CROPPING an image, you don't get more image quality etc...), consider that the largest group of potential camera buyers on the market are those on which this fine differentiation is normally lost...

I don't want to sound condescending, but if you look at the advertisements for the Digital Rebel and its successors, you will easily see that these cameras are not so much aimed at the knoving amateur who reads this forum, but rather at the ignorant picture taker that continues to take aquarium images with the pop-up flash and the kit lens (normally one of my pet peeves when visiting a zoo )

And when a Canon FF camera will be $ 999 one day, there will still be a (very large) segment of the market where the $299 Canon Digital Rebel XXSTI will be competing with the $279 NOINK D95... and it would not make much sense for Canon to abandon those for the sake of selling superior technology FF cameras only...

Best regards,
Andy

Andythaler wrote in post #2384174
... and it would not make much sense for Canon to abandon those for the sake of selling superior technology FF cameras only...

Different technology, not superior.

It takes superior technology to get a noise free picture when more pixels are packed onto a smaller sensor.

It takes different superior technology to manufacture a larger sensor and get a corner to corner sharp image.

We have no idea what the limits of either technology will be.