Why are people buying crop sensors when they know that FF is the future?

The camera model might get replaced after 18months (but the time is stretching as the market matures) but it still takes as good a photograph as it did at the start. So YOU do not have to change if you are photographer and not a collector.

I am still using my very early original 5 year old 1Ds (Nov 2002) and selling pictures from it. So it is earning is its keep. I expect I will use my 1DS mark 3 when it arrives for at least next 5 years. I am probably looking at changing when necessary which is likely to be no more frequent than alterate generations - so my next camera will probably be the 1Ds mark 5 (or whatever) in about 2013!

My original 1Ds will probably go to one of my grown up kids who is showing an interest in photography. So it will still be earning money for another few years.

If I was not selling pix I would not be changing.

Martin Wilson
Nottingham, England

Some of the problem seems to come from the words used. Full Frame...now that sounds complete, the normal size what things should be. Cropped....less than something not complete, reduced....not good. When in fact all it really means is that there are a number of different sized sensors out there.

Over time technology will change and move and improve and for any given sensor size quality will improve, resolution will improve and noise will reduce. Also if you can get the same quality from something smaller with correspondingly smaller and lighter lenses...why not? Isn't it inevitable?

Full frame is a hang up from film days which are in the mainstream..dead and gone. And as someone said earlier in this thread...one of a line of "full" frames depending on the technology of the day. Wasn't 35mm called minature at some point.

--
Chris
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrismorgan/

Pop-up flash? Just because they stopped putting pop-ups on FF body doesn't mean it's can't be done. It's hardly related to sensor size. Most non-1 series film body got pop-up flashes. I almost never use them though.

The larger view finder in FF bodies also make everything easier to see. For wide angle shooters FF is also better.

joe mama said:

FF has only two advantages over crop: more shallow DOF and higher
IQ. That's it. Crop has tons of advantages over FF: smaller,
lighter, less expensive, more available lenses, pop-up flash, and
in-camera IS (not Canon and Nikon).

How often do people print larger than 8x12, and/or want DOF more
shallow than what crop already offers? A lot less than want all the
advantages of crop, that's for sure.

--
--joe

http://www.josephjamesphotography.com
http://www.pbase.com/joemama/

Click to expand...

--

Michael Fredericksen said:

You should buy a 5D. Unlike computers, which are "obsolete" in 2-3
years, surpassed by something far faster (speed that is needed to
work with modern software), a camera like the 5D will not become
obsolete until you can no longer get parts or media for it. The 5D
takes spectacular photographs; it is really the first moderately
priced camera that beats 35mm film handily. It will always take
spectacular photographs. Just because another camera comes along that
takes 10-12 frames per second, or has 22 megapixels, that doesn't
mean the 5D is obsolete. If you really need those new features then
that's another matter, but if you just want a tool that enables you
to take great photos, you can buy a 5D without qualms. Once you
experience the image quality you'll kick yourself for waiting so long.

Click to expand...

I agree with all that you have said, I do realize what a spectacular camera 5D is, IQ wise I don't think its picture would be "obsolete" in due time, but I would very much like to wait for a few more months to see what the 5D MK2 packs. As I just bought a camera recently with a not so cheap lens lens, I don't think I can afford a 5D anytime soon. But since live view is the norm now, why not make it more flexible by incorporating a swivel screen, that would help a lot if you do tripod shots at weird angles. I doubt it would be on a 5D MK2, but maybe on a MK3 perhaps...

--

'Intelligence plus character – that is the true goal of education.' Martin Luther King Jr.

With a digital camera, seems to me that it is too difficult to keep your mentality of not taking the camera as a tool, but rather an extension to yourself. This can be simply proved by the number of shots one normally take in a day film vs digital. I was shocked to learn from many of my friends who took a few hundred shots in half a day. I though it was like shooting a machine gun instead of photo taking. People always talking one should take photos with a heart, but I wonderf how one could have a heart taking so many shots in such a short time.

--
Anders

'It is nice to be important but it is more important to be nice'

gdanmitchell said:

To anticipate a comment that usually follows in a thread on this
topic ("FF will always cost a lot more than crop")... If I recall
correctly, the next generation 1DsMKKIII is expected to retail for
about the price as the current generation 1DsMKII - and, if memory
serves, wasn't the previous version about the same price? And this in
the face of inflation. If so, the argument that there is little or no
flexibility in sensor cost doesn't hold much water.

Click to expand...

Overall technology costs decrease, but for a given technology level, a 24x36 sensor will always have a chip cost of 10x or so (Canon's figures) that of 18x24 sensor. At the moment, that would seem to equate to around (very rough estimate) $500 (24x36) and $50 (18x24). It's still a significant enough part of the cost of a complete camera to dictate that you won't find 'low end' FF SLR, or a APS-C P&S (apart from the Sony R1, and Sigma D14 but they sells at SLR prices).

24x36 sensor SLRS will only become dominant in the low end SLR market when the sensor price is a small proportion of whatever the market price for a low end SLR is. Give that the entry level price for an SLR is still dropping fast, don't expect this to happen any time soon. The low end film SLR price bottemed out at about $200 body price, and there's still a long way for DSLRs to go before they get to that price point.
--
Bob

The market wil probably stay diverse, because image size is not the constraint it was in the film market. The dominance of the 24x36 format in film was due to the requirements of the processing chain (Nikon were forced to change from 24x32 to 34x36 so that it would fit the Kodachrome slide mount). Attempts to make cameras smaller and more convenient by limiting the image size (sum-min,half frame, APS, etc, etc) always foundered on film choice and processing costs. These just don't apply to digital. So people who want smaller cheaper cameras and are happy with the IQ that they produce, will buy them and manufacturers will make them to meet the market.

Similarly, there will be niche markets for other sensor sizes, if there are photogs who find them a good compromise for them. One interesting thing about this thread is the amount of support for the 1.3 crop, which many have derided as a nonsensical halfway house. If there's a market for it, nothing is absurd. There's a lot of people think the Pentax 110 SLR was a wonderful camera. They would buy a digital version which gave them the same advantages as that camera.
--
Bob

Anastigmat said:

If and when full frame DSLR cameras fall
below $2,000, we will probably see the beginning of the end of
cropped sensor cameras. If and when FF DSLR cameras fall below
$1,000, the cropped sensor will either disappear completely or be
restricted to the very bottom end of the market.

Click to expand...

No, the bottom end of the market will move down. Remember, you could buy a very decent film SLR for $1000, and one that would take very good pictures for $200. When FF DSLR cameras fall below $200, you might be right, but for some parts of the market, the size and 'reach' advantages would still be sufficient to ensure a market for them.

--
Bob

--
Luciano Oliveira

v5point0 said:

But I couldn't justify buying a FF camera with such a price tag esp
on something that gets obsolete withing 18 months or so thus I
settled for the crop body.

Click to expand...

If I were advising you, I'd tell you to go snatch up a 12 MP 5D before they are discontinued.

Well for one, one usually starts pretty much uninformed, cause you 1st have to lay your hands on something and from there becomes more informed, based on at least some experience.

2ndly, just as luck would have it you more easily get away with cheap lenses on 1:6.

So in the end we all going to have full frame or 1:3 as preferred, as we gets better informed....Experience can be costly, but it make you see the difference in stuff clearly, rather than believing anything you hear.....

--
Canon Knowledge Bank:A sure read !
http://www.cps.canon-europe.com/kb/index.jsp
The Canon 1DMK IIIn Japan site
http://web.canon.jp/Imaging/eos1dm3/html/sitemap.html

. . . here in our Canon-centrtic world, that a frame size of about 36 mm x 24 mm is somehow automatically the holy grail of digital photography. It gets that bogus title because it is the largest format that is supported by the extensive lens catalogs of Canon, Nikon, and the like. That's an important practical consideration, but we need to be careful not to ascribe supernatural properties to that format as a result.

For example, in film photography, that frame size was never thought of as the "ultimate" from a performance standpoint (even in a practical context). Not to ignore the work of photographers using large formats, perhaps the 120 format family was seen as the "top of the world for cameras that you could easily carry".

I myself think that the frame size of the Four-Thirds System (about 18 mm x 13.5 mm) could well come to play, in digital photography, the role that the 26 mm x 24 mm format came to take in film photography.

Will Canon shock the photographic world by, in 2012, introducing a whole new family of digital cameras, lenses, and the like with a format size of 18 mm x 13.5 mm? I would hate to bet either way.

It is fascinating to note the size of the sensors used in modern high-performance high-definition studio television cameras (often about 14 mm x 7 mm or smaller). Admittedly there the norm of output resolution is not the same we typically aspire to in "still photography".

Still, my favorite crop camera is my Pocket Kodak 3A, formerly used by the Department of Agriculture.

Carla has an interesting outlook. She feels that there is a range of body size that is best for serious hand-held photography (somewhere between that of the EOS 40D and 5D). She could not care less about format size. She thinks that the bodies of typical Four Thirds cameras are too small, and EOS 1-series cameras too big.

We may recall that when Olympus, years ago, managed to design a really nice full-frame SLR 35-mm body that was smaller than the Nikon and Canon full-0frame 35-mm bodies of the era, it was not taken seriously by a lot of photographers.

So my vote for best size for serious digital photography is the Canon EOS 5D, whatever format size that uses. Perhaps Canon should offer that body in a range of format sizes.
--
Best regards,

Doug

Visit The Pumpkin, a library of my technical articles on photography, optics, and other topics:

http://doug.kerr.home.att.net/pumpkin

'Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler.'

"So my vote for best size for serious digital photography is the Canon EOS 5D, whatever format size that uses. Perhaps Canon should offer that body in a range of format sizes."
----------------------------

It is offered already with FF and 1.6x crop (in 40D). The only one missing is 1.3x crop

--

Not everything that counts can be counted; not everything that can be counted counts

For many apps pixel density matters .... most you can get currently comes with the crops.

best, mark

DotCom Editor said:

In other words, it's all relative. My 20D is a superb camera. Who
give a rat's a$$ what size the "frame" is? (And my 1D III is superb,
too.)

If you are a crappy photographer, the frame size is irrelevant.

Click to expand...

Well it does make a difference, particularly when you submit to photo agencies like Alamy & do commercial work....but I doubt you even know what that is, you should keep your poorly educated views to yourself IMHO......

'Your failure to be informed, does not make me a wacko.'
John Loeffler.

No politically correct beliefs were challenged or harmed in any way during the writing of this reply.

equipment- lots of FulL FrAMe & whacky lenses, some groovy remotes-various MF/LF.



http://www.pbase.com/foodphoto/i_call_it_art
http://www.pbase.com/foodphoto/weddings1

Rick Knepper said:

If I were advising you, I'd tell you to go snatch up a 12 MP 5D
before they are discontinued.

Click to expand...

With the MKII to be announced just around the corner? Hmm I dunno, I rather wait and see...

--

'Intelligence plus character – that is the true goal of education.' Martin Luther King Jr.

Hi, Sebastian,

sebastian_p said:

"So my vote for best size for serious digital photography is the
Canon EOS 5D, whatever format size that uses. Perhaps Canon should
offer that body in a range of format sizes."
----------------------------
It is offered already with FF and 1.6x crop (in 40D).

Click to expand...

Well, not quite the same size, but a good point.

sebastian_p said:

The only one
missing is 1.3x crop

Click to expand...

Four-Thirds missing!

Best regards,

Doug

Visit The Pumpkin, a library of my technical articles on photography, optics, and other topics:

http://doug.kerr.home.att.net/pumpkin

'Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler.'

. . . people were saying: "35-mm film in a still camera? How silly. Why would people do that when we can get so much better results with 120 film?"
--
Best regards,

Doug

Interesting feedback I have received thus far, though I didn't expect such a defensive review on the crop sensors coming from a FF forum. Though I agree with the cost and the application needs I do not imply that an FF has to be a 1Ds nor are you required to buy it this instant. It intrigues me to see people so interested and buying the next best crop thing and imply that the quality from a 40D = 5D somewhat psychologically justifying the reason that they don't need to go FF even when cost is not a factor. I also notice that there is a preference for 1.3 FOVCF as opposed to the other formats, lesser vignetting on lenses and lower cost I suppose? I do not picture myself getting a 1Ds even if I have the money to blow, I would be more comfortable handling a 5D variant and perhaps when the prices have become more reasonable in a few tech generation and when they can't cram any more MP's on a APS-C, people would look to the FF. Canon is leading the market to FF slowly, and despite Nikon mentioned before that they would be faithful to the 1.5 FOVCF or DX format and have no plans in going FF, they changed all that by introducing the D3. Its just a matter of time till they introduce a D400, or D500 with a FF while maintaining the same price as that line. By that time, Canon would compete with a 5D MKIII or MKIV, with a similar price as the Nikon's offering. Just wait and see...

VJ
--

'Intelligence plus character – that is the true goal of education.' Martin Luther King Jr.