Most cars used to be bigger and heavier. These days the trend is
toward smaller and lighter and it will keep going that way. Why?
Because it's more practical and efficient. Technology has improved
greatly and the small cars of today are usually safer than the big
cars of yesterday. Many of the small, ordinary cars of today are more
powerful and faster, yet more economical than the muscle cars of
yesterday.
A good start is to use a proper analogy. How about telescopes? Now,
certain technological advances have allowed smaller telescopes to
outresolve larger telescopes, and new ideas, such as putting
telescopes into space beyond the atmosphere, have allowed smaller
telescopes to function better than larger ground-based telescopes.
But, for the same technology, bigger is better, and there is simply
no reason to expect that smaller sensors will employ a "better"
technology than larger sensors.
When a small sensor is designed that has the same or better
attributes as a large sensor, there won't be any need for a large
sensor. Even if a future large sensor might be "better" than a small
one, what's the point of making one if it doesn't do any good? If a
small sensor does the job and does it well, that's what people will
want, especially when it keeps the cost down and it means smaller and
lighter cameras and lenses.
The large sensors are put into the flagship cameras of the companies.
So, until that changes, if there are any technological advances,
they'll be seen in larger sensors before smaller sensors.
More P&S cameras are sold these days, by far, than DSLRs. Most people
want small, light cameras and lenses. Most people will even sacrifice
some image quality to have those small, light cameras and lenses.
When small sensor cameras are able to match or exceed today's large
sensor cameras in image quality and other attributes, why would
anyone want a big old clunker of a DSLR and huge lenses and the
associated costs?
No small sensor camera will
ever be able to get the shallow DOF I
get with my 5D and current lenses. Since I
love shallow DOF, and
there are others like me, there will always be a demand for the
larger sensor cameras.
But of course smaller sensors are more popular! Most people do not
care about what I care about in photography. What's your point?
Going back to your thread where you expressed your dislike of ultra
shallow DOF:
If big sensors and expensive cameras were what most people want,
medium format or large format cameras, whether film or digital, would
be selling like crazy.
If "what most people want" was the criteria for what is considered
"good" in photography, then that would be a sad day. Sure, there
will come a time when cell phone cameras will satisfy the QT (quality
threshold) for the vast majority, just as endless bad TV satifies the
QT for the vast majority.
But I think I'd rather sit down and watch some programming that
wasn't "what most people want" than watch what everyone else is
watching. That said, I enjoy some popular shows.
In other words, I think
great pics can be taken with
all formats,
and I certainly do not deny the greater pouplarity of smaller
formats, from cropped sensor DSLRs to compacts to cell phones. But I
do deny that that smaller sensors will
ever outperform the larger
formats of the same generation. Whether or not you care about what
the larger formats have to offer you is an entirely different matter,
however.
So, please make sure that you differentiate between technological
limitations and scientific impossibiities, and also distinguish
between what the majority want, what you want, and what others want.
They are all very different things.
--
--joe
