People use it because the semantics of it makes them feel better. This was also when all the equivalency nonsense started.
To some, its nonsense when you don't understand it!
As someone who used medium and x-large format film cameras, full frame is a made up term used to bolster up the psyche of those users to make them feel superior to anyone else.
First, all terms in every language - national, technical, formal, jargon - are made up. So saying "full frame" is made up is true but otiose.
Second, although you may not like t-its meaning it certain has one, so saying it's meaningless is simply wrong. As we've seen in this thread, "full frame" was used in cinematography and film photography long before the advent of digital photography but - not generally noted - it was used then in other ways than now.
For technical and commercial reasons early makers of digital cameras re-used lens designs and body formats but with sensors that were smaller than the whole frame of their existing film cameras. This caused some confusion but people came to accept and understand; but when sensors that were the same as the whole frame of their existing film cameras it was only sensible to emphasise this fact (how else would people know what they were?).
Whether people remembered the old term "full frame" or invented it anew really doesn't matter - in the circumstances in which it was introduced it clearly and unambiguously applied to the 36 x 24mm frame size of many 35mm cameras.
It's interesting to speculate about the thought processes of someone who tells us he used larger film cameras. Not to make them feel superior to anyone else, surely? Or why anyone would even think of ascribing any self-boosting reason to the use of a simple, natural, logical term.
In the film days it was 35mm or 135 format, and it was clear what was meant. There was also APS film, disc film, 110, 120, 126 film...not this full frame and crop sensor nonsense!
Ah! The simplicity of film nomenclature. Do those
film sizes logically match frame size to number in any order? Were cameras logically described by frame size?
No to both questions. Sort out the sizing order from here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_format , noting on the way that many of the film sizes were used for several different frame sizes.
Consider a frame described as 66 - that was nominal size in cm (6 x 6cm) but actually 56 x 56mm - which doesn't convert exactly to 2.1/4 x 2.1/4" either. 645 is different - the 45 is actually intended to represent 4.5cm although it was really 41.5mm. Those are about 1/4 of the frame sizes that were served by 120 film. Note that the frame format bears no relation to the film size - you had to know how they went together by specific knowledge.
Now, if naming were logical a frame of 36 x 24mm would be called something like 425 (4 being a rounding of 36mm to cm in whole numbers, 25 being a rounding of 24mm in half numbers). And that would be one of at least two formats served by 135 film.
So the digital naming system nonsense might be nonsense but compared to the film system it's a paragon of logic.
