How can Sigma make sure the FFF is the best success it can be? Locked

Doppler9000 wrote:

DMillier wrote:

This started with Iain complaining about the term "full frame" which is really arbitrary

True.

and meaningless

Not true. Full frame refers to a 24 x 36mm sensor. It is an arbitrary but helpful basis to characterize lenses, as long as the reader understands equivalence.

It may be helpful for some purposes to pick a reference format for comparison purposes, but why call that reference 36x24 format "full frame" (and thereby condemn smaller formats to be an inferior half frame or cropped format)? Why not just call it 35mm format, as it had been known in film for a hundred years.

What annoyed the former Kodak product manager I discussed this with years ago was that the term "full frame" already had a technical meaning relating to sensors (as in CCD full frame transfer method) - the unnecessary purloining and repurposing of the term for a format was clever marketing, not a technical usage.

The years have passed and all this is lost in the mists of time, but I wonder who actually coined the phrase and caused the perfectly respectable existing terms of 35mm or 135 format to be replaced? There must be a patient zero originator.

p.s.

A quick google turned up this:

The term "Large Format" has recently been popularized thanks to ARRI's introduction of the ARRI Alexa LF and Alexa Mini LF which both have a sensor that measures 36.7mm x 25.54mm.

It appears "Full Frame" isn't good enough. 37x26mm is now "large format".

They are all at it for marketing purposes. Save The Language!

and I agree with him.

I added the secondary complaint about the term "cropped sensor". For the reasons I already explained (DX sensors are smaller sensors using bigger lenses and so legitimate, from the ground up 4/3 sensors have never been "cropped" anything). m4/3 users have complained about this usage for years. It attempts to demean sensors smaller than 135.

There is a separate usage of the "crop" term - "crop factor". I actually complain about both these terms but (being generous) I can see that "crop factor" has some kind of meaning if one assumes that every photographer in the world understands that 35mm is some kind of universal standard and that it is easier to compare a native format to 35mm than it is to learn all those numbers for every different format (Ausjena's point, in effect).

But I still dislike the usage and particularly dislike the special place it assigns to 35mm. This didn't happen in the film era. It's a dumbing down usage for the most part.

Meanwhile, I have to live in the real world and accept my camera has a 0.79x crop sensor (how ridiculous does that sound, how can you have a negative crop). if we are going to do this murder to the language, why don't we call it what it is "equivalence to 35mm" or some better phrase. "Crop" became an archaic term around 2003 when the 1Ds and 14n appeared and DX cameras got their own dedicated bodies and lens sets.