DX vs FX, do you fine a reason, besides reach, to adopt DX?

Giovanni_1968 said:

My thing is to shoot people but I entertain myself with landscape in the offseason and even tho I know the issue being going wide angle with cropped sensor I still ask myself if the DX thing allows for more DOF as to make it a choice for landscape shooters, what's your take?

Oh, of course if I could afford a TS lens I won't ask such a question...

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You can just stop down for more DoF at base ISO.

With how dirt cheap 1st gen FX Z bodies are you have to really love compactness to rationalize going DX IMO. I think a used Z6 is cheaper than a new Z50 by several hundred dollars.

Stan Disbrow said:

APS-C was a technological stopgap on the way to Full Frame. As was APS-H. Now APS-H is gone and APS-C is going. All that will be left are low end, entry level, APS-C before long.

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Go into the Fujifilm forum and say that.

Bob A L said:

You need a Zfc

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There is no comparison between Zfc and Fujifilm. The only reason to use Zfc is if you absolutely must re-use your Nikon lenses. There is no point in Zfc without aperture controlled lenses. Just get a Z50. Or rather, wait for the Z50 II.

Sorry, that's obviously just my opinion. I'd get a Df before a neutered Zfc, but that's obviously FF and much larger.

Giovanni_1968 said:

Oh well,

while on a week end abroad I went into a big shop and, unfortunately, I saw the Fuji X-T5 and handled an X-T4 and so much love the handling and the analog like dials, on the other hand I still have a couple of DX bodies but just because of the sake of it, not any use not to mention that I am all Nikon with both D and Z and all full frame so maybe I just wanted an excuse for some gear ;-)

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I don't know what the used gear market is like in your country. I think Fujifilm makes great APS-C gear (well, good small medium format too). If you like the X-T5 and X-T4 I would seriously consider taking it for a spin with used gear like an X-T3. You can pretty much sell it for not much less than you paid for it if it doesn't work out or if you decide you love it and want to get more recent gear.

But it's a different style camera, for sure. Meant to be used differently than a PASM camera. You can use it as a PASM camera, but then what's the point?

Since my only DX camera is the D500 I find other reasons besides reach to use it:

It is a beautifully designed rugged camera with outstanding AF pretty much across thew frame, so I favor it over my other remaining DSLR, the D750)

When I want a rugged camera for dirty environments

When I want a lighter camera for outdoor sunny days when depth of field is irrelevant; the D500 with 16-85 and 10-20 are very light , although the Z6 and 24-70 14-24 F4s are also very light and compact

And of course for telephoto reach

If nikon came out with a better Z DX Body (IBIS!!!!!!, Faster flash sync) I would definitely consider it

vockman said:

Since my only DX camera is the D500 I find other reasons besides reach to use it:

It is a beautifully designed rugged camera with outstanding AF pretty much across thew frame, so I favor it over my other remaining DSLR, the D750)

When I want a rugged camera for dirty environments

When I want a lighter camera for outdoor sunny days when depth of field is irrelevant; the D500 with 16-85 and 10-20 are very light , although the Z6 and 24-70 14-24 F4s are also very light and compact

And of course for telephoto reach

If nikon came out with a better Z DX Body (IBIS!!!!!!, Faster flash sync) I would definitely consider it

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I agree on the Z combo, I own the 14-24S and the kit 24-70 and together they'd do an amazing and light kit.

DX wise it's not really about the sensor, I handled the damn Fuji X-T and loved the handling and the dials placement, I hate to have to go through buttons and menus to change settings on my Z6II, I could set the U settings for three different scenarios but it never works that way, the dials make the X-T look perfect from that point of view.

Size wise not much of a difference with a Z body, lenses of course are different sizes but that's not the point, handling as said above and, in some scenarios, like when I am working on a boat and taking shots of my guests, I always feel like FF DOF screws the photo when to fit both subjects and background I need a certain distance where nonetheless the aperture I can't get it all in decent focus and thought of adopting a DX camera with a zoom to give me flexibility and ruggedness.

Landscape wise, as written in my opening post, I sometimes can't menage to focus stack and get all combined because of, say, either water or branches moving, either too much hassle or impossible to achieve.

If it was just DOF for landscape instead of forking out 2K on a Fuji X-T I'd rather save and get a Nikkor 19TS but I have great memories of the Fuji X-Trans adventure and even tho there were tons of flaws the compactness of the thing and the little precious (and flawed) 35/1.4 got me some really nice pics I could have not taken with a reflex due to the intimidating size.

PHXAZCRAIG said:

What do you think would be the difference between shooting a 20mp DX camera with a lens, then putting that lens on a different camera with enough pixels that the DX crop from it is also 20mp?

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Perhaps you could be more specific with the detail of your question.

If you switch from FX to DX with the same lens the angle of views changes - and you do not get the same image :-D

If you use a wider angle lens on DX to get the same angle of view as an FX then the DX image has about one step more depth of field than the FX image.

If you use the same lens on both format bodies and crop the FX image to DX proportions you'll near enough the same depth of field.

For a more exact depth of field change the DX crop would need to be 1.42 rather than 1.5. The difference I consider minor.

If you use the same focal length lens on both bodies with no FX body cropping then the narrower angle of view on FX loses you two stops depth of field compared to the one stop dof gain with the DX body.

Shooting this way overall you lose one stop dof on DX, offset by greater subject magnification.

D7500 (DX) vs. Z6II (FX) : Both are 24 MP camera , what improvements would I see in image quality with the FX image using a comparable lens as DX image at say ISO 200 ? I am guessing tonality and lower noise would be an advantage of the FX image - but there could be more ?

chrisD46 said:

what improvements would I see in image quality with the FX image using a comparable lens as DX image at say ISO 200 ? I am guessing tonality and lower noise would be an advantage of the FX image - but there could be more ?

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Based on my using a D7200 and D800 alongside each other - differences I found very close to undetectable.

I find it is not until much higher than 200 ISO that noise and dynamic range differences become relatively distinct.

What you can get with 45 MP FX is much higher image resolution if needed than with DX.

The main reason for me would be size and weight of the lenses. Especially when travelling, that makes a huge difference. Unfortunately only Fuji has a convincing set of lenses.

Hi,

Ha! Yeah. They march to the beat of a different drum. And that's fine.

Fuji also calls their medium format GFX Large Format. Well, LF for *them*. I won't call anything LF until 4x5.

Fuji can stick with the APS-C. Fuji was part of the $10k each debacle which was the Nikon E series. Fuji called it the DS-5xx series. And all models sported both the Nikon and Fujix logos.

And, again, APS-C was a major step up. And, they have decided to skip over 135 format FL frame. I envision they will stick with that, and that's OK.

I may well buy one of the Fuji MF bodies and then adapt lenses from other MF makers to it. I won't be buying any Fuji APS-C ones though. My idea of Small Format stops at 135 Full Frame and with Nikon. I'm done with Canon as well. I used to have both Nikon and Canon at one time but quit after the 1D and 1DS pairing.

Stan

Stan Disbrow said:

Hi,

Ha! Yeah. They march to the beat of a different drum. And that's fine.

Fuji also calls their medium format GFX Large Format. Well, LF for *them*. I won't call anything LF until 4x5.

Fuji can stick with the APS-C. Fuji was part of the $10k each debacle which was the Nikon E series. Fuji called it the DS-5xx series. And all models sported both the Nikon and Fujix logos.

And, again, APS-C was a major step up. And, they have decided to skip over 135 format FL frame. I envision they will stick with that, and that's OK.

I may well buy one of the Fuji MF bodies and then adapt lenses from other MF makers to it. I won't be buying any Fuji APS-C ones though. My idea of Small Format stops at 135 Full Frame and with Nikon. I'm done with Canon as well. I used to have both Nikon and Canon at one time but quit after the 1D and 1DS pairing.

Stan

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I agree with your general sentiments Stan. I don't consider any of those baby medium format digital systems to be "medium format", let alone large format. Yeah, I know, definitions can change. But the 33x44mm sensor is no more medium format in my mind than you could call Canon's APS-H systems a 135 full frame format system.

People will argue that there were several medium format sizes, not a single one like 135 format full frame cameras, so there's nothing wrong with calling the current systems like the GFX medium format. But almost all those different medium format negative sizes had one thing in common, at least one 6cm edge. I'm not saying a 6cm edge IS what defines medium format. But it does sort of put a pin in how far you can deviate and still say medium format.

Nothing wrong with putting a line in the sand at 135 format and saying no smaller. I probably will never buy into a Fujifilm top end system again now that Nikon Z is here. But when I use Fuji it's because I want to go small and their top line X cameras are not small. They're really no smaller than a Sony or Z camera. Lenses are smaller, though. So for me, Fuji is for those small "soap bar" bodies and f/2 lenses.

Giovanni_1968 said:

My thing is to shoot people but I entertain myself with landscape in the offseason and even tho I know the issue being going wide angle with cropped sensor I still ask myself if the DX thing allows for more DOF as to make it a choice for landscape shooters, what's your take?

Oh, of course if I could afford a TS lens I won't ask such a question...

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Well, I haven't adopted DX yet, but size would be one reason. Especially the little 16-50 lens is crazy light and compact. IF I wanted a very compact camera, I might consider DX. I choose FX over DX for the optics and low-light (although the current DX options from Nikon are quite good and far better than they used to be 5-7+ years ago in that regard). There are times also where I Just don't need FF or I just don't need fast lenses and would rather have something small, say like I'm going on a walk, or I'm going to be walking around a large city during travel (say I'm going to visit NYC or Chicago to do some street photography... I dont necessarily need the bulk of a FF camera for that).

I think DX is perfectly fine for landscape. The only potential challenge there might be lens selection as it seems your options at least for OEM lenses is a bit more narrow than it is for FF. But they do still have the AFP 10-20 and 10-24, and I think the 12-28 DX Z will proabbly come out this year. But you certainly could do landscape photography with either format, and that's probably one of the few genres where the format doesn't really matter as much, because most people would probably be shooting stopped down (either to say f/5.6 or higher) and you're probably going to be on a tripod in low-light, if not all the time).

I mean I shot landscape for a few years with my Fuji and my D750 and both looked about the same. In fact, when looking at exported JPEGs I'd sometimes have to look at the EXIF data to tell which camera was used for what shots.

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When I originally bought DX Nikon weren't even making FX DSLR, so the question didn't arise. ;-)

When I upgraded that camera both price and size mitigated against FX (the D7100 was bigger than I wanted, but viewfinder size and second control wheel were important so I had to swallow that).

I never considered an FX DSLR subsequently because of the bulk (the D7100 really was my limit for comfort). But when the Z6 and Z7 were announced I knew my next camera was going to be FX.

I now have a Z7 II, so have the option of selecting DX while still having usable resolution. But even when I know I'm going to be cropping harder than that it rarely occurs to me to do so: I can always crop in post, and if I'm cropping that hard I'm probably not cropping exactly to the DX frame anyway. Plus it's an annoyance when I do select DX and then forget to revert afterwards! So really cost + slightly smaller body are the only reasons I can see, but against that DX lenses aren't Nikon's priority and the bodies are less capable. And TBH a Z50 + 16-50 is still a bit bulky to stick in a pocket, so the size difference isn't a killer argument for me (though I have occasionally wondered about a Z30+16-50 as a compact option).

If I were a birding enthusiast and they made a Z90 then it would be a different matter. But for my usage I don't find any reason to choose DX.

Hi,

I'm ok with calling 44x33 digital Medium Format. There are a few sensor choices which are larger. But the big selling size is 44x33mm.

My own definition of MF is the use of 120 or 220 film. Oops. No film in digital! Definition Destroyed!

For that matter, 135 was a film size, too. And some cameras that used that were half frame shooters. Oh, dear. We are lost again. Where are we going and why are we in this hand basket?

And then there was 240 film. It was also known as the Advanced Photo System. And those cameras shot C, H and P frames. Auto Correct changed that last to Pancakes. That makes for an interesting mental picture! Cameras shooting pancakes. Now I want some pancakes.

Nikon had their Pronea line for APS film. And Kodak made digital versions just like they did for other Nikon and Kodak cameras.

Anyway, we have all these film cameras that shot 120 or 220 film. And they had more formats than I can shake a stick at. 645 was one. But it didn't image 6cm. A tad smaller for the masking of the film transport. And they were all called Medium Format.

So I'm going to go with the lenses made for the cameras. Since I have Pentax, that'd be 645 and 67. And I use both for digital MF. Same with my Small Format Nikon F mount lenses. And we can call those Full Frame or FX.

No APS lenses, either DX or IX. And I think one would need a Kodak Digital Pronea to mount IX lenses. Kind of a dead end there. IIRC Kodak made two digital backs for Pronea, but long ago now.

Stan

Stan Disbrow said:

Anyway, we have all these film cameras that shot 120 or 220 film. And they had more formats than I can shake a stick at. 645 was one. But it didn't image 6cm. A tad smaller for the masking of the film transport. And they were all called Medium Format.

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I'm not talking about the image size. But they had a common size along one edge... 6cm (56mm or something about that size for the image). 645 was 6x4.5. There were medium format cameras that shot 6x6 (the most common incarnation), 6x7, 6x8, and 6x9. There were probably others. All using a 120 or 220 film roll. Even a Brownie Bullseye used 6cm film, although in Kodak's dumb genius they called it 620 film and put it on a spool of a slightly different size so that you couldn't load 120 film into the Bullseye.

You're not alone in being accepting of calling 33x44 digital sensors medium format. I think the only reason people are is because what else are you going to call it? I don't buy into that. But that's my choice. Like I said before, I'm not going to call APS-H full frame and I'm not going to call baby medium format "medium format".

sirhawkeye64 said:

I think DX is perfectly fine for landscape.

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That's certainly a different take on it. I know a lot of people that would say GFX medium format for landscape. As would I. I don't own GFX, but I wouldn't buy into DX for landscapes.

Small format maxes out at 36x24mm. So it would have to be medium format.

Leonard Shepherd said:

PHXAZCRAIG said:

What do you think would be the difference between shooting a 20mp DX camera with a lens, then putting that lens on a different camera with enough pixels that the DX crop from it is also 20mp?

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Perhaps you could be more specific with the detail of your question.

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OK, what is the difference shooting a lens, let's say a 300f4, on a D500, then putting that lens on a D850 - at the same subject distance, just swap cameras under the lens, then crop that shot to DX. You get a 20mp D500 image and a 19mp D850 image. And dof should be exactly the same, since shot from the same distance.

Leonard Shepherd said:

If you switch from FX to DX with the same lens the angle of views changes - and you do not get the same image :-D

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If I shoot two different lenses from the same spot, the images are different. So what's the point? Anything optically I can do with a 300F4 on a D500, I can do with a 300F4 on a D850 in DX mode.

I'd link to a webpage of mine where I shot the same lens on CX, DX and FX cameras and compared the results, before and after cropping. But right now I'm fighting some equipment issues in my network and my web server is down.

Leonard Shepherd said:

If you use a wider angle lens on DX to get the same angle of view as an FX then the DX image has about one step more depth of field than the FX image.

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Yes, but then I'm not shooting from the same distance.

I do use this 'trick' a bit, by the way, with my underwater macro shooting. Basically I shoot at F16 from a distance, then crop. That way I have less pixels on subject than if I'd gone in closer, but I have more DOF, and less diffraction from stopping down to, say F29.

Leonard Shepherd said:

If you use the same lens on both format bodies and crop the FX image to DX proportions you'll near enough the same depth of field.

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Yep.

Leonard Shepherd said:

For a more exact depth of field change the DX crop would need to be 1.42 rather than 1.5. The difference I consider minor.

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I used to shoot film (from about 1960 to 1992), then DX until 2007 or so when I got a D700. At that point I had to take my old lenses out and relearn how they behaved on FX, mainly for depth of field. I quickly came to the viewpoint that for the DOF to look 'the same' on both bodies, with the same lens, I had to stop down another 1.5 stops on the FX side. (Or move and crop...)

What REALLY caused me concern was what it looked like when you pixel-peeped the corners. By the time I got a D800e a few years later, I resolved to also upgrade my old AF/AF-D lenses to the newest standards. Much improved results, both wide open and in the corners.

Leonard Shepherd said:

If you use the same focal length lens on both bodies with no FX body cropping then the narrower angle of view on FX loses you two stops depth of field compared to the one stop dof gain with the DX body.

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One could also say 'gains a couple of stops of subject isolation'.

Leonard Shepherd said:

Shooting this way overall you lose one stop dof on DX, offset by greater subject magnification.

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Nowadays I shoot a Z9, and before that a D850, for the same basic reason. These cameras may not be the best at a particular thing, but they'll shoot almost anything. Jacks of all trades, and quite good at almost all of them. I can (with the Z9) shoot faster than a D500. I can set the Z9 to DX mode, and even the viewfinder will then 'DXify itself'. Pretty much same resolution.

I do crop a lot, but almost always in post. Because I crop so often, I no longer really think of formats. I just frame as close as I can (very often cannot approach underwater subjects for macro to fill the frame), and then crop where I need to to get the composition I had in mind. Or another composition that seems better in post. I don't think in terms of 'on a DX camera this 300f4 becomes a 450F4'. I just look at the end results after I've cropped and decide if I need to change lenses. However, underwater I have unique challenges in that very few lenses are supported. I know that I normally shoot at what would be close to full-frame with a 150mm macro - but I can only have a 105mm, so I end up cropping a lot.

Getting back to the question in the title = do I have a reason to do DX? Basically only for cost. I can do what a DX camera can do with the D850 or Z9, simply by 'post-cropping' instead of 'pre-cropping'. But I can't do with a DX camera what I can do with FX, though I can do a lot of the same things with a smaller camera.

There is another reason, among so many, that I often need to crop. Recently I bought a strobe with a snoot, and it is so difficult to line up on a subject that it is quite routine to shoot a portrait-mode subject in landscape and then crop to portrait in post. It's just too difficult to reorient things from landscape to portrait. (It can take several minutes to line things up for an orientation, and even then you have to precisely position that flash for the small circle of light to hit the subject. Anyway, here's a shot I simply could not get without cropping once I'd set up for landscape.




Snooted strobe image of a Christmas Tree Worm shot in landscape and cropped to portrait orientation



--
Phoenix Arizona Craig
www.cjcphoto.net
"I miss the days when I was nostalgic."

Giovanni_1968 said:

My thing is to shoot people but I entertain myself with landscape in the offseason and even tho I know the issue being going wide angle with cropped sensor I still ask myself if the DX thing allows for more DOF as to make it a choice for landscape shooters, what's your take?

Oh, of course if I could afford a TS lens I won't ask such a question...

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The extreme of this reasoning would be that a phone camera would be "better".

And since nowadays you cannot buy a phone without camera you probably have got that already. Sorry, no reason for GAS here ;-)