tasty donuts
Senior Member
i'm patentedly careless with keeping dust out of my 10D, having changed lenses hundreds of times with little regard for protecting the body, and i hardly had anything on the sensor. after 4 months there was one speck in the upper right corner that was barely visible at f/11, which i rarely shoot at anyway. a five minute cleaning took care of it. with a little more care on my part i could probably go several months at a time without sensor cleaning (like Forrest). i suppose if you were working in very dusty conditions, it would be more of an issue, but there are plenty of professionals that get by just fine. my friend with a Nikon D1x has actually had dust affecting his lenses more than his sensor.
i'm all for full-frame if it becomes affordable. but i'm ok with 1.6x crop for the time being, and even for some time in the future.
another factor is that the 2/3" sensors used in digicams are more widely manufactured than the APS-size (and of course full-frame) DSLR sensors - greater demand, more competition, resolution goes up faster. but as the DSLR market grows, there will be more competition in the APS and full-frame sensor manufacturing arena. greater demand for and competition among DSLRs, not perceived competition from digicams, is what will ultimately drive DSLR technology forward.
that might be temporary, but i don't see what's so bad about the 1.6x crop. i hated it at first too, but now that i've assembled some lenses around it i don't mind so much anymore. unless you need true ultra wideangle (
i'm all for full-frame if it becomes affordable. but i'm ok with 1.6x crop for the time being, and even for some time in the future.
i agree that some pressure from the digicams is not a bad thing, but i think the DSLR market will evolve at pretty much its own pace regardless. the fact that Canon has no qualms introducing a digicam with higher resolution than the 300D, which has only been out a few months, seems to indicate they're competing directly with cameras like the Sony F828 and are comfortable with the DSLR/digicam divide. yes there will be some 300D owners who feel ripped off that the Pro1 has "2MP more" and costs about the same, but those people probably should have stuck with digicams in the first place. just as SLR film cameras have been around for decades co-existing with very full-featured non-SLRs that cost less, i think DSLRs will be just fine despite whatever happens in the digicam market. apples and oranges as someone else said. besides, i fail to see what is so groundbreaking about the Pro1 other than the 8MP resolution and the "L"-designated lens, which has nothing to do with the DSLR bodies anyway - if anything it should put pressure on Canon to introduce some higher-quality, lower-cost EF-S lenses, thus keeping the 1.6x crop for a while. the way i see it, if you want Canon to keep making progress with respect to cost in the DSLR market, you should be for 1.6x crop and EF-S, not against it... after all it's the tiny sensor of the Pro1 that makes a fast, 28-200mm equivalent "L" lens possible.
another factor is that the 2/3" sensors used in digicams are more widely manufactured than the APS-size (and of course full-frame) DSLR sensors - greater demand, more competition, resolution goes up faster. but as the DSLR market grows, there will be more competition in the APS and full-frame sensor manufacturing arena. greater demand for and competition among DSLRs, not perceived competition from digicams, is what will ultimately drive DSLR technology forward.