Which way will sensor size go ?

[Steingrim]

Olympus are putting a lot of effort into cranking up their 4/3 system, which includes an even smaller sensor than that of the D70, 300d, *ist or Sigma SD9. As such, APS sized sensors, though they differ slightly in size, seem like a concurrent trend in the world of dSLRS.

Then I hear people say that "in x years from now we will be back to full size sensors". My question is : Why would that be ? There is basically no reason why one should make sensors that are exactly the same size as a frame of film, other than to perpetuate a certain crop of lenses that are made to that spec.

Once companies decide to put in the effort to change things and move away from that status quo, then why should they later turn back ?

 

[Petteri Sulonen]

Steingrim wrote:
[snip]

Once companies decide to put in the effort to change things and
move away from that status quo, then why should they later turn
back ?

Physics dictate that for any given pixel count, the larger the sensor, the higher the dynamic range and sensitivity. Anything an APS-C sensor can do, a full-frame sensor can do better. While APS-C is certainly more than capable for most applications, there are some that will always benefit from the extra punch a larger sensor can provide.

I for one would pay a significant premium for this. Although not quite as significant as the current state of the market...

Petteri
--
[ http://www.prime-junta.tk ]

 

[kazus14]

You make a very good point. I wonder if there is a maximum limit of megapixel they can fit on a sensor of a specific size. For example, for the 1Ds. Did they have to go to a full size sensor to accomodate the 11megapixel density? I see no problem with staying with the smaller sensor size so long as technology allows for improvements on image quality and noise reduction. I would think that with the rise of the DSLR, more lenses may be developed specifically for use in the digital format. I don't know if Nikon does this already.

kazus14

Olympus are putting a lot of effort into cranking up their 4/3
system, which includes an even smaller sensor than that of the D70,
300d, *ist or Sigma SD9. As such, APS sized sensors, though they
differ slightly in size, seem like a concurrent trend in the world
of dSLRS.

Then I hear people say that "in x years from now we will be back to
full size sensors". My question is : Why would that be ? There is
basically no reason why one should make sensors that are exactly
the same size as a frame of film, other than to perpetuate a
certain crop of lenses that are made to that spec.

Once companies decide to put in the effort to change things and
move away from that status quo, then why should they later turn
back ?

 

[Steingrim]

Once companies decide to put in the effort to change things and
move away from that status quo, then why should they later turn
back ?

Physics dictate that for any given pixel count, the larger the
sensor, the higher the dynamic range and sensitivity. Anything an
APS-C sensor can do, a full-frame sensor can do better. While APS-C
is certainly more than capable for most applications, there are
some that will always benefit from the extra punch a larger sensor
can provide.

I for one would pay a significant premium for this. Although not
quite as significant as the current state of the market...

@@@Well I don't doubt that there will continue to be a full frame market. The question is really if the APS market will be fased out or if it will continue to exist concurrently with the full frame market.

 

[Steingrim]

Take the Canon s1. It has a sensor that is around 5.3 mm wide, and with 3.2 megapixels. An APS sized sensor like that of the 300d would sport around 60 - sixty - megapixels simply by employing the same pixel density. What is the limit ? Given the exponential development of computer hardware in general, in terms of both speed and size, there is no way to tell. I think we will hit the ceiling whenever the megapixels catch up with the resolving power of the best lenses they are able to make. Beyond that, it will all be nothing more than a marketing gimmick.

kazus14

Olympus are putting a lot of effort into cranking up their 4/3
system, which includes an even smaller sensor than that of the D70,
300d, *ist or Sigma SD9. As such, APS sized sensors, though they
differ slightly in size, seem like a concurrent trend in the world
of dSLRS.

Then I hear people say that "in x years from now we will be back to
full size sensors". My question is : Why would that be ? There is
basically no reason why one should make sensors that are exactly
the same size as a frame of film, other than to perpetuate a
certain crop of lenses that are made to that spec.

Once companies decide to put in the effort to change things and
move away from that status quo, then why should they later turn
back ?

 

[Petteri Sulonen]

Steingrim wrote:
[snip]

@@@Well I don't doubt that there will continue to be a full frame
market. The question is really if the APS market will be fased out
or if it will continue to exist concurrently with the full frame
market.

Oh, I've no doubts at all on that score. We already know that APS-C sensors are immensely capable -- and whatever a full-frame sensor can do, an APS-C sensor can do 95% of it for much cheaper.

IOW, I expect FF sensors to stay firmly in the pro/semi-pro segment, with APS-C dominating everywhere else.

Petteri
--
[ http://www.prime-junta.tk ]

 

[Petteri Sulonen]

You make a very good point. I wonder if there is a maximum limit
of megapixel they can fit on a sensor of a specific size. For
example, for the 1Ds. Did they have to go to a full size sensor to
accomodate the 11megapixel density? I see no problem with staying
with the smaller sensor size so long as technology allows for
improvements on image quality and noise reduction. I would think
that with the rise of the DSLR, more lenses may be developed
specifically for use in the digital format. I don't know if Nikon
does this already.

Nah, a 20-30 MP APS-C is perfectly feasible. The reason we don't have it yet is that we don't yet have the (cheap) processing power and storage space to handle all those pixels.

Petteri
--
[ http://www.prime-junta.tk ]

 

[Steingrim]

@@@Well I don't doubt that there will continue to be a full frame
market. The question is really if the APS market will be fased out
or if it will continue to exist concurrently with the full frame
market.

Oh, I've no doubts at all on that score. We already know that
APS-C sensors are immensely capable -- and whatever a full-frame
sensor can do, an APS-C sensor can do 95% of it for much cheaper.


IOW, I expect FF sensors to stay firmly in the pro/semi-pro
segment, with APS-C dominating everywhere else.

@@@In other words, if you don't plan on going for a full frame body later, it shouldn't be a problem to invest some money in a good EF-S lens or other APS specific lens that fits your APS camera like a bell.

 

[Petteri Sulonen]

Steingrim wrote:
[snip]

@@@In other words, if you don't plan on going for a full frame body
later, it shouldn't be a problem to invest some money in a good
EF-S lens or other APS specific lens that fits your APS camera like
a bell.

Nope. And even if you do plan to go full-frame, there'll be an active used market for the lens.

Petteri
--
[ http://www.prime-junta.tk ]

 

[Adam-T]

full size sensors". My question is : Why would that be ?

because the pixel count is always going UP and the more sensor real-estate you have the more pixels you get in before degradation sets in - Olympus sealed the 4/3 system's fate before it was even released and Nikon are doing the same with their DX lens line. Hopefully Canon will let EF-S die with the 300D and keep to the bigger is better plan, hopefully with an EOS3D..

--
Please ignore the Typos, I'm the world's worst Typist

 

[Steingrim]

The way you are talking, we should expect megapixels to push sensor size ad infinitum and we will all end up with 10 pound cameras with 3 foot lenses. Time to grow those 18 inch biceps, guys and gals.

Fujifilm and Foveon have however shown us that there is something to be done about the sensors themselves. The Fuji S2 even sports an incredibly low noise iso1600, the lowest on any camera to date, that I know of. On an APS sized sensor.

Perhaps the old equation of sensor size ~ image quality is in the process of being modified a bit.

full size sensors". My question is : Why would that be ?

because the pixel count is always going UP and the more sensor
real-estate you have the more pixels you get in before degradation
sets in - Olympus sealed the 4/3 system's fate before it was even
released and Nikon are doing the same with their DX lens line.
Hopefully Canon will let EF-S die with the 300D and keep to the
bigger is better plan, hopefully with an EOS3D..

--
Please ignore the Typos, I'm the world's worst Typist

 

[PaulyOly]

kazus14

Olympus are putting a lot of effort into cranking up their 4/3
system, which includes an even smaller sensor than that of the D70,
300d, *ist or Sigma SD9. As such, APS sized sensors, though they
differ slightly in size, seem like a concurrent trend in the world
of dSLRS.

Then I hear people say that "in x years from now we will be back to
full size sensors". My question is : Why would that be ? There is
basically no reason why one should make sensors that are exactly
the same size as a frame of film, other than to perpetuate a
certain crop of lenses that are made to that spec.

Once companies decide to put in the effort to change things and
move away from that status quo, then why should they later turn
back ?

I'm sure they could fit many, many more pixels on a full frame sensor and the same goes for the 1.6x crop sensors, but quantity does not mean quality as can be seen in the smaller 8mp sensors. They have to make the pixels smaller which is not good from what i've read.
--
http://www.pbase.com/paulyoly/root

 

[Steingrim]

From dpreview's various iso noise charts (lower scores are better)

ISO ...50...100..200..400..800.1600.3200

10d..........1.1...1.4..2.0...2.9...3.3...4.9
S2 ...........1.1...1.2..1.7...1.8...2.3
1d2 ..0.7...0.9...1.1..1.4...2.2...3.3...5.6
1ds ..1.2...1.5...1.9...2.7..4.5...5.8

S2 : 1.6x crop
1d2 : 1.3x crop
1ds : Full frame

As you can see, noise levels and sensor size don't run in paralell at all. The 1d-markII is even a newer release than the Fuji S2.

Notice that the Fuji S2 exhibits roughly the same noise levels at iso1600 as the 1ds does at iso200.

 

[Dom167916]

And for these reasons i find many people's arguments against investing in lenses designed for apc-s sensors, because the lenses will be useless... and without a market...

well i find that argument silly, and the points from both of you just reinforce this to me.

There is as you say no guarantee that FF is where all models of camera body are heading.

@@@In other words, if you don't plan on going for a full frame body
later, it shouldn't be a problem to invest some money in a good
EF-S lens or other APS specific lens that fits your APS camera like
a bell.

Nope. And even if you do plan to go full-frame, there'll be an
active used market for the lens.

Petteri
--
[ http://www.prime-junta.tk ]

--
http://www.pbase.com/dom277

 

[Shan Zhu]

For smaller senser, we require higher/better resolution of glasses.

By packing more pix into a fix size sener, we are asking the glasses
of lens to resolve more details in a given senser area.

Lets say we have 12 M pix in a APS-C senser, I think most consumer
grade lenses will not be able to take that advantage.

Then we need to make smaller lenses with higher precision and
also better focus precision too. Since lenses is mostly mechanical
and can not be improved quickly. So, I think
in order to get better resolution, large senser is beneficial,
at least for now.

-shan

Olympus are putting a lot of effort into cranking up their 4/3
system, which includes an even smaller sensor than that of the D70,
300d, *ist or Sigma SD9. As such, APS sized sensors, though they
differ slightly in size, seem like a concurrent trend in the world
of dSLRS.

Then I hear people say that "in x years from now we will be back to
full size sensors". My question is : Why would that be ? There is
basically no reason why one should make sensors that are exactly
the same size as a frame of film, other than to perpetuate a
certain crop of lenses that are made to that spec.

Once companies decide to put in the effort to change things and
move away from that status quo, then why should they later turn
back ?

 

[Dom167916]

darn good points....

kazus14

Olympus are putting a lot of effort into cranking up their 4/3
system, which includes an even smaller sensor than that of the D70,
300d, *ist or Sigma SD9. As such, APS sized sensors, though they
differ slightly in size, seem like a concurrent trend in the world
of dSLRS.

Then I hear people say that "in x years from now we will be back to
full size sensors". My question is : Why would that be ? There is
basically no reason why one should make sensors that are exactly
the same size as a frame of film, other than to perpetuate a
certain crop of lenses that are made to that spec.

Once companies decide to put in the effort to change things and
move away from that status quo, then why should they later turn
back ?

--
http://www.pbase.com/dom277

 

[Steingrim]

Let's compare pixel density while we are at it :

10d : 6.3 MP / 3.45 cm2 = 1.826 MP/cm2
S2 : 6.17 MP / 3.87 cm2 = 1.594 MP/cm2
1d2 : 8.2 MP / 5.48 cm2 = 1.496 MP/cm2
1ds : 11.0 MP / 8.52 cm2 = 1.291 MP/cm2

The 1ds has the smallest pixel density and the highest iso noise levels.

From dpreview's various iso noise charts (lower scores are better)

ISO ...50...100..200..400..800.1600.3200

10d..........1.1...1.4..2.0...2.9...3.3...4.9
S2 ...........1.1...1.2..1.7...1.8...2.3
1d2 ..0.7...0.9...1.1..1.4...2.2...3.3...5.6
1ds ..1.2...1.5...1.9...2.7..4.5...5.8

S2 : 1.6x crop
1d2 : 1.3x crop
1ds : Full frame

As you can see, noise levels and sensor size don't run in paralell
at all. The 1d-markII is even a newer release than the Fuji S2.

Notice that the Fuji S2 exhibits roughly the same noise levels at
iso1600 as the 1ds does at iso200.

 

[Petteri Sulonen]

For smaller senser, we require higher/better resolution of glasses.

By packing more pix into a fix size sener, we are asking the glasses
of lens to resolve more details in a given senser area.

Lets say we have 12 M pix in a APS-C senser, I think most consumer
grade lenses will not be able to take that advantage.

Actually, most consumer grade lenses would show some improvement up to 20 MP on APS-C or thereabouts, when shot in their sweet spot. Primes or pro lenses could go even higher.

Then we need to make smaller lenses with higher precision and
also better focus precision too. Since lenses is mostly mechanical
and can not be improved quickly. So, I think
in order to get better resolution, large senser is beneficial,
at least for now.

There's a flaw in this logic. It's very easy to improve lens resolution: just project a smaller image. APS-C lenses are potentially 1.6x sharper than full-frame lenses, all else being equal. This is why it's possible to get very sharp images out of consumer digicams -- an APS-C sensor with the pixel density of the Pro1 would be around 60 MP, yet the lens on the Pro1 has no trouble resolving enough detail for the sensor.

Petteri
--
[ http://www.prime-junta.tk ]

 

[Shan Zhu]

with our current DR camera (6MP), I can easily tell the image
difference between 50mm f1.8 prime and the kit lens even
at f8. This means that the kit lens already start to show
its limit with our DR which does not pack much pix yet.

I SERIOUSLY doult there will be any meaningful improvement with
20MP senser coupled with current kit lens. Here, I just use the kit
lens as an example for consumer grade lenses.

Just my thought.

--shan

For smaller senser, we require higher/better resolution of glasses.

By packing more pix into a fix size sener, we are asking the glasses
of lens to resolve more details in a given senser area.

Lets say we have 12 M pix in a APS-C senser, I think most consumer
grade lenses will not be able to take that advantage.

Actually, most consumer grade lenses would show some improvement up
to 20 MP on APS-C or thereabouts, when shot in their sweet spot.
Primes or pro lenses could go even higher.

Then we need to make smaller lenses with higher precision and
also better focus precision too. Since lenses is mostly mechanical
and can not be improved quickly. So, I think
in order to get better resolution, large senser is beneficial,
at least for now.

There's a flaw in this logic. It's very easy to improve lens
resolution: just project a smaller image. APS-C lenses are
potentially 1.6x sharper than full-frame lenses, all else being
equal. This is why it's possible to get very sharp images out of
consumer digicams -- an APS-C sensor with the pixel density of the
Pro1 would be around 60 MP, yet the lens on the Pro1 has no trouble
resolving enough detail for the sensor.

Petteri
--
[ http://www.prime-junta.tk ]

 

[Steingrim]

that efforts to reduce (iso-noise divided by pixel-density) are keeping up with the need to boost megapixel count. If this holds up into the future, then there is no need for larger sensors.