Full frame VS cropped
Discussion
srider said:
Because they can't.
Hold a 5D or 1Ds up to your eye, then you'll understand......
Oh, and there's the stunning detail, high iso with low noise, really wise angles, and more dof control as well
[devilsadvocate] Wouldn't a REALLY REALLY good 35mm format DSLR deliver all that, and you could just crop to 'full frame (square!?)' size is so desired? {/devilsadvocate]
UKBob said:
Can anyone explain in detail why full frame is supposed to be so much better - apparently, not everyone wants full frame. Why didnt Nikon decide (if full frame is better) to include it in their new cameras?
Definition - Full Frame: A digital SLR camera with an image capture area that is the same as that provided by a 35mm film camera - 24x36mm.
The term arose because most early digital SLR cameras used image capture chips with image areas smaller than that of 35mm film for cost and technology reasons.
Mr Noble said:
So if Nikon decide to make their cameras "full frame" in years to come, does that mean thast all our DX lenses "optimised for DSLR use" will not work??
Nikon say they have no plans to make 35mm sensors, but even if they did, they would be on the top-end cameras.
Another factor: DX-size sensors are cheaper to make which is why you can have a decent DSLR for £500. DX lenses can also be smaller and cheaper as they don't have to project such a large image. The flip side of this is that a lens designed for 35mm will probably be better as you're losing the edges and corners, which is where most problems occur.
At Nikon Expo they had a splendid explanation of why DX is better than 35mm, but then they would, wouldn't they
And frankly if the D2X can work as it does with a DX chip, it can't be that bad. I wouldn't worry too much.
Personally I am happy for Nikon to retain the current sensor size, it suits my photography and the 1.5 crop factor means I don’t have to re-mortgage the house to achieve a 750mm focal length.
Full (double) frame sensors are good for people who genuinely need them and can get the most from them for their own brand of photography.
It’s my belief that with the onward march of technology sensors will ultimately be getting smaller not bigger, current production methods and materials are preventing this at the present. Anyone fancy a 30Mp sensor coupled with a 10-500mm lens and all the size of a phone?
As soon as we move down the road of shape changing lens and perfect the production techniques it will be the way to go.
Anyway – enough of my b******s , here’s a link to some info (although some may say he is slightly biased).
Click me
Full (double) frame sensors are good for people who genuinely need them and can get the most from them for their own brand of photography.
It’s my belief that with the onward march of technology sensors will ultimately be getting smaller not bigger, current production methods and materials are preventing this at the present. Anyone fancy a 30Mp sensor coupled with a 10-500mm lens and all the size of a phone?
As soon as we move down the road of shape changing lens and perfect the production techniques it will be the way to go.
Anyway – enough of my b******s , here’s a link to some info (although some may say he is slightly biased).
Click me
Iirc it has a lot to do with cost. I remember reading that of every 100 chips made, something like 95 of those are thrown away due to faults. I'd imagine it's an awful lot cheaper to throw away 95 'cropped' chips rather than 95 full frame.
I'm sure Canon/Nikon/... would gladly put full frame chips in all cameras, even with such a high production failure rate, IF its customers were willing to foot the cost, and if they were still bought in such quantities as they currently are buying (which they/we wouldn't!). £5k for a 20D? No thanks
I'm sure Canon/Nikon/... would gladly put full frame chips in all cameras, even with such a high production failure rate, IF its customers were willing to foot the cost, and if they were still bought in such quantities as they currently are buying (which they/we wouldn't!). £5k for a 20D? No thanks
UKbob said:Not really.
A full frame camera will output an image to the same size/dimensions as a normal 35mm print, correct? Meaning you wont have white lines at the sides when printing a 6x4?
Full frame refers to a sensor that is the same size as a 35mm film image, i.e., 36x24mm. Smaller sensors will have the same aspect ratio (3:2), but a smaller physical size (e.g, Canon 20D is 22.5 x 15.0mm).
IMO, the only reason manufacturers fit sensors smaller than this to DSLRs is cost and the fact they're easier to manufacture.
The main "advantage" of a smaller sensor is that a given lens (e.g., 100mm) will appear to act like a longer one (e.g., 160mm for a 1.6x crop factor sensor), however you can get the same effect by cropping the full frame image in Photoshop. The reverse is also true - a 10mm wide angle lens will act like a 16mm lens on a smaller sensor, however this is not possible to fix in PS.
The other "advantage" is that the smaller sensors only take a portion of the image beamed onto it by the lens, and as the quality of the image often reduces at the edge of the image, the smaller sensors pick up the best part - thus making the most out of lenses that may not be top-notch quality (read cheaper).
One of the downsides though is that the viewfinder is smaller, and thus is not as nice to use as with a full frame camera like the Canon 1Ds or 5D.
Another factor to consider is that generally speaking, bigger pixels give better quality images, especially at higher ISO settings. This is because the output fom bigger pixels is bigger in relation to the random noise that the sensors produce compared to a smaller pixel.
This is one of the main reasons why an 8MP DSLR will give better results than an 8MP compact - the sensors and pixels are bigger.
That said, a good small sensor can give better results than a bad big one, so it's not as straightforward to say that the bigger the sensor the better, however all things being equal, a good big one is better than a good small one.
ehasler said:Thanks for the excellent explanation.
The main "advantage" of a smaller sensor is that a given lens (e.g., 100mm) will appear to act like a longer one (e.g., 160mm for a 1.6x crop factor sensor), however you can get the same effect by cropping the full frame image in Photoshop. The reverse is also true - a 10mm wide angle lens will act like a 16mm lens on a smaller sensor, however this is not possible to fix in PS.
Lets say you had two 10mp cameras, using the same lense. Assuming the photos produced by both were uncropped, would the small-sensor would give you a greater telephoto magnification. Meaning if you wanted telephoto shots, a small sensor would give you a .6 boost in magnification without either of them loosing any definition through cropping?
What about lighting, is there much of a benefit in going for a 5D in this respect?
ledaig said:
Anyone fancy a 30Mp sensor coupled with a 10-500mm lens and all the size of a phone?
Actually, no
Files the size of Bolivia and camera-shake to boot. ehasler said:
One of the downsides though is that the viewfinder is smaller
The D70 certainly has a small viewfinder. However the D200, which has the same size chip, has a significantly bigger viewfinder. I'd have thought it was more to do with optics than chip size, or maybe the D200 has a magnifying lens built in somewhere..?
the reason some cameras don't use full frame and in the case of nikon is quality and cost.
the differences come from the fact film and digital sensors behave differently in the way they capture light. A film is reasonably thick and absorbs light in the way a sponge does, whereas digital sensors are much flatter and sharper so the light refracts at different angles.
what happens is alot of the glass used on traditional cameras are not up to the job.. In the bigger meduim format sensors the pixels have micro prisms installed infront of each pixel to direct the light in correctly but this makes for expensive sensors hence the price tag.
Even the big manufacturers like Hasselblad redeveloped an entire system of lenses to compensate for this. inspite of this on full frame sensors imperfections can be seen. as a result they have now started to introduce compensations in the software like automatic architechture compensation to recalibrate the images and remove the imperfections from the lens. Infact I had a demo of the latest system and the conclusion was not to go above 22mp as the glass can't handle it. unless you have the latest system in the H2D.
with 35mm sensors it seems that the latest full frame sensors expose the flaws in the lenses. I shoot L glass and use a canon 1D2 drom time to time and this can quite clearly be seen even with a smaller sensor if you shoot outside of the sweet spot.
I have to say I use a Leica as well and no such imperfections can be seen. even when shooting wide open. which I think is testament to their lens quality.
I guess some manufacturers in particular Nikon felt it was better to spend money on other areas than larger sensors. infact seeing nikon and canon side by side for basic slr's I would fancy the Nikons have the edge in colour rendidition. I have always been disappointed by canons flat colours. as for resolution sure it makes big files... but who needs them??.. most 35mm cameras historically only printed to 10x8 if you were lucky... if you needed bigger you would use MF.
so the best advice is unless all these current 35mm lenses are re-engineered its almost limiting to go to full frame. better to stick to a reduced size that will remain in the sweet spot of the lens.
edit .....sorry if this repeats some of what was already said... I started penning it at 9.30ish but got distracted...
>> Edited by bacchus180 on Thursday 2nd February 14:25
the differences come from the fact film and digital sensors behave differently in the way they capture light. A film is reasonably thick and absorbs light in the way a sponge does, whereas digital sensors are much flatter and sharper so the light refracts at different angles.
what happens is alot of the glass used on traditional cameras are not up to the job.. In the bigger meduim format sensors the pixels have micro prisms installed infront of each pixel to direct the light in correctly but this makes for expensive sensors hence the price tag.
Even the big manufacturers like Hasselblad redeveloped an entire system of lenses to compensate for this. inspite of this on full frame sensors imperfections can be seen. as a result they have now started to introduce compensations in the software like automatic architechture compensation to recalibrate the images and remove the imperfections from the lens. Infact I had a demo of the latest system and the conclusion was not to go above 22mp as the glass can't handle it. unless you have the latest system in the H2D.
with 35mm sensors it seems that the latest full frame sensors expose the flaws in the lenses. I shoot L glass and use a canon 1D2 drom time to time and this can quite clearly be seen even with a smaller sensor if you shoot outside of the sweet spot.
I have to say I use a Leica as well and no such imperfections can be seen. even when shooting wide open. which I think is testament to their lens quality.
I guess some manufacturers in particular Nikon felt it was better to spend money on other areas than larger sensors. infact seeing nikon and canon side by side for basic slr's I would fancy the Nikons have the edge in colour rendidition. I have always been disappointed by canons flat colours. as for resolution sure it makes big files... but who needs them??.. most 35mm cameras historically only printed to 10x8 if you were lucky... if you needed bigger you would use MF.
so the best advice is unless all these current 35mm lenses are re-engineered its almost limiting to go to full frame. better to stick to a reduced size that will remain in the sweet spot of the lens.
edit .....sorry if this repeats some of what was already said... I started penning it at 9.30ish but got distracted...
>> Edited by bacchus180 on Thursday 2nd February 14:25
simpo two said:
Actually, no
You're spot on on the file size thing . . . even at 12Mp the file sizes on raw with fairly modern IT kit is a pain . . .
simpo two said:
I'd have thought it was more to do with optics than chip size, or maybe the D200 has a magnifying lens built in somewhere..?
I read somewhere that there are two different ways of doing viewfinders . . . can't for the life of me remember more than that - but that one was more costly but produced better results . . .
Fd
simpo two said:Viewfinder shows what the sensor captures. It's more difficult to make a bright viewfinder for a smaller focal plane array due to the smaller aperture. Full frame FPA means you get a bigger, brighter viewfinder.
The D70 certainly has a small viewfinder. However the D200, which has the same size chip, has a significantly bigger viewfinder. I'd have thought it was more to do with optics than chip size, or maybe the D200 has a magnifying lens built in somewhere..?
fergusd said:
Actually, no
You're spot on on the file size thing . . . even at 12Mp the file sizes on raw with fairly modern IT kit is a pain . . .
Ahh....but thinking ahead to when 30Mp would be a possibility for retail cameras (assuming they are still using pixel based technology), think what size the memory cards will be and also the associated transfer rates
The 2Gb card I have been suing for over a year is 4 times the size of my first ever hard drive - and I got into computers very late indeed.
They will never release a part of the system(camera) if another part of the system is either not up to the job or not due an upgrade (memory).
ledaig said:
Ahh....but thinking ahead to when 30Mp would be a possibility for retail cameras (assuming they are still using pixel based technology), think what size the memory cards will be and also the associated transfer rates
Time may prove me wrong, but if you can get a visually sharp photograph 10x8" from 6/8/10Mp, what do you need the other 20/22/24 million pixels for? They'll be lucky if they can catch any photons at all! There are far more useful things they could be working on. 10 stops dynamic range and no noise would be far more useful.
The evolution of the car didn't give us a V64 engine that does 1,000mph... it ain't practical
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