Jumbuck wrote:All this talk of "full frame" is starting to get to me. So I'm going to finally make a comment here.
What the hell is "full frame" anyway? Who determined that 35 mm is "full frame"??
You need to understand the history of these devices.
The basic design, and many components and nomenclature, all derive directly from 35mm film photography. The bodies look like 35mm film SLRs, and in a great many cases, the lenses from a 35mm film SLR camera will fit a DSLR.
Case in point: we have a gaggle of 35mm film SLRs (look at my signature line) and a shelf full of lenses for those cameras. Some of the lenses are 35 years old (or thereabouts) but they will fit my shiny (almost-)new D70.
But whereas the image I will get with those lenses, on a 35mm film camera, will occupy a certain physical size within the camera and on the light sensor (in this case, a piece of film), if i put that exact same lens onto my D70, I will lose a whole lot of image information from the edges of what I might otherwise be seeing in my film camera.
The image, therefore, is just a partial rendition of what the 35mm lens and camera is capable of, and thus often referred to as "cropped", and with a Nikon DSLR, the crop factor is 1.5, which basically means that if I treat the cropped digital image as if it were full frame, I would something 150% magnification of the (smaller) image area in comparison to the full 35mm frame area as defined by the film camera.
Why then isn't a 5" x 7" print a cropped version of a 10" x 8" "full print"? Isn't the Cannon's senor a cropped 120mm? No. Is a D70 a cropped 35mm? No. The D70 is a "FULL FRAME" camera because it was designed and manufactured with a particular sensor size - and it uses 100% of its sensor.
No. While I don't understand most of your questions here, this is not a question that relates solely to the sensor.
It's to do with the lenses that are available for the camera, and in fact, when the first Canon and Nikon digital SLR cameras were released, the only lenses available were the standard 35mm lenses, with a full 35mm aspect ration and field of view.
A large portion of which is wasted when used in a DSLR.
The "full frame" bizo comes from a reference to the useability of 35mm lenses to the destination sensor sized cameras. Just as you would say if you were referring to trying to work out the crop factor when fitting a 120mm lense onto a Cannon 35mm.
Er, no.
If the 120mm lens was designed for a Canon 35mm film EOS body, then its image area would be optimised for a frame size appropriate to a 35mm film frame.
That same lens would then have the Canon crop factor of 1.6 applied to it when used on, say, a 20D, because that's a description of how much of the image area that the lens is designed to produce (in 35mm terms - always the reference point) that it loses when a smaller light sensor (be it film - sauch as an APS camera, or digital) is brought into play.
There is also one little tiny thing that seems to be overlook, and this is the actual size of the sensor pixels. Did you know that the D2x has pixels 1.3 x smaller and tighter than the pixels in the so called Cannon "full frame" DSLR? This still makes the Cannon capabale ot capturing technically more detail, but in reality only by a whisker.
Who says that we have overlooked that point?
FWIW, Nikon are already on record as saying that, within the context of a DX sensor, they can go to about 24MP. That's suggestive of something like a 50MP Nikon full frame sensor at some point in the future.
But there's a hell of a lot more to the quality of an image than just the MP rating, and all other things being equal, a higher number of smaller photosites on any given sensor should be capable of producing a higher resolution - and higher quality - image.
That means that a Coolpix 8800 should produce a better image than a D70, yet that's not the case. Why is this so?
As sensor pixel sizes get smaller and if they continue to elminate high noise (usually associated with smaller pixel count),
No.
Higher noise is generally related to the size of the photosites in play. Larger photosites are less noisy. That's why the PHD cameras, with sensors about the size of your pinky's fingernail, rarely go beyond ISO400. The photosites in use are just too small to amplify to the point where a useful image can be produced.
Compare the actual (physical) sensor sizes between any Canon or Nikon DSLR and any any PHD camera, and you'll see that there's a difference there of more than an order or magnitude.
That's a part of why, for instance, you can get DoF control on a DSLR, something that's lacking on PHDs.
then its pretty clear to me the 35 mm sensors will be monsters from the past pretty soon.
You're welcome to your opinion.
You're welcome to be wrong on so many counts, too.
Ahh, I feel better now I've finally aired my opinion.
That's why we're here. You can air your opinion, and hopefully, you can listen to those of others, and perhaps even learn a few things into the bargain.
Welcome to the forums; please put your location into your profile, so that we can be better placed to help you with any questions you may have in the future.
Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 2:40 am
