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Here's an article discussing the pros / cons of full-frame sensors in digital cameras...

An interesting read...

Personally I do not understand how some people are so fixated on full frame. Unless you are switching back and forth between digital and film surely it would not be a major issue.

Personally I prefer the 1.5 crop I get so far with my sensor, and with the crop you are less likely to get vignetting when you dont want it.

The only advantage of full frame i can really see as being usefull is that the quality of the image at high ISO speeds, I heard that the new sensor boasts really good noise levels.

Though that alone isn't enough to make me get all wet over a silly camera and want to sell all my gear in order to get my hands on one body and a shitty lens.

which was what some of the canon fanboys on dpreview were talking about doing </rant>

Oneputt wrote:Personally I do not understand how some people are so fixated on full frame. Unless you are switching back and forth between digital and film surely it would not be a major issue.

That article does explain it very well - your lenses behave as they're intended to.

Grab a full frame SLR and pop a 15mm onto it; look through the viewfinder. You caannot match w=that with any of the cropped formats.

Gary I know that, however my point is that if you are shooting only digital surely you simply make allowances?

My point is one of "why should you?"

Well now that is another argument altogether Me I choose not to get in a lather over the issue.

Both my current DSLRs are 1.6x units. In full-frame terms the field of view I get with my current lenses ranges from 27mm - 900mm, and that's been fine for me. And I feel the DOF I can get is fine for my current work. I won't be surprised if early next year I add a 5D to my bag (possibly prior to Africa) which will widen my reach to 17mm with the same lenses (and add a few more pixels). But I don't feel like I'm particularly missing out in the meantime.

The 5D has a lower pixel-density than the 20D (or even the 10D) in the centre of the lens' image circle, but a higher density at the edges (ie. there are actually pixels there!) so it will introduce different challenges for the way I use my current glass. But at least I can explore this without having to get a whole set of new equipment!
It's good to see continued development and the ability to get even more pixels out of an image (which at this level mainly just gives more flexibility in cropping images in PP) but I'm not sure if it's a "paradigm shift" as such...

guys once you are used to FF it is really annoying going back to 1.5 or 1.6 crop.

It is a massive advantage for getting the best out of your lenses.

i.e. take your 85mm lens (either canon 1.2 or nikon 1.4). Both lenses have stunning bokeh but on the cropped cameras you have to stand well back, thus you lose your closeup perspective of the main object.

On the FF you can get up and still have a realy nice close perspective, but still with plenty of room to have a nice background area that is blurred to bring out the object as the central object. This is kinda hard to explain but believe me it's very nice to have.

Perhaps a better example might be a macro lens - the nikon 60mm is a heck of a lot better on FF than on 1.5x crop - on the FF you get up super close and can fit heaps of stuff in whilst still keeping that great closeup view.

hope this makes sense.

Gavin,

do you experience any sort of vignetting or softness from your Nikon lenses on a full frame sensor? Or does it really depend on the lense itself ie - you mainly stick to primes

When I used a kodak slr/n I never saw any vignetting although this may depend on the subjects you typically shoot - i.e. although I owned a 17-35/2.8 I never really used it very wide.

full frame I really missed having my 17mm tokina wide angle lens and PL filter on digital.

Now I have the 10 20mm sigma and I am happy again my only complaint about smaller digital sensors was the lack of a realistic ultra wide lens.