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Canon seems to have a mix of 1.5x, 1.3x and full frame sensors now,
and their push seems to be towards the FF. Is this a pattern that
other companies are going towards? Do people here prefer the 35mm
sensor size?

"DeanB" <> wrote in message
news: s.com...
> Canon seems to have a mix of 1.5x,

You mean 1.6x (lens factor).


> 1.3x and full frame sensors now,
> and their push seems to be towards the FF. Is this a pattern that
> other companies are going towards? Do people here prefer the 35mm
> sensor size?

Not me. All Nikon dSLRs have a 1.5x lens factor and I'm perfectly happy with
that sensor size. There is much speculation that Nikon may eventually
produce a camera with a full frame sensor too, but even if they do I think
it's extremely unlikely it will ever challenge the present DX sensor size in
popularity.

Neil

"DeanB" <> wrote in message
news: s.com...
> Canon seems to have a mix of 1.5x, 1.3x and full frame sensors now,
> and their push seems to be towards the FF. Is this a pattern that
> other companies are going towards? Do people here prefer the 35mm
> sensor size?

So far, Canon (well, and Leica) is the only manufacturer to have a sensor
larger than ~1.5 crop. A few early stone-age,
cost-as-much-as-a-Mercedes-Benz digital SLRs excepted.

The rest of the world seems to be well and truly stuck in APS crop-land for
the time being. It's all up to the sensor manufacturers really - if they
don't make it, nobody can build cameras around it...

You should also remember that the cost of a sensor rises exponentially with
price. A sensor twice the size will be far, far, far more than twice as
expensive to make. Don't expect to see FF digital sensors in anything but
flagship models for quite a few years yet. The least expensive FF camera at
the moment is the Canon 5D and it is anything but cheap - and the camera
body on it isn't any better than a 20D. The sensor must account for the
greater part of the production cost.

FF as such? I like it. The non-digital-crop lenses have much more sensible
zoom ranges now And you get your shallow DOF back when you need it. Nice.
You won't find me going back to an APS-crop body.

On Feb 23, 11:03 am, "Ståle Sannerud" <staale.sanne...@bibits.no>
wrote:
> "DeanB" <deanbrow...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> news: s.com...
>
> > Canon seems to have a mix of 1.5x, 1.3x and full frame sensors now,
> > and their push seems to be towards the FF. Is this a pattern that
> > other companies are going towards? Do people here prefer the 35mm
> > sensor size?
>
> So far, Canon (well, and Leica) is the only manufacturer to have a sensor
> larger than ~1.5 crop. A few early stone-age,
> cost-as-much-as-a-Mercedes-Benz digital SLRs excepted.
>
> The rest of the world seems to be well and truly stuck in APS crop-land for
> the time being. It's all up to the sensor manufacturers really - if they
> don't make it, nobody can build cameras around it...
>
> You should also remember that the cost of a sensor rises exponentially with
> price. A sensor twice the size will be far, far, far more than twice as
> expensive to make. Don't expect to see FF digital sensors in anything but
> flagship models for quite a few years yet. The least expensive FF camera at
> the moment is the Canon 5D and it is anything but cheap - and the camera
> body on it isn't any better than a 20D. The sensor must account for the
> greater part of the production cost.
>
> FF as such? I like it. The non-digital-crop lenses have much more sensible
> zoom ranges now And you get your shallow DOF back when you need it. Nice.
> You won't find me going back to an APS-crop body.




> You should also remember that the cost of a sensor rises exponentially with
price.
Really? isn't that always 1:1?

I don't understand why its cheaper to make a 4MP sensor 24mm across
rather than 35mm across? Why should that be? Smaller is usually MORE
expensive.

DeanB wrote:
> Canon seems to have a mix of 1.5x, 1.3x and full frame sensors now,
> and their push seems to be towards the FF. Is this a pattern that
> other companies are going towards? Do people here prefer the 35mm
> sensor size?

It's all over the map. I think full-frame sensors will end up playing
the role medium-format film cameras used to play (and with similar prices).

People who use telephotos a lot kinda like the 1.5x and 1.6x cameras, it
gives them free extra reach. People who use wideangle a lot aren't so
pleased; but buying one lens like the Tokina 12-24mm f/4 gets me most of
what I had with my 17mm f/3.5 lens on film, and I still get the benefits
at the long end.

You say "push seems to be towards the FF", but only Canon is currently
doing anything with that. And Contax and Kodak *did*, earlier on, and
got driven out of the DSLR market. I don't see a "push".

On 23 Feb 2007 08:08:41 -0800, in rec.photo.digital "DeanB"
<> wrote:


>I don't understand why its cheaper to make a 4MP sensor 24mm across
>rather than 35mm across? Why should that be? Smaller is usually MORE
>expensive.

Because the chips are cut from circular wafers of the base silicon
material. The bigger the chip the less per wafer. So the process costs
are spread over a smaller number of chips.
-
Ed Ruf ()
http://edwardgruf.com/Digital_Photog...ral/index.html

All chips are produced on circular wafers containing some number of
chips depending on the chip size. The wafers can be cut into a number
of chips depending on the size of the chip. All wafers have defects.
Say a wafer had one defect. The defect would make one of the chips on
the wafer not useable. If the chip was small enough that a hundred fit
on the wafer, they yield would be 99%. Now say the chip was large
enough that only two fit on a wafer. Assuming one defect per wafer,
the defect would land on one or the other of the two chips on the
wafer. The yield drops to 50%. This is not a realistic example, but it
explains why bigger chips are more expensive, it not because of the
silicon cost, it is because of the silicon cost and the yield factor.
Throw a number of defects onto a wafer and very large chips and the
yield will go way down.

On Feb 23, 11:08 am, "DeanB" <deanbrow...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Feb 23, 11:03 am, "Ståle Sannerud" <staale.sanne...@bibits.no>
> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > "DeanB" <deanbrow...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> >news: ps.com...
>
> > > Canon seems to have a mix of 1.5x, 1.3x and full frame sensors now,
> > > and their push seems to be towards the FF. Is this a pattern that
> > > other companies are going towards? Do people here prefer the 35mm
> > > sensor size?
>
> > So far, Canon (well, and Leica) is the only manufacturer to have a sensor
> > larger than ~1.5 crop. A few early stone-age,
> > cost-as-much-as-a-Mercedes-Benz digital SLRs excepted.
>
> > The rest of the world seems to be well and truly stuck in APS crop-land for
> > the time being. It's all up to the sensor manufacturers really - if they
> > don't make it, nobody can build cameras around it...
>
> > You should also remember that the cost of a sensor rises exponentially with
> > price. A sensor twice the size will be far, far, far more than twice as
> > expensive to make. Don't expect to see FF digital sensors in anything but
> > flagship models for quite a few years yet. The least expensive FF camera at
> > the moment is the Canon 5D and it is anything but cheap - and the camera
> > body on it isn't any better than a 20D. The sensor must account for the
> > greater part of the production cost.
>
> > FF as such? I like it. The non-digital-crop lenses have much more sensible
> > zoom ranges now And you get your shallow DOF back when you need it. Nice.
> > You won't find me going back to an APS-crop body.
> > You should also remember that the cost of a sensor rises exponentially with
>
> price.
> Really? isn't that always 1:1?
>
> I don't understand why its cheaper to make a 4MP sensor 24mm across
> rather than 35mm across? Why should that be? Smaller is usually MORE
> expensive.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

"David Dyer-Bennet" <dd-> wrote in message
news:45df1355$0$44191$. net...
> DeanB wrote:
>> Canon seems to have a mix of 1.5x, 1.3x and full frame sensors now,
>> and their push seems to be towards the FF. Is this a pattern that
>> other companies are going towards? Do people here prefer the 35mm
>> sensor size?
>
> It's all over the map. I think full-frame sensors will end up playing the
> role medium-format film cameras used to play (and with similar prices).

That's exactly what I think too.


>
> People who use telephotos a lot kinda like the 1.5x and 1.6x cameras, it
> gives them free extra reach. People who use wideangle a lot aren't so
> pleased; but buying one lens like the Tokina 12-24mm f/4 gets me most of
> what I had with my 17mm f/3.5 lens on film, and I still get the benefits
> at the long end.

I recently bought that Tokina 12-24 myself, and between that and the Nikon
10.5 fisheye I'm all set as far as ultrawide goes -- especially since the
10.5 converts to rectilinear very well in Nikon Capture.


>
> You say "push seems to be towards the FF", but only Canon is currently
> doing anything with that. And Contax and Kodak *did*, earlier on, and got
> driven out of the DSLR market. I don't see a "push".

I don't either. When and if such a push develops, I'll be one of the 99% who
ignore it.

Neil

On Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:37:35 -0800, DeanB wrote
(in article < m>):

> Canon seems to have a mix of 1.5x, 1.3x and full frame sensors now,
> and their push seems to be towards the FF. Is this a pattern that
> other companies are going towards? Do people here prefer the 35mm
> sensor size?
>

What push? Their latest model, the one they call their flagship model, is an
APS-H sensor. You're imagining things.

People like 35mm sensors because they don't want to buy new wide angle
lenses. Apparently, they like the vignetting and lack of sharpness of
ultra-wide photography.

--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

On Feb 23, 8:16 am, David Dyer-Bennet <d...@dd-b.net> wrote:
> DeanB wrote:
> > Canon seems to have a mix of 1.5x, 1.3x and full frame sensors now,
> > and their push seems to be towards the FF. Is this a pattern that
> > other companies are going towards? Do people here prefer the 35mm
> > sensor size?
>
> It's all over the map. I think full-frame sensors will end up
> playing the role medium-format film cameras used to play (and with
> similar prices).
>
> People who use telephotos a lot kinda like the 1.5x and 1.6x
> cameras, it gives them free extra reach.

If the pixel size is the same for the full frame sensor, you get no
"free extra reach" with the 1.6x sensor, just a crop. The 1D mk3 has
the same pixel size as the 1Ds mk2, so the 1.3x sensor of the 1D mk3
gets you no extra reach over the 1Ds Mk2. And the 30D only gets you
1.125x more reach over the 1Ds mk2.