.
That's about it, the physical size of that lens would compromise any 'portability' you might expect from a 'bridge' camera. Physics are physics I'm afraid, they can make a reasonable size P&S with a crop sensor, but they compromise the lens to keep the size down. With a full size sensor I'd expect to find a fixed lens of approx 40mm, making it an expensive and rather inflexible piece of kit.
With a P&S small sensor it's fairly easy to make a superzoom because the sensor is so tiny that the actual lens measurements are small too. So a bridge camera can have a lens of 5mm -75mm (28-420 equiv - Fuji S2500HD). But a 400mm lens is a large object purely because 400mm is 400mm (roughly)
Sorry that the actual answer isn't as romantic as all the notions of pocketable large format cameras.
In the table below the 1/1.8" is your average bridge camera sensor, 35mm is full frame - I think you'd struggle to fit the latter into a body designed for the former.....
Yeah, I wasn't being very clear there.
What I was trying to say (using psychic powers rather than typing - sorry) was that for a given aperture, lens size is in proportion to sensor size. The difference in size between a G11 sensor and a full frame sensor can give you an idea how big the lens portion of a full frame super zoom bridge camera would need to be, assuming the G11 design is as efficient as Canon can make it.
Maybe a Canon SX10 is a better example as it has a 20x zoom, as well as a smaller sensor. I went with the G11 as it supposed to be good quality for it's size, but with a bit more versatility that something like a DP2.
Anyway, basically the same point you'd already made below.
The classic Leica is full frame. The camera that started it all by turning 35mm cine film sideways and putting it in a still camera. The film itself is 35mm wide in total, but after the sprocket holes the image height is 24mm, and to create a nice oblong image, it is 36mm long. That is 'full frame 35mm' as distinct from half-frame, which never caught on for reasons of image quality and is pretty rare.
While this might sound like a bit of a bodge, for mainly optical reasons it's a pretty good size. It's adapted itself very well to the SLR camera design and despite numerous attempts to 'improve' on it, they all failed (notably Kodak APS and it's variants).
Then there is medium format, which basically means 120 film. That comes in three main sizes - 6x6cm, 6x4.5cm, and 6x7cm. You can get digital versions of these, but they're all 6x4.5 or a bit smaller, and cost a fortune, eg Hasselblad £25k. Image quality is quite good
Fuji have just introduced a new version of their 6x7cm film rangefinder camera, the GF670. The lens folds away and the whole thing is about the size of a paperback book, which shows that it's not the format that takes up the space. Here http://www.ephotozine.com/article/Fujifilm-GF670-mediumformat-film-camera-announced-13918 A 'full frame 35mm' digital version of that is quite feasable, with a retracting lens, and I think we might see something along those lines, with a short-ish lens. Maybe.
The mega-compacts we see, bridge cameras, have big zoom ranges because they only have to cover a tiny sensor - the size of your little fingernail. Their lenses might be labelled something amazing like 25-400mm, but that is the 'equivalent' focal length range expressed in full frame terms. The actual focal length is more like 5-80mm, and given the tiny image circle they have to deliver and modest maximum apertues, they can be made quite small.
But when you scale that up to cover the image circle rquired by full frame, you inevitably end up with an absolutely massive lens. Even if it was possible, which currently it isn't.
Nearly as bad as the 'smile shutter' on my phone
The apart from IQ the big issues missing from these arguments about sensor size are;
Shallow DoF, viewfinders.
When I used MF film the greatest benefits (apart from image quality) were the great viewfinder and the great control over DoF.
It isn't for everyone, but many of us spend lots of money on fast lenses so that we have better DoF control. And the larger the sensor the more effective this effect.
So although the 4/3 sensor is taking off with newbies and a lot of amateur togs, lots of pro's still gravitate to 'full frame' and even medium format digital cameras. This isn't for 'megapixels' but for the 'feel' that you get from the actual physics ie glass, viewfinders, shallow DoF.
And as image quality improves in smaller sensors it also does in larger sensors. So where I get IQ from the 7d comparable to what I did with medium format, a Hassy MF digital will still give me an exponentially better image. So whilst 4/3 and micro 4/3 will make inroads into DSLR sales, for those that covet the benefits of the larger sensor they are an irrelevance.
However there are now Fujifilm P&S cameras with a 'pro' mode that shoots pictures with bracketed focussing in order to create the appearance of a shallow DoF
In the table below the 1/1.8" is your average bridge camera sensor, 35mm is full frame - I think you'd struggle to fit the latter into a body designed for the former.....
I agree, one of the reasons I upgraded to FF is so I can use the shallow DOF effect as I just love subject isolation.
Having said that I didn't notice much difference yet compared to APS-C, but I haven't used my new camera much
Photography noob here!:shrug:
I get the basic concept of the thread, dont get me wrong, but could somone please explain what "full frame" actually means??
Thanks!!!
