Full frame v crop sensor

gercam

gercam

Messages
420
Name
Gerry
Edit My Images
Yes
If I was to upgrade from a crop sensor to a full frame body what would be the benefits?
Thanks
 
More Dof control (more shallow dof) better high iso. Those are the two main benefits. Best thing is to go to a canera store and ask to try one, bring your own memory card take some pics and view at home to see if its worth it to you.
 
Bigger viewfinder is very welcome on a long shoot
 
Quick one from someone who moved "up" from a D300s to a D700.

If your work involved wide angle work, and you value a big viewfinder and you want to use a range of traditional lenes rather than DX or crop only ones the yes, move up.

However if you use tele lenes and your work involves say Aviation, then no, don't bother. And this is where the market falls down. Nikon and Canon appear not to be providing quality semi-pro or even pro crop bodies. Yes, Nikon still may sell you a D300s and Canon a 7d. But these are old bodies.

I think what work you do will determine what type of body to go for. Crop does not mean crap. One option may be to move up to a FF and buy a bottom end crop for that distance work. I bought my Mrs a D3200 for just that, then she doesn't let me use it for aviation work!
 
Thegreatroberto said:
Quick one from someone who moved "up" from a D300s to a D700.

If your work involved wide angle work, and you value a big viewfinder and you want to use a range of traditional lenes rather than DX or crop only ones the yes, move up.

However if you use tele lenes and your work involves say Aviation, then no, don't bother. And this is where the market falls down. Nikon and Canon appear not to be providing quality semi-pro or even pro crop bodies. Yes, Nikon still may sell you a D300s and Canon a 7d. But these are old bodies.

I think what work you do will determine what type of body to go for. Crop does not mean crap. One option may be to move up to a FF and buy a bottom end crop for that distance work. I bought my Mrs a D3200 for just that, then she doesn't let me use it for aviation work!
Click to expand...

Mainly For portrait/lifestyle photography
 
Thegreatroberto said:
Quick one from someone who moved "up" from a D300s to a D700.

If your work involved wide angle work, and you value a big viewfinder and you want to usea range of traditional lenes rather than DX or crop only ones the yes, move up.
Click to expand...

Is there anything in it width wise these days? As far as I know the widest non fisheye FF lens is the Sigma 12-24mm and the widest APS-C lens is the Sigma 8-16mm. Nothing much in it. At the longer end and possibly with macro the smaller systems may offer some advantages.

I don't really buy into the more DoF control idea as an advantage as it's only the case that you get less DoF with FF for the same framing and aperture but if you can and are prepared to alter the framing you can still get very shallow DoF from the smaller systems. Plus of course shallow DoF isn't always an advantage and with FF you can end up struggling to get adequate DoF and keep the shutter speed up. With the smaller systems you have an advantages for hand held shooting as you can get adequate DoF at wider apertures allowing you to use lower ISO setting or possibly and more crucially allowing you to use faster shutter speeds and that can offer real advantages.

To me the advantages of FF are probably limited to three things, FF probably has better noise performance at the very highest ISO's, FF probably gives you ultimately better image quality than smaller systems under some conditions but you might have to look very close to see the advantages (and you have to remember for example that some CSC, so some test sites claim, capture a greater dynamic range than any Canon FF DSLR yet made,) and FF probably gives you better image quality when printing very big.

For me personally there's little in it these days unless you are pushing at the very edges of what these cameras can do.
 
I think there might be more useful information, along with what you're planning on shooting, your style, and exactly which cameras you're talking about.

If I was starting out with lifestyle portraits and a wish list, it'd be a 5dIII (5d II backup) with a bunch of fast primes and some battery studio heads. Despite my preferences, though, I shoot mostly zooms on crop bodies and flashguns with studio gear for only inside.

With Noink, it might be different gear - I don't have the experience to suggest.
 
woof woof said:
For me personally there's little in it these days unless you are pushing at the very edges of what these cameras can do.
Click to expand...
This.
 
Bigger viewfinder is my main reason. Went from D3100 to 5D mark 2.

Then I got the crop sensor Fuji x100, it has the biggest viewfinder in smallest possible body, happy now. :D

As good as full frame's image quality advantages, the biggest disadvantage I found was its price, weight and size. When you factor in the full frame lenses' weight and size, you are looking at almost doubling the amount of stuff you carry.


gercam said:
Mainly For portrait/lifestyle photography
Click to expand...

35mm and 85mm would be my choice. Fuji x100 and 85mm f1.8 on a full frame for shallow DoF. Whole setup is not as weighty as a bag full of full frame lenses, and you get the power to flash sync at 1/2000s without using HSS.
 
wuyanxu said:
As good as full frame's image quality advantages, the biggest disadvantage I found was its price, weight and size. When you factor in the full frame lenses' weight and size, you are looking at almost doubling the amount of stuff you carry.
Click to expand...
Yup. I went APS-C -> FF -> micro 4/3rds. Weight and size whilst retaining 90% of the image quality was my reason for change.
 
The main thing i noticed was my bag got a lot heavier & my wallet got a lot lighter :bonk:
 
Think I might rent one and see how it feels. Thank you for all your replies
 
For me it was all about noise performance. I was however comparing a D300 to a D700. I'm not sure the gap is so significant these days. Or maybe I should say that crops and m4/3 now offer sufficient noise control for the majority of users. The bigger viewfinder is a very nice bonus too.

Like others, the big draw back for me was the cost of quality lenses, particularly decent fast zooms. I'm now back to a crop body and a much simplified bag. I do miss the d700 in low light with no flash but otherwise very happy.
 
gad-westy said:
For me it was all about noise performance.

..


Like others, the big draw back for me was the cost of quality lenses, particularly decent fast zooms.
Click to expand...
This is where I think u4/3 has a significant advantage. Not only are the f2.8 zooms significantly smaller and lighter, the 70-200 equivalent is way cheaper than the Canon/Nikon versions. The consequence is I can afford to buy and actually carry the f2.8 for u4/3rds instead of the f4 70-200 I had for the 5D2. That gets back 1 stop of noise advantage there. Let alone the fact I always have it with me if I have my camera out with me as it's 300odd grammes as opposed to 1.6kg :eek:.
 
arad85 said:
This is where I think u4/3 has a significant advantage. Not only are the f2.8 zooms significantly smaller and lighter, the 70-200 equivalent is way cheaper than the Canon/Nikon versions. The consequence is I can afford to buy and actually carry the f2.8 for u4/3rds instead of the f4 70-200 I had for the 5D2. That gets back 1 stop of noise advantage there. Let alone the fact I always have it with me if I have my camera out with me as it's 300odd grammes as opposed to 1.6kg :eek:.
Click to expand...

Yep, and that's before you consider the incredibly fast primes available for m4/3... F/0.95 :)

Must admit, if I was 100% confident that something like an OMD was suitable for Motorsports and other fast tracking, I'd probably drop DSLRs all together.
 
barratt1988 said:
What lenses do you own? If you own crop lenses its going to work out very pricey. And depending on what sort of photograhy you do depends how much you'd benefit from FF
Click to expand...

I have a 70-200 f4.0l, a 17-55 f2.8 and a 50mm 1.8 and I use them for portrait/lifestyle photography
 
70-200 f4L is FF. 50mm f1.8 is also FF.

17-55 f2.8 is crop only.

The switch will require you to buy 24-70 f2.8L, also perhaps 85mm f1.8 for portrait if you want to retain 50mm on crop's field of view.
 
Just touching back on the viewfinder point raised earlier...
my mrs bought a D700 purely because i let her look through the VF on my D800 & compared it to her D90. :wacky::LOL:
 
wuyanxu said:
70-200 f4L is FF. 50mm f1.8 is also FF.

17-55 f2.8 is crop only.

The switch will require you to buy 24-70 f2.8L, also perhaps 85mm f1.8 for portrait if you want to retain 50mm on crop's field of view.
Click to expand...

This is the problem with full frame. The lenses are sooooo expensove and if you upgrade from crop you will need new lenses even if they are FF compatable the FOV changes
 
gercam said:
If I was to upgrade from a crop sensor to a full frame body what would be the benefits?
Thanks
Click to expand...

Hi, One quick answer, "Image Quality".
 
:plus1:

I have had just about everything and FF RAW is just the most wonderful file format for me. Shame the cameras are so Damn big and heavy!! Oh and expensive :LOL: The Canon 6D and Nikon D600 are pretty light though and fine with a prime (weight wise).

The only small camera that comes close in IQ to FF is the Sigma DP Merrill Cameras!
 
Last edited:
But when will or when do you see the better image quality?

IMVHO unless you're at the very highest ISO's you'll have to look very very close to tell a FF image from a smaller format image and unless you know what you're looking at you'll get it wrong a lot.

You may have to work harder to get the best out of a smaller format image and that means shooting RAW and processing the shots for best effect yourself but lets face it if you use a FF camera and shoot JPEG you may just get better results from something that fits in your pocket and spits out JPEG's by default.

If sensor size was everything we'd all be using large format but we don't so that must prove that the vast majority of us are willing to make compromises. The question is what gear offers the best blend of advantages, compromises and disadvantages for us.
 
Also the lenses have an easier time projecting onto smaller sensors, so going against the FF IQ thing (with some lenses). When the 5D was released I think you could tell in many shots whether the camera was a 5D or a crop-body just from the 'look' (particularly skin tones), however that was a long time ago.

That all said I'm happy with my old 5D still, despite the size/weight issues (which are issues, certainly).
 
pearce_jj said:
Also the lenses have an easier time projecting onto smaller sensors,...
Click to expand...

I think it cuts two ways. On smaller systems you'll only use the centre best bit of a full frame lens but the additional resolution and magnification will make the lens work harder and show up any defects hidden by the possibly less demanding larger format.
 
Thegreatroberto said:
Quick one from someone who moved "up" from a D300s to a D700.

If your work involved wide angle work, and you value a big viewfinder and you want to use a range of traditional lenes rather than DX or crop only ones the yes, move up.

However if you use tele lenes and your work involves say Aviation, then no, don't bother. And this is where the market falls down. Nikon and Canon appear not to be providing quality semi-pro or even pro crop bodies.
Click to expand...

The Canon 1D series is a crop body (1.3x as opposed to 1.6x of the 7D etc).

.
 
For me moving from 50D, 1Dmk2, 5D to a 5D3 was the fact it just works, it does everything I want from a camera. I can use an f4 lens with a 2x teleconverter so I don't need to buy super long lenses, often quoted a down side to FF, F8 focusing helps immensely in cost cutting terms. I guess some of the other less expensive FF bodies would be as good. The IQ from a FF is superb and my lens just seemed to get better overnight when I went 5D3. Expensive but definitely worth it.
Matt
 
Thanks again for all your replies

Def going to go into shop and try some and then rent one and see how it goes
 
pearce_jj said:
Also the lenses have an easier time projecting onto smaller sensors,
Click to expand...
Except they don't. You have to squeeze more onto a smaller sensor which means the lenses have to work harder the smaller the sensor...
 
Boldonian said:
I think once you go full frame you'll never go back to crop....as long as the finances allow.
Click to expand...
Yes you do. I can afford (and have owned) FF, I choose to shoot micro 4/3rds. The supposed advantages just aren't there in all but the extremes woof woof has mentioned.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top