Full frame vs crop sensor question

Mmarques

Mmarques

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Marco
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Hey everyone,

I've had my nikon d3100 for a good few year now and looking to upgrade, was looking at d810 and reading about it and found its full frame, my question is would I have to sell up all my lenses that I've got at the moment and start from crutch and buy new lenses for a full frame camera?

Thanks
Marco
 
The 50mm and the 70-300 will work on full frame, I assume the 35mm is the DX version. However, assuming you have the cheaper version of the Tamron (without VC) then if is pretty crap and will not do the 36mp sensor of the D810 any favours. The problem with buying a body like the D810 is that you also need to spend a small (or large!) bomb on lenses to do it justice.

That said, they will all work as the camera has a DX mode BUT there's not much point in going full frame if you're going to use it in crop mode.
 
Nawty said:
The problem with buying a body like the D810 is that you also need to spend a small (or large!) bomb on lenses to do it justice.
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Lenses don't have to work so hard on ff and I suppose ultimate quality depends on how close you look. If you don't print massive or view closely or at high magnification even humble lenses might be perfectly useable until funds allow upgrades.
 
Nawty said:
The 50mm and the 70-300 will work on full frame, I assume the 35mm is the DX version. However, assuming you have the cheaper version of the Tamron (without VC) then if is pretty crap and will not do the 36mp sensor of the D810 any favours. The problem with buying a body like the D810 is that you also need to spend a small (or large!) bomb on lenses to do it justice.

That said, they will all work as the camera has a DX mode BUT there's not much point in going full frame if you're going to use it in crop mode.
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Thanks for the reply, yes they are the DX version and yes it's the cheap tamron version. Does the DX mean that it will be used in full frame or will it still be used in crop?
 
woof woof said:
Lenses don't have to work so hard on ff and I suppose ultimate quality depends on how close you look. If you don't print massive or view closely or at high magnification even humble lenses might be perfectly useable until funds allow upgrades.
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Agreed, although why spend so much money on a body and put crap lenses on it, you'd be better off spending your money on decent lenses.

Mmarques said:
Thanks for the reply, yes they are the DX version and yes it's the cheap tamron version. Does the DX mean that it will be used in full frame or will it still be used in crop?
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DX = Crop.

As above, my view is that unless you are prepared to spend some serious cash on lenses then there isn't much point in getting a D810
 
woof woof said:
Lenses don't have to work so hard on ff
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???? Lenses work harder on FF because the sensor can see the whole lens so if its soft at the edge etc it will be much more apparent - a crop sensor is looking through the middle of the lens to chromatic aberation etc are less of an issue

Personally if you want to go to FF I'd say go with either the 610 or the 750 and spend the money you'll save against the cost an 810 on some better quality lenses
 
Lenses, and lens quality, are all about magnification - the less you magnify through them the less they have to work so on the whole they work better on a FF sensor. Yes corner sharpness and vignetting are an issue but the gain is worth it.
 
Nawty said:
Lenses, and lens quality, are all about magnification - the less you magnify through them the less they have to work so on the whole they work better on a FF sensor. Yes corner sharpness and vignetting are an issue but the gain is worth it.
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but the magnification doesnt change - all thats different is the feild of view (not to mention that people ofte crop FF images )
 
big soft moose said:
???? Lenses work harder on FF because the sensor can see the whole lens so if its soft at the edge etc it will be much more apparent - a crop sensor is looking through the middle of the lens to chromatic aberation etc are less of an issue

Personally if you want to go to FF I'd say go with either the 610 or the 750 and spend the money you'll save against the cost an 810 on some better quality lenses
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Maybe it depends on how close you look.

With a ff camera there'll be less magnification and unless you look closely any little shortcomings could be hard to spot in a normally viewed whole image. That's been my experience anyway. As Ned says the gain is (maybe, probably :D) worth it :D

Back when I had a APS-C 20D I had some, lets say less than stellar lenses and they too performed quite well for whole images when viewed normally.

Anyway. I just wanted to add my view that if the OP is set on a ff camera less than state of the art lenses may be good enough until funds are available for better ones especially for whole images viewed normally.
 
big soft moose said:
but the magnification doesnt change - all thats different is the feild of view (not to mention that people ofte crop FF images )
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Have you tried relatively less good lenses on APS-C and ff cameras?

Getting off topic maybe though.
 
Magnification is also a matter of how big you blow the fram up though - so a FF image printed at A3 will show defects more greatly than a DX image printed at A4 ( the FF image will also have more defects to show as it casn see the corners.)

I've got a 40D and a 6D - the lack of edge sharpness on my old 170-500 and 90-300 was much more appriceable on the 6D ,
 
big soft moose said:
but the magnification doesnt change - all thats different is the feild of view (not to mention that people ofte crop FF images )
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But field of view changes because the magnification changes.

For example, I have a 70-300VR lens.

On my D700 it was stellar a 100% view - 12mp FF
On my D610 it is really good at 100% view - 24mp FF
On my D3200 it is not bad at 100% - 24mp DX
On my V1 (with FT! adapter) it isn't actually any better than the D3200 despite the x2.7 crop factor, I could just as well use the D3200 and crop the image.

All this is down to the basic limitation of the lens, the more you try and magnify through it the more the limitations of the lens is shown.
 
But yes, as said if you don't view at 100% or print really big it doesn't really matter, but again, why buy FF otherwise?

By the way @woof woof , I am just in the process of figuring out with M4/3 to buy - thought you might appreciate that :D
 
Nawty said:
But field of view changes because the magnification changes.
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No the field of view doesnt maginfy the image at all - all it does is crop the central portion , so if you take a crop sensored image its looking through the centre of the lens where the glass is the best quality (or at least where poor quality glass is least evident).

If you take a FF image you can see the edges so the defects are more evident - if you cropped off the edges in photoshop to replicate the FoV of a crop sensor the photo would be exactly the same (excepty probably higher megapixelled depending on which DX/FX cameras you were using)
 
Buuuut
big soft moose said:
No the field of view doesnt maginfy the image at all - all it does is crop the central portion , so if you take a crop sensored image its looking through the centre of the lens where the glass is the best quality (or at least where poor quality glass is least evident).

If you take a FF image you can see the edges so the defects are more evident - if you cropped off the edges in photoshop to replicate the FoV of a crop sensor the photo would be exactly the same (excepty probably higher megapixelled depending on which DX/FX cameras you were using)
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Buuut, if you then view the image at the same size you have magnified it...
 
big soft moose said:
Personally if you want to go to FF I'd say go with either the 610 or the 750 and spend the money you'll save against the cost an 810 on some better quality lenses
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For me the best bit of advice in the thread, ignore the circular debate about crop factors and pixel densities it is increasingly tedious!

There are many reasons to invest in full frame but I would always try and tilt your investment towards glass as it lasts longer and makes a better investment!
 
big soft moose said:
???? Lenses work harder on FF because the sensor can see the whole lens so if its soft at the edge etc it will be much more apparent - a crop sensor is looking through the middle of the lens to chromatic aberation etc are less of an issue
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There are other tradeoffs. Assuming you are using different lenses on FF & APS-C so that the fields of view are equivalent, then the lens on the APS-C camera has to be a better lens to get the image captured at the same sharpness. This is because you are trying to get the same detail onto a smaller number of millimetres (the image you are taking is the same, the sensor you are capturing it onto is smaller) so the spatial resolution of the lens has to be higher for the same sharpness. You will find that most FF lenses are designed with FF sensors in mind and produce less sharp images on a crop sensor camera and have much lower resolution per mm when compared to top end lenses designed for a smaller system (some of the Olympus lenses for micro 4/3rds spring to mind here).

I agree with you that you miss out the issues around the edge of the lens, but the image at the centre of the lens should still be sharper on a FF camera due to it having more area to spread the same detail over (i.e. it is working "less hard").
 
To answer the OP's question rather than get sidetracked into pixel density debates, Nikkor lenses marked as Dx, Sigmas designated as DC and Tamrons DiII are all unsuitable for using on full frame cameras although the Nikon FF bodies can all be used with these lenses if set to Dx mode in the body's menu.
 
Th D810 is a hell of a leap and you need to ensure you are prepared for the files it produces (i.e. have a reasonably quick laptop/PC), it's overkill if you're coming from a D3100 in my opinion.

A D610 would leave you well over a grand in change over a D810, which could buy you some very nice glass to replace some of your DX glass (a Sigma 35mm 1.4 ART and Nikon 85mm 1.8 AFS would happily fill the £1k difference, and would no doubt have a far bigger overall impact than the difference between the D610 and D810)
 
why not just buy a upmarket dx camera then you can keep all your dx lens's also give you time to get a bit more experiance as it seem you lack that at the moment
 
Thanks for all your replies, I understand it better now :)

If I were to go FF I'd sell me lenses and get new ones, I was just wondering if they'd work on a FFS camera.

So reading your replies, I'll look into the 610, I might even think about canon if I sold up the DX gear, but if I did decide to stick with a DX camera, what would be the best one to go for before moving onto FF? Nikon obviously :P
 
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nikon 18-55mm
Tamron 70-300mm
Nikon 50mm
Nikon 35mm

you don't have to panic, you'll lose reach due to the change in field of view (not actually magnification but for the purposes of this discussion there's not much difference)
the 50mm will give you something like the 35mm would have.
the 35mm can go unless you want to use it in DX format
the 18-55, yes will be best to go
the 70-300mm will lose reach but isn't great anyway, so you said.

In this situation if you really want to jump to FF, then keep the 50mm, as these are lovely full frame I think.
then just sell the DX lenses and get a decent FX piece of glass, for example the sigma 24-70 or the tamron 24-70 if budget allows.
really though, ask what you're jumping to FF for? the nikon FX cameras are very nice I admit :)
 
i upgraded from a D3100 to a D700 last week. I first bought a decent lens Nikon 28-70 2.8 to try with the D3100.The combination still didn't give me the quality i wanted, the D700 is awesome with the above lens and the 50mm prime and wish id upgraded sooner
 
Mmarques said:
Thanks for all your replies, I understand it better now :)

If I were to go FF I'd sell me lenses and get new ones, I was just wondering if they'd work on a FFS camera.

So reading your replies, I'll look into the 610, I might even think about canon if I sold up the DX gear, but if I did decide to stick with a DX camera, what would be the best one to go for before moving onto FF? Nikon obviously :p
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The D7100 is the current top of the line DX camera, the previous generation D7000 is very good and can be had for bargain prices second hand.
 
Been looking at the reviews of the d7100 and quite like it, will try and get some hands on to see how I get on with it and then it looks like I might get one if I like it :)
 
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