Why are so many of you on 1.6 crop cameras?

Full frame is a poor term to use anyway. Those using Medium Format cameras would consider the digital 24mm x 35mm sensor cameras to be cropped by comparison. All the lenses I use are designed for the sensor in my camera body so I fail to see where cropping comes into it.
 
I mostly use an F5, F90x and Bronica Medium format my first look into whether I could be bothered with digital was a very cheapo Olympus E20. Some years later, a D200 was purchased followed by a 2nd body later, full frame lenses were added to the collection as early on it was obvious Nikon would eventually release full frame. D3 was purchased late last year, about half of my serious work is still film, which I much prefer in terms of quality, digital is convenient I guess.
 
Full frame is better if you want the most sharpness, least noise, most dynamic range, highest ISO, fastest and most accurate AF, highest frame rate, narrowest depth of field, and everything else I can think of that is worth having. And if you want, you can always crop a full frame image for whatever benefits, but you cannot up-size a cropped sensor image.

Where are the pages and pages of debate to be had in that statement? :thinking:

Furthermore, I can't think of a single subject that is better tackled with a crop camera over full frame (including birds/wildlife).

On the other hand, crop is much cheaper and does most things very well. I use a 40D :)
 
Well said Hoppy. Other than those with endless cash choice of equipment is always some sort of compromise. Personally I'd love one of those 39 Megapixel Hasselblads.
 
The market is saturated with 1.5/1.6 'crop' sensor cameras and they are excellent value for money that's why!

My 1D MkIII is a 1.3 crop, right in the middle which for me is the best of both worlds.
 
Really? It would seem to be the worst of both worlds with no lenses made specifically for your sensor size! I guess you'd know better than me though and I haven't thought about it too much, just my initial thoughts.
 
bradleysmith said:
no lenses made specifically for your sensor size!
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I strongly disagree. The 1D was created by canon for Pro work and takes all the EF lenses. Made for the sensor or not the camera produces some stunning pictures and that composition comes from us and not the camera/lens combination.
 
bradleysmith said:
So Canon do make lenses designed specifically for that sensor size?
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no, but it is only recently canon make lenses specifically for cropped sensors, virtually the entire lens lineup from canon is full frame, so they dont make many dedicated lenses for the 400/40d ranges either but all the full frame lenses work.

and if you have a 1d, you are probably only working on having the top end glass anyway;)
 
Fair enough. Organic's strong disagreement with my statement made me think I'd misunderstood something.
 
this is a silly debate

35 mm was the standard because.. it was cheaper and more convinient than 120/240 film

People still shoot MF, but more people shoot 35mm because they are cheaper, lighter, and easier to use (in some instances)

My mum shoots a compact because it has a on button and a shutter release

Back to digital

Full frame is 35mm because for ages that was considered the industry norm. Because those of us with film cameras could swap an old lens onto a D1 35mm was determined to be "full frame for digital" at the time most sensors were smaller - hence the crop factor

Essentially the birding camp are saying - "superb - a 300mm lens behaves like a 400mm lens" (or whatever the maths is) and for that camp, not being eaten by a lion is a big deal so this "change in length" is an advantage

from an optical point of view there are 3 major things to consider:

- noise
- resoloution / resolving power
- off axis performance

Noise etc.. It is generally acepted that bigger pixel sites are better for noise and resolution, so a bigger sensor, with a lower pixel count densitey ought to be the thing to go for

Resoloution / resolving power - here is the duplicity - more pixels + great optics = higher resoloution - but there is a blance to be had.. larger pixel sites also = less noise and potentially higher resolving power

Off axis performance... The digital camera manufacturs have it good with a 3/4 sensor - just where a lens performance becomes potentially crappy they run out of sensor. this means "full frame lenses" will need to be a lot more cleverly designed, and restrictivly designed to offer similar performance to the optics we have used on 3/4 lenses. A "DX" lens is essentially a lens who's optics are fine for a 3/4sensor, but probrably are awful off axis beyond that
 
HoppyUK said:
Full frame is better if you want the most sharpness, least noise, most dynamic range, highest ISO, fastest and most accurate AF, highest frame rate, narrowest depth of field, and everything else I can think of that is worth having. And if you want, you can always crop a full frame image for whatever benefits, but you cannot up-size a cropped sensor image.

Where are the pages and pages of debate to be had in that statement? :thinking:

Furthermore, I can't think of a single subject that is better tackled with a crop camera over full frame (including birds/wildlife).

On the other hand, crop is much cheaper and does most things very well. I use a 40D :)
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I really hope for your sake that was in jest :LOL:
 
Personally although I often find a 1.6 crop good for aviation photography there are equal times I find it far too close and really need a much wider lens option.

In truth I would probably be happiest with a 1DMark2 for the superb AF which would probably make up for the length loss by giving far more accurate images of fast moving subjects whilst offering a wider view when needed.

Ah well maybe one day....
 
Werecow said:
I really hope for your sake that was in jest :LOL:
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;) I think I know what you mean, but no, I'm not joking.

It doesn't matter what you want to do, or how you want to do it, in terms of ultimate image quality there is always a better solution available in full frame than there is in crop format.

That is so obvious I'm just amazed at the heated debate. It's as obvious as the nose on your face, and I see no point in denying it.

That doesn't mean that crop isn't extremely good, and of course much cheaper. That's why I use it, same as most people. This is not rocket salad.
 
HoppyUK said:
;) I think I know what you mean, but no, I'm not joking.

It doesn't matter what you want to do, or how you want to do it, in terms of ultimate image quality there is always a better solution available in full frame than there is in crop format.

That is so obvious I'm just amazed at the heated debate. It's as obvious as the nose on your face, and I see no point in denying it.

That doesn't mean that crop isn't extremely good, and of course much cheaper. That's why I use it, same as most people. This is not rocket salad.
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Well i completely disagree as i regularly choose my 30D or 50D over my 1D for a certain situation and get better results.
I really can't be bothered to go over why again though :LOL:
 
I totally agree with Hoppy. All other things being equal a bigger sensor is better.
The real world doesn't work like that of course otherwise we'd all be using 39 megapixel Haddelblads.
 
Werecow said:
Well i completely disagree as i regularly choose my 30D or 50D over my 1D for a certain situation and get better results.
I really can't be bothered to go over why again though :LOL:
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Don't move the goal posts! I would be interested to know in what 'certain situation' a crop camera will yield better ultimate image quality than full frame. This is what I said:

"It doesn't matter what you want to do, or how you want to do it, in terms of ultimate image quality there is always a better solution available in full frame than there is in crop format."
 
HoppyUK said:
Don't move the goal posts! I would be interested to know in what 'certain situation' a crop camera will yield better ultimate image quality than full frame. This is what I said:

"It doesn't matter what you want to do, or how you want to do it, in terms of ultimate image quality there is always a better solution available in full frame than there is in crop format."
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I'm not moving the goalposts at all. I've made a couple posts in this thread already with my views and one with supporting evidence as well. Since then i have acquired a 50D and the difference is even bigger.

I refer the honorable gentleman to my first post....

"Crop sensors (longs their pixel density is high of course) are great for wildlife and other subjects where its actually hard to get close to your subject or its preferable to be further away from your subject.

I have a 1D which is only used for flight and action and a 30D (soon hopefully upgrading to 50D) which is my main camera for most wildlife.
To put it simply it puts much more pixels on the subject and you have a much more detailed photo at the end of the day.

Obviously in a perfect world, animals wouldn't be scared of people and in those rare situations i use my 1D. But at all other times the bigger crop camera gets the better photo 99% of the time."

When i choose my 30D or 50D it's in situations where i can't get close enough to my subject to fill the frame to my desired composition.
Choosing between the cameras is often the difference between having enough pixels on the scene after cropping to be able to make a decent print or send to the recycle bin. It's as plain and simple as that.
 
Some "certain situations" where i chose my crop cameras...

Where the lens minimum focus distance was reached so i switched to my 30D to get the perfect head shot of a puffin on skomer island.

When i'm on a cliff as i often am (i lack the ability to fly to get closer to the birds;))

When i'm in a public hide and the perches or preffered environment is too far away for my 1D.

When i'm on a nature reserve where theres a closed off section to respect the wildlife, but thats still viewable.

Theres masses of reasons to choose a crop camera.
 
Werecow said:
Some "certain situations" where i chose my crop cameras...

Where the lens minimum focus distance was reached so i switched to my 30D to get the perfect head shot of a puffin on skomer island.

When i'm on a cliff as i often am (i lack the ability to fly to get closer to the birds;))

When i'm in a public hide and the perches or preffered environment is too far away for my 1D.

When i'm on a nature reserve where theres a closed off section to respect the wildlife, but thats still viewable.

Theres masses of reasons to choose a crop camera.
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Those are practical considerations, and of course very important ones. But what can you do with a crop camera in those situations that you cannot do with full frame and a longer lens, or just an extension tube in your first example?

There is no situation you have described in which you will not get better ultimate image quality with a full frame camera, given the right camera with the right lens, and a big enough budget.

In that 'ultimate' scenario, full frame always wins.
 
HoppyUK said:
Those are practical considerations, and of course very important ones. But what can you do with a crop camera in those situations that you cannot do with full frame and a longer lens, or just an extension tube in your first example?

There is no situation you have described in which you will not get better ultimate image quality with a full frame camera, given the right camera with the right lens, and a big enough budget.

In that 'ultimate' scenario, full frame always wins.
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It's those practical considerations that let the crop camera take the better picture in those situations! There comes a point where you can't use a bigger lens. I've already got a 500mm F4 with a 1.4tc on a lot of the time.

I didn't want an extension tube on the camera and lose infinity and below focussing.

Yes there is a better quality about a full-frame camera's pictures when you can have the ideal composition, but as soon as you lose that and cropping comes into play the crop camera will produce the superior amount of pixels on a subject.

I've been doing this for years now... working with a 1D and a crop camera and theres situations ideal for both.... i do use my 1D when ever i can but dismissing the situations when my crop cameras are superior as just practical considerations and then saying you still get ultimate image quality from a fullframe is just plain ridiculous... sorry.

I've got gigabytes of wildlife images that would not have been worthwhile had i used the 1D. There is no "this one is best!" flat statement to be made here. The practical considerations you keep dismissing are EVERYTHING quite often, and you have to work around them with your equipment and choose the best thing for that situation.

Your "ultimate scenario" rarely exists in some types of photography.
 
I think we're arguing about two different things here...

Given equal sensor density, using a smaller sensor is the same as just using the middle bit of a bigger sensor. So, if you had two identical bodies and the same identical lens on both of them and the only difference between them was that one of them had a larger sensor area (but same sensor density and therefore more megapixels) then there is nothing you could capture on the smaller sensor that you could not capture on the larger one. The inverse is not true though.

Is this correct? It seems so.
 
Werecow said:
It's those practical considerations that let the crop camera take the better picture in those situations! There comes a point where you can't use a bigger lens. I've already got a 500mm F4 with a 1.4tc on a lot of the time.

I didn't want an extension tube on the camera and lose infinity and below focussing.

Yes there is a better quality about a full-frame camera's pictures when you can have the ideal composition, but as soon as you lose that and cropping comes into play the crop camera will produce the superior amount of pixels on a subject.

I've been doing this for years now... working with a 1D and a crop camera and theres situations ideal for both.... i do use my 1D when ever i can but dismissing the situations when my crop cameras are superior as just practical considerations and then saying you still get ultimate image quality from a fullframe is just plain ridiculous... sorry.

I've got gigabytes of wildlife images that would not have been worthwhile had i used the 1D. There is no "this one is best!" flat statement to be made here. The practical considerations you keep dismissing are EVERYTHING quite often, and you have to work around them with your equipment and choose the best thing for that situation.

Your "ultimate scenario" rarely exists in some types of photography.
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"Yes there is a better quality about a full-frame camera's pictures."

And that is all I'm saying. I am not taking practical considerations into account at all. If I was, we'd be arguing about compacts being far more practical for many applications.

And I am not saying that full frame is better in absolutely every respect. Clearly that's not true. But if you are talking ultimate image quaility, whatever crop can do, full frame can do it better. If the 'ultimate scenario' doesn't exist for you with full frame, then I am not going to disagree.
 
Yeh i think some people are getting confused with that Bradley. Cropping a photo (not talking about the crop on the sensor size here) introduces a whole new aspect to this argument.

Some types of photography you hardly ever need to crop which is why this thread is going on so long i think.
 
Simply because I can't afford it at the moment and a 450d was a high quality yet affordable way to get into the world of dslr.
 
Werecow said:
Except when you have to crop the final image... then yeh i agree. As you can see by my resolution test posted earlier in this thread.
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You mean the comparisons between the 30D and 1D cameras posted many weeks ago? What do you mean by a 1D? If you refer to the original 1D camera of 2001, it was only 4mp on a 1.3x crop. I don't see the relevance :thinking:

To compare like with like as far as we reasonably can, today you should compare something like a 50D and a 5D2.
 
HoppyUK said:
Full frame is better if you want the most sharpness, least noise, most dynamic range, highest ISO, fastest and most accurate AF, highest frame rate, narrowest depth of field, and everything else I can think of that is worth having.
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You're joking about the AF and frame rates aren't you??? :thinking: Edit: come to think of it I'll put my 1D's up against a 5D for build as well.
 
dod said:
You're joking about the AF and frame rates aren't you??? :thinking: Edit: come to think of it I'll put my 1D's up against a 5D for build as well.
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Haha! For the purposes of this debate, Canon 1D-series cameras are full frame as they can't use crop format EF-S lenses :D
 
fair enough, you're still wrong though. :p

Look at the frame rate for a 50D compared with a 5D MkII :shrug:
 
dod said:
fair enough, you're still wrong though. :p

Look at the frame rate for a 50D compared with a 5D MkII :shrug:
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The fastest cameras are:

Canon 1D3 - 10fps (1.3x)
Nikon D3 - 9fps (FF)
Nikon D700 - 8fps (FF)
Nikon D300 - 8fps (Crop)
Canon 50D - 6.3fps (Crop)

and Canon 5D2 - 3.9fps (FF)

The two fastest cameras are both full frame or 1.3x. So it looks to me like the full frame cameras are leading the way here, as I originally posted :p
 
Make your mind up then :thinking:

HoppyUK said:
To compare like with like as far as we reasonably can, today you should compare something like a 50D and a 5D2.
Click to expand...

HoppyUK said:
The fastest cameras are:

Canon 1D3 - 10fps (1.3x)
Nikon D3 - 9fps (FF)
Nikon D700 - 8fps (FF)
Nikon D300 - 8fps (Crop)
Canon 50D - 6.3fps (Crop)

and Canon 5D2 - 3.9fps (FF)

The two fastest cameras are both full frame or 1.3x. So it looks to me like the full frame cameras are leading the way here, as I originally posted :p
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dod said:
Make your mind up then :thinking:
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Doddy, please pay attention dear boy.

The 50D/5D2 comparison is taking the highest pixel crop and the highest pixel full frame.

If you want to compare the fastest drive speeds, then look at the 50D against the D3 or 1D3.

In both comparisons, full frame wins.
 
I use crop cameras as they are what I can afford,simple as that really......(y)
 
bit unfair to compare a 50d and a 1d, you got lots of other differences other than sensor size in there, and a fairly hefty price difference to allow for it.

and the 1d(1.3 crop) arent full frame, they are cropped, shouldnt move the goalposts halfway through. the 1ds are full frame arent they?
 
I have a 30D, 40D, 50D and 1D3. On Saturday I went birding and I took the 50D and 1D3 together with my 100-400 and 1.4X teleconverter. I left home with the lens on the 1D3 but when I got to the bird reserve I saw there was nothing large enough or close enough for the 1D3 to make a worthwhile shot, and little going on in the way of action to demand the 1D3 AF performance.

Without taking one shot with the 1D3 I swapped the lens over and tried for some smaller, perched birds with the 50D. That still wasn't enough so I added the teleconverter.

Here is a sample from the day, taken with the 50D at 560mm, f/8 (wide open), 1/640, 400 ISO. This has been cropped to 1/4 of the frame and then resized to 50%. By using the 50D instead of the 1D3 I placed 2.27X as many pixels over my subject, thus picking up detail the 1D3 would have missed entirely. To get a similar sized image from the 1D3 I would have had to crop and resize to 100%, and it would still have been a bit smaller.

3372735537_9a489a6a2f_o.jpg


It's a shame it isn't a little sharper, although this has had no edits other than the crop and some output sharpening on resize and conversion to JPEG. I guess I could have tweaked my capture sharpening first. I should also have stopped down a bit. You can see how narrow the DOF is from the wire upon which the bird is perched. Then there is the wide open softness of the zoom to consider as well. I could have traded 1/3 stop or 2/3 stop of aperture for a little reduction in shutter speed. This was focused using Live View Contrast Detect AF, a feature which the 1D3 does not even have.

There is clearly room for different sensor sizes and pixel densities. Higher densities give you more detail, at the expense of noise. Lower densities give less noise but less detail as well. Larger sensors require longer glass to create an image of equal relative size on the sensor and to gain any value at all from the larger sensor. That costs big bucks for the camera and bigger bucks for the glass.

There is also extra bulk and weight to consider. When I go on vacation, with photography in mind, I like to take a couple of bodies - one to have long glass, like my 100-400. for wildlife - and one to have a wide angle for landscapes or a medium zoom for people etc.. The extra bulk and weight of the 1D3 is significant and for long range/cropping the low pixel density is an issue, compared to the 50D. For such trips the 1D3 will stay at home and I'll take my 40D and 50D.
 
Hey! This is turning into camera Top Trumps again. How exciting.

:popcorn:

And isn't that last picture a bit big? Nice, but big. Too many pixels for it's own good I say. :LOL:
 
That goldfinch is a great example of the practical advantages of crop. And a very convincing case for live view focusing. I need to try that :)

How did you support the camera using live view Tim, with all that focal length on board? Thanks.
 
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