Originally posted by dotchoucou In a full frame world everything will be much more expensive.
Most of us are not professional and a balance between quality and price is important. That's why I don't believe in FF for amateurs/experts.
Is is not only like electronics where better technology will be cheaper and cheaper. We are also talking here about optics, lenses etc...
For me, except for "show off" and ego, most of the people here would not benefit a FF. Or you all guys want to make pictures for a living and not a hobby. Not that I want to hurt or anything, but I don't understand the FF mania.
Of course, a FF in the pentax world would be very good for the image of our favorite brand. And a lot of people will feel happy with the idea that one day, perhaps, eventually, they might jump to a professional FF body. Of course this day never comes most of the time for canikon people and it is perhaps better like that.
why would everything be much more expensive in a full frame world? i may be making a stupid simplistic assumption, but it seems to me that the development of the APS-C sensor was poor judgement to begin with. All old lenses for which Pentax maintained backward compatibility were engineered to project light on a 24x36 sensor (35mm film). The APS-C introduced a crop factor for use of these lenses which has remained since (keeping a penalty on the use of old glass). A kind presumtionis that the smaller sensor was designed because it saved a bit on cost and the market-place was competitive. Somebody correct me if I am wrong, but if a FF sensor was engineered to collect light just as the old lenses were engineered to project it, wouldn't the old lenses would work at 100% efficiency in the digital world? Of course they would. That is the threat to the manufacturer and the reason FF is kept expensive. To keep the amateurs purchasing new lenses in their quest for better image quality. If a FF camera came out that allowed the old glass to perform at the max, the lens market would be impacted.
Again, correct me if I am wrong, but a camera system (forget the bells and whistles) is nothing more than a lens focusing light on a target collector (sensor, film, whatever) to produce a recordable image.
If the lens focus equals the collector area, you have an efficient lens/camera combination. Old lenses would not fall to the wayside, they would become 100% efficient. New optics would not be required.
Saying that FF should be left to the pros is a silly remark. why not draw the line at point and shoot and let the pros have the rest? The fact is that FF systems with mediocre glass will outperform APS-C systems with the best glass (per what I have read on various posts by FF reviewers and commentators). This has nothing to do with pro or not. And to say that most of the people here would not benefit from Ff is silly too. You should not have to make a living at photography to benefit from better technology. The whole point of amateur photography is to make the best photos possible. If the answer is FF then why not?
I personally believe that the reason for the ASP-C in the first place was to make the old lenses not as desirable as the "new lenses designed specifically for the digital camera". Although an original sensor in the FF 24x36 format would have been the most logical for the user, manufacturer profit motive was the reason we didn't have it. So, unless someone proves me wrong with some real science, I feel that there is no reason a FF couldn't be introduced that had a manufacturing cost within 20% of the current model, (this 20% being the cost differential between the small sensor and the larger). I have no basis for the numbers, but a sensor twice the size should not be a huge percentage of the total manufacturing cost.
You can stick with the APS-C if you wish. For my part, my K7 is the last APS-C I will own. The other manufacturers have offered FF to their base (though I think the prices charged would not be justified if the truth were known). If pentax doesn't follow they will lose followers including me.