[normhead]

I regularly use medium format, 35mm film (aka FF) and APS-C cameras and I don't worry about any of this at all. I am far too busy producing brilliant photographs.

Exactly..... if you use a lot of formats, you don't sit down with a piece of paper to figure this out. You know from experience what format you want for what job, and you reach for the one that's appropriate. It's like basketball. It's gotta be muscle memory. If you have to think about it, you're too slow.

And if you don't have exactly the right format for what you want, you make do with what you have.

[redrockcoulee]

I regularly use medium format, 35mm film (aka FF) and APS-C cameras and I don't worry about any of this at all. I am far too busy producing brilliant photographs.

Same here but I can add large format and subtract the word brillant.

And with large format pinhole shots DoF is not a question. f352 anyone ?

[normhead]

Same here but I can add large format and subtract the word brillant.

And with large format pinhole shots DoF is not a question. f352 anyone ?

The joke is folks talking FF and APS_c claiming FF is "large format". It's kind of like some one comparing a small car to a slightly larger car, and bring up a semi cab in the conversation.

[john.margetts]

Same here but I can add large format and subtract the word brillant.

And with large format pinhole shots DoF is not a question. f352 anyone ?

I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek with the word 'brilliant' - I was mostly trying to imply the 'get out there and take some pictures' attitude.

[JensE]

I'm putting this as a sticky on my desk top, so i never have to write it out again

Thanks for this excellent summary, I hope giving the example will indeed help to make this topic more accessible.

I'll take your invitation on

anyone who'd like to suggest improvements feel free

seeing that circumstances for 'better noise performance' are not explicitly mentioned, and are still a point of confusion, maybe you could put this way:

"The advantage to the full frame sensor is that it has one stop of narrow Depth of Field that cannot be taken on APS-C, and only for those narrow Depth of Field exposures, the sensor receives more total light and has a one stop low light performance advantage."

What's missing in your writeup is a discussion of dynamic range. If you assume the same number of pixels, the full frame pixels are bigger and able to hold a larger maximum amount of charge, while maintaining a similar, but not equal, low-charge noise floor in combination with good amplifiers/AD converters. Thus the dynamic range that the sensor can capture increases. As can be seen in measurements, this is not always a full stop, but noticeable.

[normhead]

The K-5 Dynamic Range was so good, and Canon FF dynamic range on their FF was so poor, that I'm hesitant to go there. But Dynamic Range of Sony Sensors has always favoured the larger photo wells. I'm just not sure that's accurate across the full range of sensor producers. But many of us are looking forward to better than K-5 Dynamic Range on a 36 MP sensor. The other issue with that is I frequently don't have my histogram going from one side of the window to the other. I am not using the full dynamic range of even my K-3 which is .7 less than my K-5. There will be many situations where More Dynamic Range will not be a factor. But for us sunset shooters, its a real thing. Just not a full time thing.

Images taken in full sun with heavy shadows are still going to be crappy pictures, even with more dynamic range.

[todd]

I regularly use medium format, 35mm film (aka FF) and APS-C cameras and I don't worry about any of this at all. I am far too busy producing brilliant photographs.

I don't think about these technical details much either. I often read these discussions and appreciate the technical details as much as I can (minus the extreme delivery methods that get disbursed by some in the process), but for me the lure of FF has long been for the lens flexibility in combination with that 'marginally better' low light ability. For example FA31 is my favorite lens and favorite normal FoV on crop sensor. It has been a pleasure to use on crop with the 42 degree FoV, and on FF it will be either a 60 degree FoV (think DA21) or the 42 degree FoV, whenever I may want that, though I will most often just crop it myself when I want to in post. FA31 or any lens with that FoV at F1.8 on FF is not possible on a crop sensor and I've shot FA31 on film enough to know it's going to gain significant (to me) versatility on the K-1, especially if the AF is up to snuff.

[JensE]

I'm one of those who look forward to upgrade a K-5 in almost any respect of interest to me with crop mode hopefully on par or better already. Sony has been able to maintain a low noise floor even across a range of amplification levels (ISO levels), much better than Canon in their sensors. If you look at the Sony sensor based Nikons of the past few years, there is a clear correlation between sensor size and dynamic range, and similar to low-light performance, it is good to have when you need it and can apply it. More often in (extreme) wide angle shots than at the long end.

[redrockcoulee]

I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek with the word 'brilliant' - I was mostly trying to imply the 'get out there and take some pictures' attitude.

Oh I got that.

[Ikarus]

"The advantage to the full frame sensor is that it has one stop of narrow Depth of Field that cannot be taken on APS-C, and only for those narrow Depth of Field exposures, the sensor receives more total light and has a one stop low light performance advantage."

Also, at the other end of the scale, since the light intensity is smaller for a given equivalent exposure by a factor of 1.5^2, the FF sensor provides ~1 stop of extra headroom at the equivalent diffraction-limited f-stop.

[osv]

That's a little twisted. Fact is:
[LIST=1][*]Whatever sensor size you use, you get the same DoF control, that is what equivalency rules of thumb tells us:

1. on a larger sensor you can gain a tiny bit of less DoF on one extreme end if you want, but at the same time lose the option to get that tiny bit of more DoF.
2. on a smaller sensor you can gain a tiny bit of more DoF on one extreme end if you want, but at the same time lose the option to get that tiny bit of less DoF.

no, with bigger sensors you get more control over dof, because there can be more usable aperture stops on the lens.

i'll repeat the obvious yet again... if i want to shoot at the edge of visible diffraction, it's ~f/8 on crop and ~f/11 on ff, so i can't even use f/11 on crop.

that is real-world applicability... there is no loss of dof anywhere with ff, unless perhaps you want to ruin pq with an f/32 aperture stop, and your lens doesn't have that stop.

[normhead]

Also, at the other end of the scale, since the light intensity is smaller for a given equivalent exposure by a factor of 1.5^2, the FF sensor provides ~1 stop of extra headroom at the equivalent diffraction-limited f-stop.

By the time you hit ƒ22 where APS-c really starts to degenerate, but ƒ32 on FF isn't any better, which is what you would need to match DoF. the only reason you'd probably ever shoot at ƒ22 or ƒ32 would be for DoF. But the thing is since you lose one at the bottom of the scale you might expect to gain one at the top. You don't. Over all in terms of what you can do with the camera FF is probably the most versatile. The APS_c however is so close in abilities that on most images it's pretty much moot which you use. And there are the things APS-c has going for it FF does.t. So you will always be faced with a trade off.

There was a time when the D800 came out when that wasn't true. A D800 in crop mode was the same as a K-5 or D7000, so anything you had with APS-c you could have with FF. With Canon's 51 MP sensor that is true again when compared to the K-3. Anytime you have the same pixel density on both systems, FF will clearly have every advantage with no disadvantages beside size and weight.

But size and weight differences can still be considerable, and a prohibitive disadvantage to many. A camera is only useful for most of us, if we are willing to bring it with us. And for a huge percentage of the population APS_c is already too big. People pay the big bucks for those 4/3 systems, just to cut down on the weight they have to manage.

[Parallax]

Exactly..... if you use a lot of formats, you don't sit down with a piece of paper to figure this out. You know from experience what format you want for what job, and you reach for the one that's appropriate.

Exactly. It's the same principle as focal length equivalence.
If you have more than one format you know how each performs under given conditions. The equivalence numbers are meaningless.
If you have only one format, the equivalence numbers are meaningless.

[Ikarus]

By the time you hit ƒ22 where APS-c really starts to degenerate

Where did you get that number from? See this page and this for evidence that the effects kick in much sooner. With my APS-C gear, I usually try to stay below f/11 if at all possible.

[normhead]

Where did you get that number from? See this page and this for evidence that the effects kick in much sooner. With my APS-C gear, I usually try to stay below f/11 if at all possible.

Diffraction kicks in at ƒ5.6 on both APS-c and Full Frame but just from my experience talking to other users etc. I find ƒ22 rarely useable on APS_c kind o like a high ISO image on any platform. FF users have told me the upper limit on FF is ƒ32,

But you can see the effects of diffraction on any test chart.


The sharpness numbers go up, then as the aperture continues to get smaller, then at some point the numbers start going down. Some of that may be lens design, most of it is due to diffraction. On most lenses peek resolution is at ƒ5.6 and diffraction takes them down from there. I believe Falconeye explained recently that the absolute best lenses peek quite bit sooner than ƒ5.6 and explained why that is, and though it made sense at the time, I can't remember any of it.

But what I proposed there, is that the curve continues down, looking at that chart to ƒ16 then ƒ22, and that on any APS-c camera I've owned ƒ22 has been spotty at best in terms of IQ. I do have a few ƒ22 images I like but it's rare. FF user have too me FF cameras each that point at ƒ32. SO this is just people's experience, not anything scientific.