[caliscouser]

Setting the cat amongst the pigeons!

What's the big deal with full frame...
when "back in the day"
we all shot full frame and
printed 8 x 10?

When "back in the day"
zoom lenses were mostly crap...
we now have some superb super-wide and out zooms
we crop in camera when shooting!

The APS-C format has matured to become a great standard!
Everything about it is accessible...full frame will be bloody expensive!

Anybody?

Michael

This could get ugly.....
I have my popcorn at the ready

[RobA_Oz]

The title is full-frame ironies...yet you don't mention any.

irony - noun

• the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.
  
• a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a result.
  
• a literary technique, originally used in Greek tragedy, by which the full significance of a character's words or actions is clear to the audience or reader although unknown to the character.

We could add another meaning like "made up to suit the circumstances", but the Mad Hatter might take exception.

[biz-engineer]

Wow , forgot to mention that u43, bridge and mobile phones are cheaper. The key word is "affordable" and is very relative of the buying power and desire of every one of us. The deal with Pentax is that all photographer who switch to Canikon for full frame when Pentax did not have one aren't here anymore. Therefore, the buying power and perception of price on remaining Pentaxians has shifted downwards. Anything is the same , food, bikes, vacation etc... from the budget to premium to luxury offers, and generally, premium is better than budget, some people are content with budget, other are content with premium and others want luxury. Truth is, Pentax offered a full frame as updgrade path when it became hard to increase the IQ of apsc, that a good thing from an engineering standpoint, although this is not fixing the issue of people habits and expectations.

For most of us, photography is a hobby, and depending on persons, hobbies and passions come and go. Typical profile is the person with passion that fade. Usually, that person start saying full frame isn't worth the money, the next step is using a smartphone for casual photos and the final step is finally leave its apsc gear in the carton box. We see this all the time. If you are a pro, the price of gear depends on what you can do with it professionally, if you are a hobbyist, price of a gear is relative to the intensity of your passion.

Do you realize that some people buy a Leica that is several times more expensive than any other brand, that's irrational, but that is.
On the other hand, some people are on the downward slope of their passion in photography and need to be reassured that camera gear isn't worth the price, it is what it is.

---------- Post added 23-12-16 at 08:17 ----------

Then there are persons who are messed up with finance. For them, buying 3 apsc lenses at $600 each ( 3 x $600 = $1800) at 3 months intervals, feels cheaper a one time purchase of a K1 body at $1800. If you are honest with yourself, add up all the money you spent on the many apsc lenses and multiple apsc camera upgrades and tell me if this is cheaper than a full frame camera with a couple of essential non overlapping lenses, chances are that you spend more money than for full frame, but you did not realize it because you spend the same amount of money in multiple chunks of smaller amounts, and it is just a bad calculation.

[D1N0]

[Rondec]

Full frame is just another format size. The lenses can be shared with APS-C -- at least for the major SLR full frame cameras out there -- and are a lot cheaper than those available for medium format. You bring up medium format, but nearly all of the medium format digital cameras on the market are crop cameras, for what its worth.

The biggest advantage that full frame has is that it has faster equivalent lenses available for it -- particularly on the wide end. People do the math all of the time, but for some reason or other they ignore the aperture. If you have an 85mm f1.4 for your full frame camera, you would need a 55mm f1 lens on your crop camera to match depth of field/angle of view available. If you want to match a 15-30 f2.8 on a K-1, you are just fresh out of luck. There is nothing in four thirds or APS-C anywhere that will match that sort of wide angle zoom with that large aperture.

It is this availability of wide aperture lenses that gives full frame its high iso advantage.

Wildlife is a tough call. If you can't get close enough to it to fill your frame, then there is no particular benefit to having a larger sensor. At the same time, if your APS-C camera has 16 megapixels or less, then you could crop your K-1 image to match it. A K3 does give a little extra length due to higher pixel density compared to a K-1 and it has a higher frame rate. I don't shoot long lenses in general and do like having better high iso available to me and the ability to shoot with shallower depth of field.

The biggest thing about the K-1 that I love is the extra dynamic range at low iso. You can push landscape images a lot without having them look noisy and this is even better if you use pixel shift.

[peterh337]

A great post by the OP He is right to raise that question.

It is much easier to make a given-performance lens for APS-C than for FF (apart from the wavelength-of-light diffraction limit on resolution, which dictates bigger diameters, but that is a very marginal issue in handheld photography).

JeffB makes great points too.

FF's shallow DOF means that landscape photography is probably mostly done at f8, even with a $2000 f2.8 lens Most lenses are sharpest at f8.

FF is just another sensor size. It is arbitrary - same as the 35mm was chosen for some then-relevant reason all those decades ago. In the digital world FF has no special meaning.

There will be a continuous quest for ever bigger sensors because more silicon = more data collected = better quality photos.

But Marketing will always dominate which is why the biggest R&D money goes into FF - because you can sell expensive cameras and get the payback. So, the K1 is a way better camera than say the K3. It has much better focus for example; something which should be completely irrelevant to the sensor size. I had the K3 for 2 years and I am amazed at the K1 each time I use it (except for the 1.8kg with the 24-70 f2.8!).

[D1N0]

FF is just another sensor size. It is arbitrary

sensor size is not arbitrary

[acoufap]

sensor size is not arbitrary

Didn’t read the whole thread but I’d like to put some of my thoughts in here.

If we stick to the old paradigm of technical sensor size based restrictions we always will see these interesting but although repeating discussions.

My fantasies about what would be a more revolutionary camera concept you can read in my new thread „Pentax FF next generation fantasy“. You’re welcome to join in there if you like. I hope it can be an anchor for some kind of new discussion.

[jlstrawman]

For most of us, photography is a hobby, and depending on persons, hobbies and passions come and go. Typical profile is the person with passion that fade. Usually, that person start saying full frame isn't worth the money, the next step is using a smartphone for casual photos and the final step is finally leave its apsc gear in the carton box. We see this all the time. If you are a pro, the price of gear depends on what you can do with it professionally, if you are a hobbyist, price of a gear is relative to the intensity of your passion.

Then there are persons who are messed up with finance. For them, buying 3 apsc lenses at $600 each ( 3 x $600 = $1800) at 3 months intervals, feels cheaper a one time purchase of a K1 body at $1800. If you are honest with yourself, add up all the money you spent on the many apsc lenses and multiple apsc camera upgrades and tell me if this is cheaper than a full frame camera with a couple of essential non overlapping lenses, chances are that you spend more money than for full frame, but you did not realize it because you spend the same amount of money in multiple chunks of smaller amounts, and it is just a bad calculation.

+1. Well-said.

[peterh337]

The sensor size is arbitrary unless you want to make use of existing lenses.

However I wonder how many "serious" DSLR photographers still use their old film SLR lenses? I would say the average time since film was abandoned is about 8 years. The modern DSLR lenses are awesomely expensive in many cases but they are very good.

It is a good point about "buying your last camera first" (and you get the same advice in many other hobbies, including aircraft ) but it isn't so simple even if you had unlimited money: a K1 is a lot bulkier and heavier than say a K3. It may not seem so on paper but the difference is very noticeable in real use.

[D1N0]

The sensor size is arbitrary unless you want to make use of existing lenses.

and want to be able to make smaller crops, shoot in lower light or better IQ, shoot with less dof, shoot with a closer perspective, want a bigger viewfinder.

[MJKoski]

Problem these days is not so much sensor size or the lack of it but wrong aspect ratio. 3:2 is totally brain dead idea. 4:3 is about right. m4/3 is on right track with this and so is 645-format.

Cropping in post is a fail compared to composing in correct aspect ratio. They are worlds apart.

[Pentax Syntax]

Nice post! To me FF is the ability to use all of my lenses in the format for which they were designed. With the K-1 that extends to APC lenses in crop mode. Some of the legacy FF lenses that had lost their luster on APC bodies shine on the K-1. I get the irony part. Full frame is in the eye of the beholder :-). For some, no sensor or film format will be big enough; for others, the ability to capture stunning images with modest equipment is the gold-standard. For most of us, this is a hobby so the goal is to have fun!

[RobA_Oz]

Problem these days is not so much sensor size or the lack of it but wrong aspect ratio. 3:2 is totally brain dead idea. 4:3 is about right. m4/3 is on right track with this and so is 645-format.

Cropping in post is a fail compared to composing in correct aspect ratio. They are worlds apart.

I have no idea what constitutes the basis for your position on aspect ratio, although we know why 3:2 came about. I don't know why the 4:3 ratio came to be a digital standard, since that was only one of many earlier negative formats.

Interestingly enough, the so-called Golden Ratio, which is both a mathematical concept and a ratio found in nature, is closer to the 3:2 ratio (actually 1.618:1).

One of the nice features of the K-1 is the in-camera cropping, limited though it is to APS-C and 24x24mm formats. Some more flexibility in future versions would make it even more versatile. There will be some who may say that this offers no advantage over cropping in post, and the disadvantage is the loss of resolution. While the latter is incontestable, though in some cases negligible, I agree that what is important about in-camera cropping, other than in APS-C format, is that it forces the photographer to see in a different format, when composing.

[mattb123]

It's cheap compared to medium format!