Originally posted by fuent104 jsherman999, that was a great post. I agree with a lot of what you said. Call me crazy, but I tend to see aps-c as a detour in the course of photography. 24x36mm has been a standard for many decades, whether people were shooting with rangefinders, slrs, or point and shoot cameras. It seems to me that aps-c was a compromise that was necessary because of the limitations of technology, not an aesthetic choice.
Ok, Crazy.
4x5" was a standard, too. So was 2x3". Then 120 roll film. Then small format 35mm. And there were quite a few half-frame 35mm cams, too.
Just like in film, increasing sensor area improves image quality, except that our digital "film" has higher resolution than most color films. The 35mm was the format that was *just good enough*, and that's why it took off like it did. Just like now, there was always larger formats if you needed more image quality, but 35mm out-resolved most of the reproduction media, and so was good enough. In digital, APS-c is going to be the format that is *just good enough*. You can already make much better enlargements from APS/c than you could from equivalent ISO color film. I think you'll see a slow slide to mostly APS-c and MF digital cameras, with CaNikon maintaining a single FF body for people who "just gotta have it", and are willing to pay. It will be like Ford and Chevy funding race cars - they don't make money on the races, but on the people who buy their regular cars because they won a race last year.
Remember that, unlike film, the cost of production of sensors does not go up linearly with the area. It used to go up as the cube of the area; that's probably dropped off, but still is probably more than the square of the area. Until the *average* purchaser of DSLRs begins making prints larger than 16" on the long side (at current pixel densities), the FF will be an
artistic choice, not a technical one.
Quote: I have confidence that the camera company's engineers will find a way to make ff technology smaller and lighter within the next few years. Just because ff cameras are larger now doesn't mean they will be forever.
In fact, size is another reason why I think some of us would prefer to have a Pentax ff camera; they have always considered it a priority to keep their lenses to smaller dimensions. I would like to avoid carrying and using gigantic lenses.
They could make the *cameras* smaller, but the lenses are what they are. You want FF, you gotta tote the barge. You want a certain FOV, you gotta carry a lens that's 1.5x bigger ( gross approximation; I've seen 200mm lenses smaller than some 135s, but on the whole a 200mm lens is larger than a 135mm one ). Even in the Pentax line, a 200mm is bigger than a 135mm of the same aperture. There's no absolute reason FF cameras have to be so freaking big; it's partially about balancing with the lenses. My T90 is a BEAST compared to my K-5; the F1n with motor drive was as heavy and nearly as large as a 5D. And nobody wants to spend the money on a 5DMkII and have it look just like a 60D.
I suspect that part of the size difference is in the computer power spent on autofocus - you gotta have room for those chips, and probably heat sinks, too.