Originally posted by RobA_Oz I'm getting more than a little irked by the constant use of the term "Full Frame" or "FF" when referring to the conventional 35mm film format. After all, the word "full" means "able to contain no more", "as much as possible" or something similar. If that is so, what, then, do we make of the so-called Medium Format (MF) sizes? Should they be referred to as "Over-Full Frame"?
I suspect that the FF term arises in reference to the film era, when the Olympus (and other) "Half Frame" cameras were made, but I also suspect that the FF term is also used now to give a cachet to the 35mm format sensor that it doesn't really deserve, as desirable as it might be for some people. The 35mm film format is obviously not as far as you can go in sensor size, because (at least theoretically) there is no limit to the eventual size of digital sensors.
There are perfectly good arguments for using the 35mm format as a standard against which to judge the qualities of smaller sensors, which are often, I suspect disparagingly, referred to as "crop sensors" (is that like "crop circles" - well, they're silly things too, aren't they?). However, those same arguments can be transferred both up and down the sensor size range - APS-C versus 4/3rds versus 1" etc etc; Pentax 645D (Kodak) 44mm x 33mm versus 35mm format etc etc. Clearly, there is no single absolute standard, which the term "Full Frame" implies for itself. In short, "Full Frame" is a Mad Hatter use of a term, to attach any meaning you want to give to it - the sort of thing marketers do all the time.
Of course, the term "35mm" is, itself, misleading, but that's another story.
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Not a bad post, but (forgive me for saying so,) slightly pedantic, IMO. I think almost everyone who inhabits these fora knows that "FF" or "Full Frame" is just another way of saying "35mm film format," or some variation of that. It's just a label - the 'full' does not signify 'absolute' or 'best'.
I think it stuck because the dominant format when digital hit the scene was 35mm film, and the first few DSLRs were aps-c - thus the comparison to the 'Full Film Frame'
that the lenses being shot on these new aps-c DSLRs were originally designed for.
Frankly I think "Full Frame" is an easier term to deal with - when I hear '35mm' I immediately think of focal length, not the film format/Sensor size.
It would be nice to have an APS-x designation for it though, much like APS-C (1.5 or 1.6x) or APS-H (1.3x). (Maybe APS-F?
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Folks used to make this same type of argument about the term 'Prime' to describe a fixed focal length lens, because that's not the original meaning of a 'Prime' lens - but it became the ad-hoc definition after a while, and now it's the accepted label for 'fixed focal length lens'.
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