[rawr]

There seems to be a lack of precision in the OP's terms. Talking about 'the FF look' is at best dreamy impressionism. No one will ever share the same concept of what it means.

The material below may be useful for the OP (I think) in order to articulate better what some of the technical aspects of 'the look' may include:

Digital Camera Sensor Sizes: How it Influences Your Photography
Understanding Digital Camera Sensors
Understanding Camera Lenses

and generally:
Digital Photography Tutorials

And anyway, aside from 'the look', this whole gear discussion misses other valuable elements of desirable images, including stuff like 'the subject', 'the unique moment', etc. All of which may never be gear related.

[Clavius]

...Another thread about people debating their personal tastes...

[Jasvox]

...Another thread about people debating their personal tastes...

Not only that, but the bizilionth one covering the exact same stale, worn out and beaten to death topic.

Jason

[TOUGEFC]

Well after reading all that, I might go bang my head against the wall for the next hour...:ugh:

[Class A]

Different formats do not imply different looks as long as the change in AOV (cropping reduces AOV) and sharpness/DOF (smaller formats need more enlargement to achieve the same output size) are compensated by using equivalent lenses and equivalent camera settings.

I recommend the "Eqiuvalence" essay by Joseph James for the theory.

In practice, some crop format lenses do not exist so some FF images cannot be reproduced on APS-C. The smaller format is also more demanding on lens sharpness and AF accuracy (because of the higher enlargement factor). On FF, one typically sees more lens vignetting. Various implementation details (e.g., micro lenses) may further contribute to a different FF look.

So in theory crop formats are not disadvantaged per se, but in practice some differences do exist. I agree that bigger formats have their appeal but it certainly is no B&W situation as in "cheap snapshot" vs "pleasing photograph".

[bobmaxja]

...Another thread about people debating their personal tastes...

I agree with you 100%.

[Karl Stevens]

the analogy would be that of producing a chocolate bar containing 10g of cocoa and weighing 20g, and producing a chocolate bar containing 10g of cocoa and weighing 30g.

My original analogies were correct. It seems that manufacturing is just one more thing you don't understand.

Since you seem to claim to understand cooking, here is one involving cooking:

It's like making a 20 gram chocolate bar, versus a 40 gram chocolate bar, with the exact same recipe. You use less of everything for the 20 gram version, and so it costs less. With silicon, APS-C sensors don't use a different process (recipe), they just use a smaller die (mould.) Using less material makes it cost less.

If you still think you're right, then please take some EE courses, so as to avoid embarrassing yourself further.

[Parallax]

Comments and/or questions directed at mika will not get a response. He will no longer be participating in this particular thread so in fairness let's continue the conversation without addressing him specifically.

[Ray Pulley]

I don't buy that marketing propaganda. The cost to produce the bigger sensor should actually be lower than the cost to produce the smaller sensor. The smaller sensor has greater miniaturization than the larger sensor.

Are you serious?

Do you have a clue as to how sensors are made?

Just a couple of points that you would be well served to investigate before you make an even bigger fool of yourself:

Sensors are made on wafers of a fixed size/area. This means that you get many times more APS sensors out of a wafer than FF.

It is not a given that miniaturization is greater on the smaller sensor. In many cases it is very similar, and can be the same, but that is not important either way as no matter how much you shrink the features, the area of each sensor size is fixed. So, while you might have more pixel density, you still get EXACTLY as many sensors out of one wafer, which means you get no cost advantage.

Defects are a function of the wafer area, and the same exact yield of defects per area of wafer will result in far fewer FF sensors than APS.

Ray

NOTE: Sorry I missed the "Mika is gone from this thread" post before I posted.

[drugal]

My personal take on this discussion mirrors what a lot of the other posters have been saying in this thread and the last one.

I see the FF vs APS-C thing as just a trade off. For me the trade off is generally cheaper/smaller bodies for APS-C vs generally cheaper/better lenses for FF for equivalent AOV/DOF. This is probably because I don't really shoot telephoto or macro (<- yet!) and keep thinking that the over 1 stop difference in DOF could be useful.

My understanding of FF was that it became (the most?) popular size in the film days because it was a good compromise between negative size and camera portability. It seems that APS-C may be good compromise in the digital era because you can still get reasonably small dof if that's what you need, but you get it in a reasonably small package with good image quality.

My DA 21/40 makes a pretty small package compared to say an FA 31/FA 50 in weight (~1/2 lb vs ~1 lb) and I assume size.
Looking at Nikon cameras, for example, the D7000 is 1.5 lb and the D700 is 2.2 lb. So for a ballpark figure I'd say a Pentax FF would be 1.5x the weight of a K-5.

I also agree with the other posters who have in essence said that aps-c/ff cameras are just tools, what really matters is what the person behind the viewfinder does with it. For now, I think the price/performance of my current APS-C setup is perfect for me, but it is fun to lust after a FF that I probably would never buy. After reading all of the posts in the two threads, I can totally see why FF would be a better choice for people in a different situation.

[Anvh]

Exactly. Because it is cropped you don't get the full range of defocus ranges in any given image. With APS-C, because of the 1.5x decompression, you only get a fraction of the defocus ranges that you would normally get with FF. Is that making sense to you?

Just forget about the 1.5x decompression since that isn't true when it comes to the DOF because you're forgetting the COC (circle of confusion) which is smaller for APS-C.
Also like said you're using different focal lengths for different situations because the sensor is smaller so it's going nowhere this thread...

[Brangdon]

Sense? No, none whatsoever I'm afraid. Cropped just means cut-out. If I take a print on a piece of paper that was taken with a FF camera and not cropped in the printing, and then I cut-out the middle to what I would have gotten with an APS-C frame (like the blue & red boxes above), then I've got a smaller piece of paper with less of the original image, but what is left of the original image is exactly the same as it was before. What has become compressed or decompressed?

I think he was saying that the parts of the image cropped out, would likely have elements of the scene that were at different distances from the lens. These would be more or less out of focus and blurred, and so would contribute to a more three-dimensional look. Without those parts of the scene, the range of distances included in the image is less, and that's part of what he means by "compressed".

If you counter that by using a wider angle, or backing off, then other factors kick in. The upshot is that FF gives a unique look.

If I've understood what he's saying correctly, then I think he's right up to the point where he seems to feel that the FF look is the only valid look in photography. That would be a personal value judgement.

[alohadave]

Actually FF frames are 2x the area of FF frames. (The diagonal is 1.5x.) So APS-C yield is 2x that of FF yield, before throwing out the bad chips, which skews the balance of APS-C to more like 3x.

Good call, thanks for catching that.

[pz1fan]

This must be the weirdest thread that I have read in a long time. I am not really sure why mika is so upset about.

Half the thread is frustration about full frame cost. But it's covered better in this thread:

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-news-rumors/157594-some-thoughts-p...ml#post1662520

[Wheatfield]

Finally, a Canadian who is more arrogant and obdurate than I am. I didn't think it possible.
I wonder how he'd react to P&PR.