bradhusick
Active member
I read a lot online about how strongly people feel about whether cameras are "full frame" or not.
"Full frame" is just an invention of the movie business in the early 1900's. When Leica adopted the film for a travel camera in the 1920's it became what we know as "full frame". There's nothing magical or special about 35mm. As technology progresses there is no reason to believe that other sensor sizes cannot produce excellent results.
What matters most is the size of the individual photo receptors - you need enough area to capture enough photons to overcome the signal-to-noise ratio. At some point there aren't enough photons to give you sufficient information to make a good image. With today's technology that lower limit seems to be about 6 microns square. That's why cramming in lots of megapixels in a small area gives diminishing returns. As an example, some of my nicest images I shot on a Nikon D1 - only 2.74 megapixels! I have 11x14" prints from this camera that are stunning. The D1 has photosensors that are 11.8 microns square.
Today for an APS-C sensor size the sweet spot is about 16-20 megapixels. For 35mm sensors, it's about 20-30 megapixels. Those pixels are useful for two things - cropping or printing large. Anything over about 4 megapixels is wasted on images that you show on a computer. My iMac 27" can only display 3.69 megapixels if the image is shown full-screen. By all means if you print huge prints then go for a huge sensor (in a huge camera).
Keep this in mind when checking out new cameras. If you don't crop a lot or print larger than 11x14 on a regular basis, then the sensor size and number of megapixels should be way down the bottom on your list of criteria to evaluate new cameras.
I hope this helps us keep an open mind. There are a lot of exciting new cameras out there!
"Full frame" is just an invention of the movie business in the early 1900's. When Leica adopted the film for a travel camera in the 1920's it became what we know as "full frame". There's nothing magical or special about 35mm. As technology progresses there is no reason to believe that other sensor sizes cannot produce excellent results.
What matters most is the size of the individual photo receptors - you need enough area to capture enough photons to overcome the signal-to-noise ratio. At some point there aren't enough photons to give you sufficient information to make a good image. With today's technology that lower limit seems to be about 6 microns square. That's why cramming in lots of megapixels in a small area gives diminishing returns. As an example, some of my nicest images I shot on a Nikon D1 - only 2.74 megapixels! I have 11x14" prints from this camera that are stunning. The D1 has photosensors that are 11.8 microns square.
Today for an APS-C sensor size the sweet spot is about 16-20 megapixels. For 35mm sensors, it's about 20-30 megapixels. Those pixels are useful for two things - cropping or printing large. Anything over about 4 megapixels is wasted on images that you show on a computer. My iMac 27" can only display 3.69 megapixels if the image is shown full-screen. By all means if you print huge prints then go for a huge sensor (in a huge camera).
Keep this in mind when checking out new cameras. If you don't crop a lot or print larger than 11x14 on a regular basis, then the sensor size and number of megapixels should be way down the bottom on your list of criteria to evaluate new cameras.
I hope this helps us keep an open mind. There are a lot of exciting new cameras out there!