It's about the compositional aspect of the shooting experience. I never stitch, it's not a pleasing shooting experience to me. I'm all about one-shot images. Oh well, I usually make more than one shot (one to make sure, and then one more to make sure even more, and maybe the wind was blowing, one more, and didn't the light change to the better? One more), but the final image is one picked out of the set. That's how I personally like images to be made.I guess my point is that I have read on many occasions people stating that having a smaller sensor is allowing them to have larger movements when that to me makes absolutely no sense when the limitation is the image circle, unless of course you are flat stitching, I am just trying to get my head around Anders preference for a certain sensor size, I guess it is only that sensors ability to deal with shift rather than the fact that it can shift further.
Anyway, when I compose with a given field of view I want to have a certain movement range and not worry about limitations. 70mm IC with a 54x41mm sensor I think is not a pleasing range to work with, too soon you hit the IC limit, no fun. I think 90mm IC is okay, especially on the wider angles, but I like more. By reducing the sensor size slightly, to 49x37mm, I feel more freedom. Reducing even further to 44x33 is overkill on 90mm image circles, but then the 70mm IC Rodenstocks start having okay range (23/28/35mm).
I think my preference is hard to understand if you assume that you use the same lenses. That is say a we have a Rodenstock 32mm and we use either a large or a smaller sensor, but I don't see it like that. First choose sensor size, then choose lenses to match so you get the field of views you want in one shot. I'd use a Schneider Digitar 28 instead of the Rodenstock 32 for a 44x33 (unfortunately that is a no-go today due to color cast issues, but if sensor tech was there... today it would be the Rodenstock 28mm and then only with the Dalsa, I don't think Sony's CMOS is good enough with it).
Of course if you already have the lenses then you will want to use the sensor that gives you the most suitable field of views for your current lens set. On the other hand you generally only need to get another wide if you step down in sensor size. If you shoot architecture you may not be able to, as there's always seems to not be enough wide angle in that case, but I as a landscape photographer has that luxury as I don't need the widest of the wide.
If we look at tilt-shift lenses for Canon the 24mm has 67mm image circle, translating that to 54x41mm would be a 40mm with 110mm image circle, but the 40mm Rodenstock is only 90mm so you get a little bit less flexibility there. I started tilt-shift with the Canon and I come to appreciate having that large movement range. It felt odd when moving to technical cameras that the movement flexibility is often actually less than on my DSLR, so I carefully chose a system where I wouldn't feel like I was downgrading flexibility and compositional enjoyment.
However if it's all about the end result and we don't really care about shooting experience, having the largest possible sensor covering as much as possible of the lens image circle is the most practical of course. You can always crop.
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