Full Frame.

That's assuming that they want to; there's a wide range of price-points in FF DSLRs just as there are with smaller-sensor ones.

The thing about FF sensors is that they run counter to the advantages of chip (read sensor) fabrication. Most of the improvements in silicon manufacture have been related to making a smaller chip by packing it more tightly. This has various advantages, making smaller, faster, more reliable chips easier to produce with better yield and reduced wastage and therefore lower cost.

It's Moore's law in action, you spend millions (tens, hundreds or maybe thousands of) making a better manufacturing process so that every chip you make costs 5 cents less than it otherwise would and then make millions more of them than you previously could. Smaller chips fit better on the wafer, are more resilient, run faster, use less power and help drive development to even smaller chips...

This makes FF sensors (about twice the area of APS-C) much less attractive to silicon manufacturers, much less cost effective and therefore much more expensive. They'd rather reduce the sensor size whilst increasing pixel count because they work in microns and not line pairs per millimeter.

If you have big buckets of cash you can get any silicon fabricated anyway you want, you just have to persuade the fabricator that it's better for their bottom line than churning out a million USB memory chips every month. Some have minimum order quantities in the millions, booked several months in advance with the next window six months later if your development slips.

Oh and if you mess it up you've invested a huge pile of cash in useless product, have to fix it and then wait for the next window to have another go (by which point your underlying technology is probably out of date) and you have to start again...

I've been there and it's very humbling when a manufacturer tells you they can't be arsed making your product (actually can't be arsed to discuss making it unless you want 100K every week)!

Clearly though it is viable to produce smaller runs of large sensors at a suitably high price - otherwise cameras such as the 645D or Leica S2 wouldn't exist.

If 36x24 becomes a more common format on DSLRs, larger production runs will be enabled, logically leading to lower prices. Maybe the difference won't quite go down to be directly proportional to size, but it should be well below the factor of 20 that I remember being quoted a few years back.

MF sized sensors are viable at much higher cost (presumably partly/mostly why the 645D costs about £7K compared to a 645AF at around £2K). The rest of the additional electronics (processors/memory/LCDs) are fairly easy to fabricate or buy-in, but the sensors have to be effectively flawless over a much larger area. Obviously if the premium is high enough, the viability increases to compensate for the cost/risk.

36x24 becomes more viable on increased volume, the snag is whether this is a big enough jump compared to APS-C to persuade enough people to buy it? Canon were first, Nikon eventually had to join them (despite saying they wouldn't make a FF body) to compete, Sony are next (after buying Minolta).

Canon & Nikon were driven by pro sales, Sony presumably have lots of cash. The question is whether Pentax have enough users who are likely to buy an FF body when there are various other options or enough cash to build that user base? Or would they rather concentrate on the 645D?

Well debates over the manufacturing economics of sensors of varying sixes aside, Masaya Maeda, Managing Director and Chief Executive, Image Communication Products Operations at Canon says the future of semi-pro DSLRs is probably full-frame

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/0336328811/cp-2013-interview-with-canons-masaya-maeda

With a general trend towards FF for semi-pro DSLRs then the volume will certainly be there.

In the end it all comes down to price and availabiliy, as johna said moores law comes ito play in that processor speed doubles every two years (18 months in reality) due to minitiarrisation and the number if transisitors you can fit on a chip. As we have seen 24 megapixel aps c sensors coming in to production the smaller pixel sensors get faded out. Once the price point bcomes consumer level on FF sensors most manufacturers will swap over to only making FF sensor bodies.

At the moment most consumer dslr buyers dont know what full frame is or means which therein lies a market ready to exploit with technology and introduce new lens ranges to. If you where manufacturer of camera bodies why would you want to ignore this new market? As I have said before SLR manufacturers apart from Sony are reliant upon sensor manfacturers just like computer manufacturers are reliant upon CPU manufacturers who will want to reduce costs by reducing inventory and simplifying product range.

I have said it before APS C has very little life left in, it has an inevitability about it, like pentium 1 2 3 and 4 processors before. Technology moves so fast it could be even sooner. Of course this could all change in the blink of an eye if some disruptive technology comes along to the sensor industry like SSD to the hard drive market or the Smartphone to the Sat Nav industry which deletes existing technology in a flash.

I'm curious as to why you find APS-C any more temporary than all the smaller sensors that also exist? If you apply the same logic to 4/3 and APS-C why not conclude equally well that all 4/3 sensors will be phased out in favour of APS-C?

Hi John

4/3 i believe is a consortium project including manufacturers fuji, olympus, panasonic, leica, kodak, sanyo and sigma amongst others so has a different future to APS C as they are literally supplying their own sensors to their own bodies. 4/3 could potentislly fill the gap left behind by the decreasing APS C market.

I think as mobile phone sensors improve and quality of photos improve this will also impact the APS market like it has the compact market. Chinese manufacturer Superpix has already been making APS C sensors and it wont be long until they want to venture into the full frame market, reducing prices even more, making them an attractive proposition for camera manufacturers.

The whole DSLR market only has a finite life before something else comes along and disrupts it. Digital disrupted the film photography industry, the mobile phone has changed the photography industry, who could have predicted that just 20 years ago? Smartphones have destroyed the sat nav industry in an even shorter amount of time. Tablets have disrupted the laptop market. We still take photos, we still communicate and we still surf the net just using different tools.

My view is that FF sensors will drop in price, but the future is still with APSC and smaller. Larger sensors will remain a minority and specialist segment.

Just think why large format cameras vanished (almost) - it wasn't because they became more expensive but because film quality improved and (almost) everyone could get the quality they required from medium format. The same thing happened to MF when film quality improved further and it became possible to get adequate quality from the smaller FF or 35mm format.

This lesson from history is that the majority are going to going to buy the smallest, cheapest and most portable format that delivers their quality requirements. We are already there with APSC and with sensor quality continuing to increase it seems bizarre to consider there will be a mass movement back to larger formats.

But what is missing is a proper commitment to APSC or whatever smaller format is adopted. If that is going to be the future it is time to commit to it and optimise the camera for that size, much though I love the old K mount compatibility that lens registration distance is designed for the 35mm format and over sized for APSC. It is time we had a 'proper' minimum sized APSC body with new registration distance minimised for APSC mirror clearance which will give real benefits on wide angle lenses - and an adapter (i.e. simple extension tube) to fit the old K lenses.

I'm going going to get splinters in my bum sitting on the fence on this topic

I'm going to buy a K-5iis. Had a go with one yesterday and it is just fabulous. ISO 3200 indoors and not a hint of noise, lovely detailed images. I don't think I will need anythig better than this and I want to be able to use my existing lenses, so full frame is not for me.

Regards
David

Take a look at next week's AP which compares the K5IIs with Nikon D600 ( and Fuji x-pro1)and concludes that the FF Nikon has only a slight advantage over the APS C rivals. At first glance the various illustrations in the article indicate that you have to indulge in extreme pixel peeping to discern a difference using 100% crops. I suspect that there will be virtually no discernible qualitative difference below 100%. The AP also comments that APS-C bodies tend to be smaller and lighter and implies that this coupled with the expense of New FF lenses must lead one to consider whether moving to FF is worth it! Overall I take the article to be an endorsement of the K5IIs and the only thing stopping me from acquiring one is the possibility of a new Pentax APS-C camera being announced in the next few months.

I have a friend who exchanged his Pentax K10D for a Sony FF camera. I see no difference in image quality in his photos and he now pines for his Pentax and is always jealous of the colours from my K5!

I have avoided splinters by sitting on a metal fence.


Oh wait it's barbed wire........ OUCH!!!!

Well the difference between K5-IIs and K5-II is down to pixel peeping for many, so does that not put it in the same boat as FF v. APSC.


Anyhow FF brings other changes, not just IQ, ushc as DOF and feild of view with certain lenses.

I'd like an FF Cam to use my A50/1.2 with as one example. I have no yearning for FF in terms of IQ though.