Full frame

I believe the lenses made for APS-C only are a great big con.

Why should a lens which has do do less work on the edges cost as much or more than a FF lens?

I really think the whole APS-C business was OK, when Digital started.
But this days, I can not see why a FF sensor should really be so much more expensive. I believe Pentax and some of the other manufacturers release more APS-C lenses and then suddenly, a FF camera is on the marked and the user is expected to buy FF lenses which should have been made all along.

Regards, Horst

I can see, why one would use a super fast lens for a portrait to reduce the dof.
But otherwise there is really no need to.

Lets assume in the Film days the fastest lens you had was a f1.4 lens.
you used a 100ASA film. There was not much you could do for available light, but use your lens wide open, or use a tripod, or get 1 more F-stop by pushing it in the development stage. This you could only do, if all the frames on the film had to be pushed.

Today with digital however , if you have a f4 lens, you just crank up the ASA setting on your camera . so 200 ASA give you f2.8, 400ASA=f2, 800 ASA = f1.4, 1600 ASA=f1. with modern cameras ASA settings of 1600 ore more are still noise free. If you go further, you may get some more noise, but faster films had the same problem.

So really especially with non portrait lenses. Speed is not that the main factor.

Regards, Horst

Fast lenses aren't just for higher light gathering they are used for shallower depth of fields.

I guess..... f2.8 on APS-C is sort of equivalent as f4 on FF anyway when it comes to DOF........

The lenses may be the same size but have you seen the size and felt the weight of the Nikon and Canon full-frame camera bodies?

You'd need to be very dedicated to ultimate image quality, whatever that might be,to lug one over the hills or carry one round on holiday. I can see that for low-light work, say in a concert hall or studio, there could be considerable benefits. Lovely bokeh for portraiture. Producing giant prints, as well.

Horses for courses, I guess.

Have you seen the size and weight of the Sony A7/R full frame camera bodies?

Smaller and lighter than my K-5II.

Not allowed to talk about my A7 but with the Pentax 50mm attached it's almost pocketable, almost.

Are you sure?

The Canon 6D is actually 10g lighter than the k-3 and the Nikon D750 50g heavier.....

Yep that old fashioned mirror box takes up a tonne of space compared to the mirrorless equivalent cameras.

bwlchmawr wrote:

When Nikon released the Photomic F, It was a lot larger and heavier than the Spotmatic or the equivalent Minolta and other cameras.
However this didn't stop people buying the Nikon's.
Especially the professionals.
Some of the Nikon and Canon FF are relatively old developments.
I am sure Pentax will be able to make a FF the same size and weight as the K3.

Regards, Horst

I also used to think that - intuitively is seems right. However recently I'd read a very convincing argument (which I didn't bookmark) as to why the pixel size is not as important as it would seem to be. Something to do with the way CMOS sensors work - larger pixel has a bigger capacitance so each incident photon will increase the charged voltage by a lesser amount than for a smaller pixel. So the limitation is actually the sensitivity of the readout circuitry.

With regards to full frame lenses having to be huge...
The Pentax 50mm 1.7 is a full frame lens and is not exactly huge. With a mirrorless body the whole package doesn't have to be very big at all, depending on what sort of lens you want to bolt to it.

Also if Pentax would get rid of the useless inbuilt flash, then the whole contraption would be somewhat smaller.

The 40mm M pancake lens is FF and very small.

Regards, Horst

It may be useless to you but I (and maybe many others) find it very useful

It certainly is ... The amazing Pentax wireless flash system, using the pop-up as an instantly available trigger, is a superb feature I will never want to lose.