Full Frame for the Insecure?

I suppose FF has traditionally had a lot better high ISO performance, but now APSC has caught up (almost) a lot more Paps will be out there toting D7000s.

Funny I was discussing this with my landscape enthusiast pal at work this afternoon, I was up in the highlands a few weeks back, and actually found myself using the 18-55 kit(!) & 55-300 far more than the Sigma UWA, it was just too wide for most shots, that surprised me... so again FF for me? Guess not

Cabstar- I knew there must of been a reason for it. Now I know!

I thought the 1D was FF- if not it seems very expensive.

I was in Rome in April and there was a guy at the Trevi Fountain with his family sporting a D3, massive lens and a full Lee style ND grad kit hanging off the front of it! Without being too judgemental he looked an utter ****.

His bag was bigger than my suitcase.

Whilst a FF Pentax would be an interesting proposition (and right now seems more likely than before Ricoh) I would like it to be about the same size as the K5.

Not much to ask and a price of around £1500 thanks.

DoF is the same for a particular focal length, aperture and subject distance regardless of format size.

With cropped sensors if you want to have the same framing you need to increase you distance to subject and therefore DoF.

It is the increase in distance from the subject that means that for an equivalent field of view you gain 1 stop DoF.

So the gain in DoF is really an increase in subject distance if you maintain the same framing and that is why you get a change in DoF, you are focusing further than you would normally have to. If you want smaller DoF you need to be closer to your subject for any given focal length. Larger formats allow you to be closer as the FoV is wider.

Any less confusing?

Hello Pentaxians, technicalities apart, those of us coming from the romantic and beautiful era of 35mm film, have a hidden and burning desire to own a full frame DSLR. Here is my own experience. Circa 1978, holed up at the Edinburgh Railway Station due to a raging blizzard, I starting moving around with my Pentax K1000 SE. A guy with a Hasselblad walks up to me smiling. Points his camera to the beautiful stained glass dome and asks me to have a look at the ground glass. I was stunned at the beauty of that view his camera showed. I vowed to buy one. Alas never had that much money. My esteemed friends, a full frame DSLR has a magic of its own - nothing to do with snob value. And technically it [b]is[/b] superior too in every way - don't fool yourselves. Reason why I have set my mind on the medium format Pentax DSLR. Good souls, please help me with a donation!

All FF would mean to me would be I'd get more bits of litter etc which I hadn't noticed, on the edges of the photo and therefore spend more time cloning it out that taking snaps

Regards

On the contrary Stan, you'd have a much clearer view through the viewfinder. So you'd have no excuse for not spotting those bits of detritus! I can't understand why you'd think FF would cause a problem, unless you mean your lenses would have a wider fov, in which case, use a longer lens

I tried a longer lens 300mm and it just looked 300 times worse than my 10mm
No, seriously its the ability to spot a photo I need to work on. I'd really like to see what a photographer sees and maybe it will happen but I'm happy learning the ins and outs of the camera and ruining what I've caught with photoshop and if I get a pleasing photograph that is a bonus.

Regards

As a working professional, I needed my Hasselblad 6x6 and Mamiya 6x7 because clients would need 6ft and more prints for mural and large display. Also, magazine picture editors often liked to see large format transparencies because they were incapable of interpreting 35mm.

For full frame and more to mean anything useful, you would have to need the definition it gives. If you only ever view on a 1650px width monitor, then any pixels beyond that must be discarded. If you have a camera that gives 6000px width, that will suffice for prints at 300dpi of 20 inches width.

If you do not view on bigger monitors or print larger than that, then the extra sensor size is simply adding pixels that must be interpreted in software and discarded. Why? Cropping? We all now have nice versatile zoom lenses.

The only reason, if you do not need the surplus pixels, to pay for them, is the same reason you buy a car capable of 200mph in a country with a 70mph (or 80) limit. It's a man thing

Lemmy, that's not true at all. The difference in DOF and therefore the 'depth' of pictures is perfectly visible at web sizes. I appreciate this isn't the be-all and end-all of most people's photography, but if dreamy portraits and 'art' shots are your thing, it might be. And the big viewfinder thing can't be argued against. It's just better to have a big viewfinder.

And larger sensors do not mean more pixels - the D700 having a lot less than the APSC sized Canon 7D for example. And less than the K20D even!

I am quite happy to stick with APSC, and use 'ultrafast' lenses if I want that shallow depth of field, but I totally understand why people would choose full frame, and wouldn't want to insinuate they're just compensating for some other indaquacy - perhaps in the underpants region - as you seem to be implying!

Agree 100%.

The DoF, AoV and general cleanliness of FF camera shots are extremely attractive features for much of the type of photography I personally prefer. And I agree completely that a FF is not for everyone specifically for that reason.

I'd be right there, queuing outside the shop overnight, though if Pentax were ever to release a FF. In the meantime I'll keep saving for when the D700 used prices drop.

A FF Pentax would be the perfect complement to the K5 & lenses (those that are FF) that I have (and I love the K5 so much that having sold my K7 I'll be adding another K5 next week as I can't shoot events with just one camera).

That's one way of looking at it.

Here's another.




Best regards

K10D : I think we would have been more impressed if you had PS'd the Nikon into Pentax and D700 into K3 (and Nikkor lens into Zeiss 85/1.4)

Way beyond my PS capabilities.

Best regards

All of my images are destined to be printed at A3 or A3+, although I do have some on my walls at home printed to A2. At these size prints my APS-C Pentax cameras and lenses are perfect.

I have won more awards this year than I could ever have dreamed of, beating many of thousands of other photographers using FF cameras.

I also met a number of my 'photographic heros' whose works really inspire me, and who consistently produce amazing exhibition winning images, they all had APS-C cameras (not Pentax I'm afraid!) some of them a generation or so behind, and each owned a rather small number of lenses.

If you like cameras I would suggest you go and buy a FF camera and a bagful or two of lenses.

If you like photography and producing images I would suggest you buy a good-value Pentax camera, a lens or two, and spend the rest of your money on producing as many images as you can with that camera.

In the future when you are old or six feet under your images will still live on, while your camera will soon be out of date, forgotten, languishing in a box somewhere.

I don't usually do philosophical posts (To be fair I don't usually post!!) but I do feel people get too hung up on this debate, and don't spend enough time improving their photography. Therein ends my sermon for today