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Is the true potential of APS now upon us?
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Interesting thread. My opinion is that the quality that APS-c sensors are capable of is ample for the vast majority of photographers. How many people actually need to produce A2 prints (present company excepted of course ;))? 10Mp is easily capable of producing superb quality A3 prints, which is even arguably sufficient for a lot of professional purposes.
I’d agree I’d like to see more concentration on improving dynamic range than more and more megapixels, and a move to proper 16 bit sensors would be nice. Proper 100% viewfinders would be nice as well, but that’s just Canikon et al being cheap!
The other factor to consider is the demands that large sensors put on lenses. Even if the base manufacturing cost of full frame sensors tumbles, it’s not going to attract too many first time buyers of the kit lens adds a grand to the cost of the camera. Going to the opposite end of the spectrum and the 4/3 system, lenses are also a major problem at the wide end. The 7-14mm Olympus lens is going for ?1179 on Warehouse express, which is a lot of anybody’s money. I think Olympus have created a problem for themselves by taking so long to get the E3 on the shelves, and are well behind the opposition.
So I reckon that there will always be those who do actually need loads of resolution (the bus poster being a good example), but the APS-C sensors are a sweet spot for the mass market. Noise isn’t that much of an issue with the latest processors, the Digic III gives quite usable images at ISO 3200, and I believe the new Nikons are amazing in that department.
John
Pardon my ignorance here but could someone give me a quick explanation of full frame sensor versus a APS sensor (eg a 1.6 sensor on a 400D am I right????.)
Sorry maybe Iw as a bit vague.
With a full frame sensor does the sensor have a great surface area than a APS sensor, am I right?
When you use a medium or large format cameras does this ‘surface area’ increase , ie does it fall over a great area of film?
forgive my ignorance on the wording
munsterman28 wrote:
Sorry maybe Iw as a bit vague.
With a full frame sensor does the sensor have a great surface area than a APS sensor, am I right?
When you use a medium or large format cameras does this ‘surface area’ increase , ie does it fall over a great area of film?
Yep, that’s pretty much it in a nutshell.
The image that comes out of the back of a lens is circular, so the diameter of the circle from the lens must be at least equal to the size of the sensor measured along the diagonal. Lenses for APS sensors thus require a smaller image circle, making them smaller, lighter, and probably cheaper to manufacture. If you were to put one of these lenses on a full frame camera (don’t try it with Canon EF-s lenses!), film or digital, you’d get a circular black border around the edge.
Sensor/film size affects a number of things: The “normal” lens (ie one which gives roughly the same perspective/field of view as human vision) is taken to be equivalent to the measure along the diagonal, so for 35mm/full frame this would be around 44mm (though historically 50mm lenses have been considered “normal”). For APS it’s around 30mm, medium format I think around 85mm (not sure of this off the top of my head), and large format about 150mm. The other thing affected is depth of field. The larger the medium, the shallower the depth of field for a given focal length/aperture. So small compacts have enormous depth of field as they have tiny sensors, but with large format, to get everything sharp front to back, you would typically have to use tiny apertures, and camera movements on top of that.
John
JMcL wrote:
munsterman28 wrote:
Sorry maybe Iw as a bit vague.
With a full frame sensor does the sensor have a great surface area than a APS sensor, am I right?
When you use a medium or large format cameras does this ‘surface area’ increase , ie does it fall over a great area of film?
Yep, that’s pretty much it in a nutshell.
The image that comes out of the back of a lens is circular, so the diameter of the circle from the lens must be at least equal to the size of the sensor measured along the diagonal. Lenses for APS sensors thus require a smaller image circle, making them smaller, lighter, and probably cheaper to manufacture. If you were to put one of these lenses on a full frame camera (don’t try it with Canon EF-s lenses!), film or digital, you’d get a circular black border around the edge.
Sensor/film size affects a number of things: The “normal” lens (ie one which gives roughly the same perspective/field of view as human vision) is taken to be equivalent to the measure along the diagonal, so for 35mm/full frame this would be around 44mm (though historically 50mm lenses have been considered “normal”). For APS it’s around 30mm, medium format I think around 85mm (not sure of this off the top of my head), and large format about 150mm. The other thing affected is depth of field. The larger the medium, the shallower the depth of field for a given focal length/aperture. So small compacts have enormous depth of field as they have tiny sensors, but with large format, to get everything sharp front to back, you would typically have to use tiny apertures, and camera movements on top of that.
John
So John could one not use an EF lense eg the canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS on a Canon full frame camera like the EOS 1D range?
You can use EF lenses on the 1d range
it the efs lenese you cant as the rear element sticks out to far and will crash into the mirror of the camera, they only work with the 350d, 400d, 10, 20, 30 & 40d
stcstc wrote:
You can use EF lenses on the 1d range
it the efs lenese you cant as the rear element sticks out to far and will crash into the mirror of the camera, they only work with the 350d, 400d, 10, 20, 30 & 40d
Sorry didnt see the s in the previous posts. So the APS sensors are smaller than the fullframe or 35mm sensors ya? Whats the craic then with the crop actor, like with th 400d one of 1.6
munsterman28 wrote:
So the APS sensors are smaller than the fullframe or 35mm sensors ya?
Yep
munsterman28 wrote:
Whats the craic then with the crop actor, like with th 400d one of 1.6
It’s essentially the size ratio of one image circle to the other, ie a full frame/35mm frame requires an image circle 1.6 times the size of that required for the 400D sensor to avoid vignetting.
In practical terms, you multiply the focal length of a given a lens by the crop factor to figure out the equivalent field of view for that lens on an APS sensor, so a 100mm lens mounted on a 400D will give the same field of view as a 160mm lens on full frame.
Note however that in terms of physics, a 100mm does NOT become a 160mm lens by using it with a 400D, it will still be a 100mm lens regardless of what it’s being used with, with all the physical properties of a 100mm lens, which has implication for things such as depth of field. What you’re getting is the cropped field of view due to only the central part of the image circle cast by the lens being used. This is particularly evident in compact camera, where the focal lengths are given in 35mm equivalents, so for example if a particular compact camera claims to be 28-180mm, the actual lens itself is probably something like 7-45mm as the sensors are miniscule, this very wide angle also results in the huge depth of field given by compacts.
John
Thanks.
So the sensors on a medium or large format camera are bigger again than those on a fullframe/35mm camera yes?
Was reading about this in the last few days and its one of these things I have to go over and over again for it too stick.
Was reading about focal length and the need to use longer focal lengths with larger format cameras. Is this so the image will be big enough to ‘cover’ the whole of the larger sensor
The size of the sensor will determine the length of any given lens for that format-
the reference to standard lenses earlier is correct-
the diagonal of the format will relate to the focal length of a standard lens-The largest commonly available format is 20″ x 24″-
so a standard lens for that would be around 600mm to 900mm-Coverage is a different matter entirely, and is unrelated to focal length-
Its the design of a lens that determines its covering power, usually measured in degrees-As long as you can position your sensor within the image circle, then its good for that format-
Having a bigger image circle than the format size, will allow camera movements-
allowing you to crop from the image circle,
without having to cut your original image size-
as well as allowing you to choose your plane of focus-
essential when using longer focal length lenses-It also allows more control of perspective-
j
i read somewhere recently, albeit one of those whacky rumour sites. (I was looking for info on the 5D MKII/6D whatever it’s gonna be called) and in relation to future technologies there was lots of mention of 50 megapixels being possible in the not too distant future and ISO’s of 12,800 being like the ISO 100 of today. Probably complete and utter crap but then again they got to the moon using a whole room full of computers. That same computer power now washes my clothes in my washing machine. It does seem impossible that such awesome capabilities would ever be a reality but then again this goes back to the argument of drip feeding. That say Canon and Nikon etc. already have these 50megapixel cameras with useable ISO 12,800 but aren’t gonna just give them up because they’ve got a good 10 or 20 years of slow and steady but wonderfully financially beneficial years to go before they need to do that.
Either way I think it’s pretty damn exciting thinking about where photography could be in a few years. But as the sensible sorts here have said, let’s just enjoy the NOW and be happy taking pictures. I know I am :)
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