Derrel
Mr. Rain Cloud
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2009
- Messages
- 48,225
- Reaction score
- 18,941
- Location
- USA
- Website
- www.pbase.com
- Can others edit my Photos
- Photos OK to edit
So, what I'm gathering here is, for "general" photography, with "typical" lighting and "normal" print sizes, the sensor size plays a small role, and the glass remains the primary concern, just as in film?
I don't se it that way. The better "full-frame" d-slr models have larger sensors, with larger pixels, which are more-efficient light collectors, and they give better overall imaging performance than do smaller sensors, with much,much smaller pixels. The difference in overall image quality between a "full-frame" camera with a high-quality sensor and a crop-size sensor (one of any of any umber of smaller than FX sizes) is pretty substantial at times. The larger sensor cameras, when paired with the same lens as a smaller-sensor camera, will create images that have higher resolution, and lower image noise, and often, better color depth and better dynamic range, than small-sensor cameras. All of the lens testing web sites have tests, many tests, that demonstrate that the SAME lens on a FF or "FX" sensor delivers better optical performance than that lens used on a small-sensor camera.
Sensor age, design, and "generation" also play a BIG role too!!! OLDER, first-generation FF sensors, like say the 11 megapixel one in the original Canon 1Ds---these days, that sensor's 11 megapixel, full-frame image quality can be equalled, or bettered, by many APS-C cameras...cameras that are now like eight or nine years newer, and which have almost double, to more than double, the pixel count--PLUS new electronics and new software!
Trust me...mothball the F2's and move to a new-fangled digital pro Nikon body!