OntheRez wrote:
NumberFive, I'm reminded of the scene from Robin Williams' masterpiece The Dead Poets Society where he reads from the introduction to the poetry book. Some brain dead academician tries to suggest that poetry can be charted on a Cartesian coordinate system. Williams' character responds by having his students tear the page out of the book. I think full frame is tearing the page out, looking as wide and open and deeply as possible at light and the world it reveals. There is no proof that FF creates better quality images. That lies in the hands and eyes of both the artist and the viewer with whatever tool they use. Full frame does, however, provide an opportunity for more light. The tool you choose is, ultimately, always an act of faith.
Robert ...Show more →
Thanks for the reply, I think this helps seal my decision between crop and full frame - I'm sticking with my current kit. I value improving my technique overall more than a few more happy accidents here and there.
Well, for me, I actually prefer seeing the softer corners and all their CA and coma glory. Because light and distance change the effect, it's hard to accurately fake in post. The edges of the image circle make the image look deeper and more organic to me. I especially like the way fast lenses look in the corners.
The crop sensors make the image look so clinical.
It's a minor argument, but it's valid at least for me.
As for prints vs. 100% crops, I happen to be on the 100% crop team. A digital image is a digital image. You can't rate it after it's been transferred to an analog medium of arbitrary size, sharpness, and resolution, and any scaling digitally can only hide the true sensor capabilities. This comes from the computer geek side of me. Prints are prints. A 60 inch LCD showing the real output of an M8 makes my jaw drop. Some cameras do look good without shrinking the image. The 5D2 also has a very real edge on the 5D at 100%. I spend a lot of time working at 100% in post, and I have 100's of thousands of images to compare between them. To me, the 5D2 is much cleaner than the 5D up close, and blows away my old 20D (recently sold.)
I like the details. Why do I have to print my images and hang them on the wall, when I can play count-the-facial-hairs on the people across the street right at my computer? I used film for the majority of my experience, but I'm not hung up on the print model. The vast majority of my work never sees a piece of RA paper.
The DOF is pretty slight in that one imo - probably because of the daylight. Interestingly enough, the white balance looks off in the 40D - everything has a bit of a blueish cast to it, but that's not present in the 5D shot.
michael49 wrote:
Another DOF comparison...I'm the self proclaimed master of these comparisons, although I'm not sure that's a good thing ......
heh...definitely the master ...someones gotta do it..thanks for doing it!
regarding the original question, I don't have any proof and this is a completely subjective answer so take it with a grain of salt, but getting a 5D (coming from a 30D) made me a better photographer...yeah i said it....all my lenses made sense, I wish someone had just told me to get a 5D and 50 1.4 a few years ago instead of messing around with crop bodies and the various lenses that just didn't seem quite right on them...the pictures have a look i really like and the viewfinder's great too...but that's my opinion i mostly shoot people and my kids...
alanwarp wrote:
getting a 5D (coming from a 30D) made me a better photographer...
I think it may be more accurate to say that the 30D limited your photographic ability more than the 5D does. You are the same photographer.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a huge gear head. "Better" equipment will make a difference every time you want to do more than "inferior" equipment allows. Even so, it didn't make you a better photographer.
hmmm... doesn't matter in that shot, but it's a huge difference IMO. Look at the barn. If detail there was important, it would change the outcome.
NumberFive wrote:
The DOF is pretty slight in that one imo - probably because of the daylight. Interestingly enough, the white balance looks off in the 40D - everything has a bit of a blueish cast to it, but that's not present in the 5D shot.
As with anything, there are pros and cons to both. It's hard to duplicate the atmospheric quality of images captured on larger formats with shallow DOF. And certain 35mm-format lenses can perform better on FF cameras.
OTOH, we all know about the extra "reach" of the smaller format. Lenses can be made much smaller and lighter while giving equivalent coverage (consider the Pentax/Tokina 50-135 compared to the Canon/Nikon 70-200, or the 200 2.8 on APS-C vs. 300 2.8 on FF).
So there is no right answer to which is "better". On an IQ basis alone, my experience is that both Canon and Nikon FF cameras deliver superior results, but the APS-C models can be excellent at lower ISOs.
Here's another example of the DOF control with FF. Sorry its another cow and barn shot ; I have a thing for barns.
5D, 70-200 f/4 @f/4....I couldn't have achieved the degree of DOF separation between the cow and the barn in this shot with my 40D @ f/4 without standing much farther away, which in this case would have been impossible...
What's most interesting (and revealing) about the barn and pasture shot above is that the 5D version shows slightly improved contrast/color and also some vignetting (which helps artistically) compared to the 40D version. I think this is mostly what is responsible for the "FF look" that people talk about, particularly with images from the 5D.
This is exactly my experience with these two models. The 40D image can be made to look nearly the same in post, but it takes a bit more work to do so.
For years I chafed against the limitations of crop sensors, in particular the lack of fast wide lenses for the smaller format. But now I have a 5D2 to partner my 40D my view of crop has modified.
To me FF has better depth of field control and at last I can get that fast wideangle look. Low light performance from the 5D2 at high ISO is beyond comparison - wonderful. 20+ megapixels does give an amazing amount of detail and I am pleased with the 5D2, the first digital camera I have owned that I am sure I will use for several years. IMHO it is very nearly as good as medium format film, but I know many would disagree with me.
However, crop does have its pluses. It uses the "sweet spot" from the middle of the image using FF lenses, I find in practice that a 10 megapixel image is rarely not detailed enough, and the bodies are cheaper to upgrade. The killer for me relates to wide lens performance. My Tokina 12-24 at 12mm f5.6 is critically sharp right into the corners of the frame, I wish I could be confident of finding a FF zoom lens that would work as well at such a wide aperture on my 5D2! For this reason alone as long as my Toke lives I will own a crop body.
I like having crop and FF in the same bag, it sort of doubles my range of focal lengths.
For a few of us old geezers, this is an argument from our childhood.
I used view cameras decades ago with medium format backs, 4x5, 5x7, and 8x10 rear ends and some of the same lenses on the front end. I also used TLRs that could take both 35mm and 120 film, as well as medium format SLRs that could take various formats of 120 filmbacks.
Yeah, yeah, depth of field differences, different strokes for different folks with regard to that.
But for the most part, we used the largest format feasible, given the physical and logistical circumstances of the session.
The simplest proof is theoretical: a 15Mp full frame camera can have much bigger sensels than a 15Mp crop camera. Larger sensels are better because they can gather more light, which means that they will have less noise and more latitude (dynamic range), and they will require less sharpness from a lens, but a larger image circle. Less noise and more latitude are indisputably good things for image quality.
Tolerance of poorer lenses is balanced by the downside that your lenses will be bigger, heavier, and more expensive to cover the larger image circle.
The depth of field differences are a double-edged sword: sometimes you want narrower d.o.f., and sometimes you don't. You can usually change your aperture one way or the other.
garyvot wrote:
So there is no right answer to which is "better". On an IQ basis alone, my experience is that both Canon and Nikon FF cameras deliver superior results, but the APS-C models can be excellent at lower ISOs.
A nice succinct summary that I basically agree with. :-)
I'll expand one point regarding the "larger image circle" issue. This supposed "corner degradation" on full frame is not quite the issue that some imagine it to be. There are are least two reasons for this.
1. For the same reason that the center of a full frame sensor image can have greater resolution than the center of a cropped sensor image, a given "size" distortions in the corners of a full frame image is smaller relative to overall image size in the larger format. (Think of expressing the "size" of the distortion in something like mm/frame width rather than mm.)
2. Because the larger format allows the photographer to stop down to smaller apertures at get overall diffraction-limited sharpness equivalent to that from larger apertures on the smaller format, shooting at the smaller apertures can, in many situations, compensate further for supposed corner image degradation.
I used to accept the notion that corners would be worse when a given lens was moved from crop to FF (especially with wide zooms) until I actually did this and found that in actual photographs this theory just doesn't play out that way. My 17-40 performs better in the corners stopped down to f/11 or f/16 on my FF body than it did at f/8 on a cropped sensor body.
Dan
brainiac wrote:
The simplest proof is theoretical: a 15Mp full frame camera can have much bigger sensels than a 15Mp crop camera. Larger sensels are better because they can gather more light, which means that they will have less noise and more latitude (dynamic range), and they will require less sharpness from a lens, but a larger image circle. Less noise and more latitude are indisputably good things for image quality.
Tolerance of poorer lenses is balanced by the downside that your lenses will be bigger, heavier, and more expensive to cover the larger image circle.
The depth of field differences are a double-edged sword: sometimes you want narrower d.o.f., and sometimes you don't. You can usually change your aperture one way or the other....Show more →
I'll expand one point regarding the "larger image circle" issue. This supposed "corner degradation" on full frame is not quite the issue that some imagine it to be.
And we keep concluding that unless there is some extraordinarily wildly variant factor, the larger format wins in image quality....as has been true for more than a century of photography.
I used film for the majority of my experience, but I'm not hung up on the print model. The vast majority of my work never sees a piece of RA paper.
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