On Fri, Sep 30, 2005 at 09:03:57AM +0100, Cotty wrote: > > Yes but I don't understand - why continue to try and get the best out of > a smaller sensor? Surely the aspiration of all SLR camera makers who have > ventured into digital, is to produce a DSLR that captures the full 35mm > frame? Anything else is surely too complicated for most people to > understand WRT smaller chips mean that lenses don't work quite the same > way as before etc etc. Or is the 1.5 crop here to stay forever, as a sort > of 'new format' along with a smattering of 'D' lenses? The 1.5 crop is here to stay. Most of the people now buying DSLRs have never owned a 35mm film camera in their lives, so they have no "before" experience to confuse them.
But, basically, it's simple economics. You can get a film SLR for $200 or so; at present a DSLR costs around $500 more than that. Most of that difference is the cost of the sensor. And a so-called 'full frame' sensor is always going to cost three or four times as much as a sensor half that size (at least until sensor prices drop down to under $50). That extra $1000-$1500 just isn't worth it to the majority of prospective purchasers. Perhaps when DSLRs are down to around $300 there might be enough people prepared to pay $450. Even there, though, I'm not sure; are there enough benefits from going to the larger sensor? For wide angle, 12mm should be enough for almost everybody - I've certainly managed for 35 years without using anything wider than 20mm on a 35mm body. And while larger pixels do allow for better signal-to-noise ratios, that's an area where I expect technology to continue to improve over the short-to-medium term.
