18 megapixels on a 1.6x crop camera - Has Canon gone too far?

On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:18:14 -0500, "mcdonaldREMOVE TO ACTUALLY REACH
wrote:

Giftzwerg wrote:
In article dee40474-3fa1-4f4c-9e28-0d412c85a708
@b18g2000vbl.googlegroups.com, says...

I don't think so. For resolution freaks, this will be welcome,
provided it doesn't cost $2500. This is apparently a cheaper 5D II.
Now, the only question is, will Nikon facing two high res camera at
low prices from Canon bring out their own?
One good thing, the lenses don't need to be hyper-expensive like for
the FF cameras in order to properly support this chip.
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0909/09...os7d.asp#specs

Why the ****ing **** can't Canon get us a full-frame camera for a
reasonable price? It's just insanely frustrating that FF cameras are so
stubbornly expensive; why the hell is this? What's so *magic* about a
full-frame sensor that a body housing one can't cost $1,200? Fer
chrissakes, everything else in the digital world halves in price or
doubles in performance every 18 months.

The 7D is just ludicrous. Dear Canon; *enough with the ****ing
megapixels, already*!! I need an 18MP APS-C sensor like I need another
asshole.

Full frame. 12 MP. Super-high ISO performance. $1,200.


Uh ... full frame need 20 MP just to EQUAL the performance,
in the central APC-C sized part, of the lowly 30D (8 MP).

At 18 MP there will be many, many lenses that are simply inadequate.
Sure, the 50-100 primes and macros will be OK, as will the $2500
super teles (which are essentially diffraction limited at f/4),
but few others will really make better pictures at 18 MP than at 10 MP.

Doug McDonald

More sad are those that deliberate on megapixel quantities. It takes a 20
megapixel camera to double the resolution of a 5 megapixel camera. These
"leaps and bounds" are minimal, at best. The resident-trolls and their
supporters as subject to marketing hype as the brain-dead consumer.

Giftzwerg wrote:
Why the ****ing **** can't Canon get us a full-frame camera for a
reasonable price?

Two reasons, one relevant and one not:

1) A sensor that's 4x the area can cost 20x as much to make

2) Companies charge as much as they can: They're not charities.

--
Ray Fischer

DRS wrote:
"Alfred Molon" wrote in message
m
In article ,
Giftzwerg says...
What's so *magic* about a
full-frame sensor that a body housing one can't cost $1,200?

Perhaps larger sensor being more expensive to make?

Why would a larger sensor with lower pixel density be more expensive to
make?

With integrated circuits the primary cost is in manufacturing a
silicon wafer's worth of chips. The cost per wafer is fixed, more or
less. For small chips you can fit a lot of them on a single 14"
wafer. For large chips you can fit in only a few.

Defects cause an entire chip to be discarded. With small chips a
single defect affects only a small area or the wafer. With large
chips a single defect affects a much larger area.

Those two factors combine to make large chips exponentially more
expensive.

--
Ray Fischer

"DRS" writes:
What's so *magic* about a
full-frame sensor that a body housing one can't cost $1,200?

Perhaps larger sensor being more expensive to make?

Why would a larger sensor with lower pixel density be more expensive to
make?

I'd guess part of it is that the yield (how many sufficiently error-free
chips they can get out of a semiconductor wafer) starts going way down.

[As chips get larger, not only does the number of chips per wafer go
down, but the probability of each chip being bad goes up.]

-Miles

--
o The existentialist, not having a pillow, goes everywhere with the book by
Sullivan, _I am going to spit on your graves_.

No spam please wrote:
"Alfred Molon" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Giftzwerg says...
What's so *magic* about a
full-frame sensor that a body housing one can't cost $1,200?
Perhaps larger sensor being more expensive to make?


everything else in the digital world halves in price or
doubles in performance every 18 months.
And in fact prices are coming down. Just compare with what DLSRs were
costing just a few years ago.

By the way, what is so magic about "full-frame" sensors? How about even
larger sensors?

Hmmm ... if the sensor is larger than a 35mm frame then what lenses would we
use with it?

Would you go with Hasselblad, Pentacon-6, Mamiya, Rollei, Pentax 6x7 (or
69?), Bronica, Contax 645, Fuji or would you strike out in your own
direction with a new camera design and lensmount?

How much were (are?) the digital backs for Hasselblads?

B&H Photo has the Hasselblad CF-22 digital back for just shy of US $20,000.
It looks very much that unless you plan to make some serious money from
your clients, it's a toy that only an ultra-well-heeled amateur could
even imagine to afford.

Why are some large-Mp camera bodies actually bigger and heavier than 35mm
bodies?
I had a play with a 40D and I'm sure it is bigger and heavier than my old
35mm Canon bodies.

Regards, Ian.

If you're complaining about the thickness of the body, then think about
the following:
How thick is 35mm film and how thick is a digital sensor, processing
board and LCD screen with backlight?
What sort of battery (if any) did your film SLR camera take and did it
have to run a miniaturized computer, several display panels and motors?

The only bit of a digital SLR camera which is really much smaller than a
film camera is the recording media.
CF, SD, XD and Memory Stick media are quite a bit smaller than the space
required for a a 35mm cannister and take-up spool.

DRS wrote:

Why would a larger sensor with lower pixel density be more expensive to
make?

For the same reason a huge gold bar with a small stamp is more
expensive than a small gold bar with a large stamp.

-Wolfgang

"Chris H" wrote in message
...
In message , Alfred Molon
writes

[ . . . ]

By the way, what is so magic about "full-frame" sensors? How about even
larger sensors?

That is the Medium format sensors used in MF cameras. There is no such
thing s "full frame" digital. Some time ago I suggested we have

CX (camera-phone size sensors)
DX
FX
MX

Are camera-phone sensors all the same size? Compact camera sensors come in
many different sizes, all much smaller than DX but different enough that you
couldn't designate any of them as a standard size in the same way DX is. I
see no reason why this should ever change, either.


and drop the "full frame" marketing rubbish. Ask any plate or field
camera user what "full frame" is and it ain't 35mm :-)

But view camera formats seem irrelevant to digital cameras.


In 10 years time the "full frame" marketing will have gone away as will
most 35mm cameras.

I don't think so -- apart from 35mm cameras of course, which already have
mostly gone away. While I see no particular appeal to 24 x 36 sensors
myself, lots of photographers do yearn for them or already have them, and
more will as prices come down. I expect the Four Thirds size will become
increasingly popular -- not necessarily in DSLRs -- but the DX size (and
near-DX, like Canon's) will remain the standard for the vast majority of
DSLR users.

"Neil Harrington" writes:
While I see no particular appeal to 24 x 36 sensors myself, lots of
photographers do yearn for them or already have them, and more will as
prices come down.

Well, there's _some_ logic behind it: I think people mostly just yearn
for _bigger_ sensors and lower noise (and/or high-resolution at
acceptable noise levels), and 24x36 is basically the largest sensor you
can use while still taking advantage of massive existing investments in
the 35mm form-factor (that's becoming less true as more and more lenses
are "DX only" or at least "DX optimized").

Technical improvements in APS-C sensors will probably lessen that
yearning over time by reducing the noise advantage.

[I personally also like bigger sensors just because I'm a fan of both
wide angles and small DOF, and bigger sensors make those things easier.]

-Miles

--
The automobile has not merely taken over the street, it has dissolved the
living tissue of the city. Its appetite for space is absolutely insatiable;
moving and parked, it devours urban land, leaving the buildings as mere
islands of habitable space in a sea of dangerous and ugly traffic.
[James Marston Fitch, New York Times, 1 May 1960]

"Miles Bader" wrote in message
...
"Neil Harrington" writes:
While I see no particular appeal to 24 x 36 sensors myself, lots of
photographers do yearn for them or already have them, and more will as
prices come down.

Well, there's _some_ logic behind it: I think people mostly just yearn
for _bigger_ sensors and lower noise (and/or high-resolution at
acceptable noise levels), and 24x36 is basically the largest sensor you
can use while still taking advantage of massive existing investments in
the 35mm form-factor (that's becoming less true as more and more lenses
are "DX only" or at least "DX optimized").

I can think of just three kinds of people likely to find advantages in "full
frame," and I'm not any of them.

1. Someone who has appreciable money in existing lenses for 35mm, especially
wide angle. A friend of mine for example had Canons in 35mm and some pretty
expensive glass for them, including a 17-35 that cost him about a thousand
bucks. Most of those bucks paid for the short end of course, and when he got
his first Canon DSLRs the short end of that 17-35 was only equivalent to
about 28mm, which he was not happy about.

(I was in much the same position with my Minolta lenses, but shortly after I
went completely digital I switched to Nikon anyway so what I had in Minolta
glass was moot.)

2. Someone who wants to make humungous prints and/or at very high ISOs to
put on a wall that people will walk up to and look at from an unusually
close distance. (I am not likely ever to do that.)

3. Now I can't remember what the third one was. :-)


Technical improvements in APS-C sensors will probably lessen that
yearning over time by reducing the noise advantage.

[I personally also like bigger sensors just because I'm a fan of both
wide angles and small DOF, and bigger sensors make those things easier.]

That's it, DOF was the third thing.

Neil

"Neil Harrington" wrote in message
...

[ . . . ]

That's it, DOF was the third thing.

No, now I remember. The third thing was a larger viewfinder. Whenever I pick
up one of my old 35s I'm reminded of how much smaller the viewfinder is in
any of my DSLRs (all DX, of course).

But the smaller viewfinder is advantageous in a way. My eyes have deep
orbits, and even with my glasses off I used to have trouble seeing all four
corners at once, with a 35.