Multiplication factors such as the one you cited do indeed have their adherants and detractors. Pluses include you get more perceived reach on your lenses (not necessarily a real one, but the lens in conjunction with the camera gets what appears to be more reach). You also tend to use more of the sweet spot of a lens. The advantages to full frame include the wider field of view - especially important with wide angle lenses.http://jcharding.zenfolio.com/..

The c sensor results in a mutiplication factor of usually 1.5 or 1.6 depending on the manufacturer. if effect you are looking at the center 2/3 of a regular full frame then enlargeing it till it fills the full frame again. no, it is not a teleconverter. quality is not affected. except because the the center 2/3 of the 35mm lens is freer from aberations that the edges. the c sensor shot if taken through a 35mm lens will be better quality than the original full frame shot..

As has been stated there are advantages and disadvantages either way. the usual argument is that full frame is better quality imaging. however there is a test on the web between a canon 1dsmkII and a nikon d2xs and the quality came out to be a tie. one camera won in some things while the other camera won in others..

Personally, I feel the better c cameras and the the better full frame are the same in quality. or at least you can spend your life arguing for either side. if you want a real and unarguable increase in quality from the c sensor camera skip ff altogether and go straight to mf. mf is plain better and there is no argument. you can get a mf film camera then go the digital back to fit with your choice of mp size..

Once you have a good c sensor OR ff the user is a far bigger variable to the quality ofthe resulting images than the camera is. either system will work but it is the user that will give the outstanding photographs...

In general, the larger the sensor, the greater you can print your results ... depends on if you're comparing similar sensor technologies, etc. but it's a pretty good generalization that carries on from film days (35mm good up to a certain size, if not good enough, you go to medium format, etc)..

A full frame DSLR offers a bigger viewfinder image that makes it easier to compose, focus, preview depth of field..

FF is more expensive. And APS-C is "good enough" for most people..

What's significant, though, is lens selection. "Legacy" lenses - the ones designed & put in production in film days, were developed because photographers found them useful on film. So you have 28-70/2.8 (or 24-70/2.8) as a fast midrange zoom, and 70-200/2.8 as a fast tele zoom ... 50mm as a 'normal' lens and fast portrait lenses ranging from 85mm to 105mm (with many people shooting portraits with other lenses, of course)..

Trying to build a lens lineup for APS-C can be a bit frustrating. There aren't really any good portrait lenses for APS-C. Nikon & Canon now make 60/2.8 macro lenses which do the job (many people used macro lenses for portraits in the past) but they don't AF as fast as non-macro lenses and they're still not as fast as a 100/2 or an 85/1.4..

It's tough to emulate a 24-xx zoom. You need a 16-xx on 1.5X crop systems and an even wider 15-xx on Canon 1.6X. Sony offers the CZ16-80 and a new (but pricey for it's f/4.5-5.6 speed) 16-105. But nothing in the way of an f/2.8 midrange, whereas Nikon & Canon offer f/2.8 midrange lenses, but I'm not sure whether they start at 16 or 17mm (and in either case, 15mm would be handier for Canon users). Third party lenses (Tamron, Sigma, Tokina) help a lot. If you like a 'normal' lens (50mm on film or full frame), you need a 28 or 35mm lens for APS-C and those are expensive (faster than f/2.8 anyway, and definitely f/1.4) and vary in availability.



Between the large VF and the preference many people have for how lenses "look" (field of view) on full frame, there's lots of interest in "affordable full frame"..

- Dennis.

Gallery at http://kingofthebeasts.smugmug.com..

There is no advantage whatever to a 35 x 24 mm sensor, AKA "full-frame", as against any other size. It is true that bigger pixels are superior to smaller pixels, so a 10MP 35x24mm sensor will have, all other things being equal, better signal to noise ratio and better dynamic range than a 10MP APS-C sensor (but not than a 6MP APS-C sensor). Also CMOS sensors are superior to CCD sensors, and all full-frame sensors are (as it happens but not for any important reason) CMOS, which confuses things. The reason 35 x 24 mm became standard was historical chance - when "35mm" was invented the real innovation was the idea of a roll of film, because serious photogrpahers used single shot plates, and they had some bits of 70mm movie film they cut down the middle and rolled up..

The disadvantage of a 35 x 24 sensor is that the edge of a lens image is worse than the middle, so to get a good 35 x 24 image from a 35mm lens is hard and expensive...

Do you prefer to work close or far away? I find that with my full-frame 5D I'm tending to work closer to the subject than I did with my crop factor 30D (to get similar framing with the same focal length). And lenses like the 24-105 and 70-200 suit me better on the 5D than the 30D (I don't have to switch lenses as often). Plus a bigger sensor is supposed to be better although technically I think it's the pixel pitch that's the issue because you could cram a billion tiny pixels onto a full-frame sensor and probably have terrible pictures..

Now that they're making lenses with focal length ranges designed especially for crop bodies the issue is perhaps less important than it was. But especially if you're into shallow DOF then full-frame may be your friend...