Tag Archives: full-frame

Equipment

Comparing 33 x 44mm “miniMF” and 24 x 36mm Full Frame Sensors

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Comparing Full Frame and miniMF Sensors
Comparing full frame 24mm x 36mm and Fujifilm mini-MF 33.8mm x 43.8mm sensors

Starting a few years ago with cameras like the Pentax 645d and then 645z and continuing with new cameras from Hasselblad and Fujifilm, systems using  the “miniMF” 33mm x 44mm sensors have become more readily available and less expensive.

In preparation for writing something about the merits of the two types of systems I created this image that holds quite a bit of technical comparison data based on pixel counts (e.g. — “megapixels”), sensor size, and ways of comparing them.

For now I won’t try to analyze this too much, except to say that comparisons between the two formats are more complicated than you might think and they are somewhat subjective — it matters how you plan to use them. For example, do you prefer to use the 3:2 aspect ratio of full frame,  or the 4:3 ratio of miniMF, or will you adapt to whichever you are using? This chart shows you how that affects your comparisons.

NOTE: The graphic is a first attempt at including a lot of information in a single chart. It has some problems, especially with the numbers representing crop factor. I’ll update the image to correct the errors before long, and at that point I’ll use it in a more substantive post about comparing the formats.

© Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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Equipment, Ideas, Morning Musings, Thinking Aloud

Morning Musings: Canon and Mirrorless Cameras

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(It has been a while since I’ve written a “morning musings” post, but since I’ve been “musing” about Canon and mirrorless cameras over the past few days and learning a few things about the subject, it seems like time for another such post.)

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past few years you are aware of the introduction of so-called mirrorless cameras by several manufacturers and of the increasing sophistication of these cameras. Their features typically include:

  • smaller and lighter bodies that may be reminiscent of older rangefinder film cameras.
  • the ability to allow use of smaller lens designs, due to the shorter distance between the lens mount and the sensor.
  • electronic viewfinders (EVFs) that can incorporate additional useful tools and information into the viewfinder display and which have advantages in low light.
  • designs and features that increasingly appeal to serious photographers.

There are still issues with these cameras, and while much progress has been made and will continue, they still lag behind DSLRs is some areas:

  • battery consumption rates tend to be quite high by comparison to DSLRs.
  • AF performance is uneven and in some cases quite slow.
  • EVFs have latency issues.
  • Not everyone is fond of looking at an EVF monitor instead of the “real” image on focusing screen.
  • With some systems (notably Sony) using a wide range of lenses will likely require the use of third-party adapters.

I’ve been using a Fujifilm X-trans mirrorless system for my travel and street photography for nearly three years. (Mine is a discontinued model, but if I were buying today I would get the Fujifilm XT1 or perhaps the Fujifilm XT10.) Virtually all of my street/travel photographs of the past two years were made with my Fujifilm camera and lenses.  For this photography, the small size and excellent quality of the system compensates for the slower AF speeds and the battery consumption issues.

More recently the Sony A7r and A7rII cameras have gotten a lot of attention. When first introduced, the A7r came with the highest MP full frame sensor then available. The cameras can use (with varying degrees of compatibility and functionality) a wide range of non-Sony lenses, and they have a number of the other pluses associated with mirrorless designs. Several landscape photographer friends use the A7r and A7rII bodies for their tripod-based, manual focus photography, and I know several street/travel photographers who like the system a lot.

Sony and Fujifilm are not the only companies moving in this direction. For example, Olympus and others produce some very fine small mirrorless cameras.

All of which leads to the question: “Where is Canon’s mirrorless offering?” (Or, “Is the EOS-M the best Canon can do?”) Continue reading Morning Musings: Canon and Mirrorless Cameras →

Equipment

The Canon 5Ds R — Dynamic Range Examples

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Updated August 13, 2015 to add a second dynamic range adjustment example.

Ongoing development and refinement of digital camera technology continues to improve cameras and the technical quality of the images they produce. Color accuracy improves, dynamic range expands, sensor resolution increases, AF accuracy gets better, and so on.

The Canon EOS 5Ds and the Canon EOS 5Ds R continue this process. Their most notable feature is the 50.6 megapixel (MP) sensor, currently the highest sensor photo site density available on full frame digital cameras. (Nikon and Sony both produce 36MP sensor cameras using Sony sensors, and Sony has introduced a camera with a 42MP sensor. Note that the differences between 36MP, 42MP, and 50.6MP are less than you might expect.)

When it comes to dynamic range — the ability of the sensor to record a wide range of luminosity levels from very bright to quite dark in a single exposure — Sony is the current champion, and cameras using their sensors have the largest available dynamic range among comparable cameras. (Some MF cameras have more dynamic range capability than any current full frame camera. )

(All current digital cameras capture images with more dynamic range than we can display on monitors or in prints — the display media cannot keep up with the capture technology. Consequently, the primary advantage of greater dynamic range comes in post-production, where the photographer will find more useful scene data in darker areas that can be “pushed” or otherwise recovered while maintaining useful image quality.)

If you can get more dynamic range without giving up anything else, there is no reason not to have it. In marginal situations, that extra bit of dynamic range might enable you to get a bit more image data in a single exposure, while a photographer with a camera providing less dynamic range is a bit more likely to have to use exposure bracketing or HDR techniques (which combine multiple images in post-production), use a graduated neutral density filter, or possibly find ways to suppress noise in shadow areas of scenes with very wide dynamic range. That said, all current high quality digital cameras capture a wide dynamic range — much larger, for example, that was possible with typical film media. (Note, however, that no currently available full frame camera can capture in a single exposure the largest dynamic range scenes that you may encounter.)

With all of that in mind, I thought I’d share a couple examples of files from the Canon 5Ds R that have been pushed quite a bit. Continue reading The Canon 5Ds R — Dynamic Range Examples →

Commentary, Morning Musings

Misplaced Focus (Morning Musings 12/3/14)

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Family Portrait
Family Portrait

From time to time I adapt things that I wrote elsewhere and re-share them on the blog. The following is something I contributed to a discussion about a question from a newish photographer who wondered how important it would be to upgrade his camera. 

I’m all for better image quality — which contemporary cameras, software, and printing processes provide in spades. And there is no question that, all else being equal, a photograph captured on a larger film or sensor format can potentially resolve more detail, and may improve other image parameters including dynamic range and noise.

As they say, “So stipulated.”

But the question (which was about choosing a sensor format) deserves a more nuanced and contextual answer than that. Fortunately, the most accurate and useful answer involves quite a bit of that nuance. I think it really comes down to something like, “Will replacing my cropped sensor camera with a full frame camera make my photographs look better?”. The best answer begins with, “It depends.”

As to the question (which also came up in the original discussion) of what is important in a photograph, image sharpness is not unimportant in many cases. (Though there certainly are photographs whose “goodness” is perhaps at least partially because they are blurred — softness and blur are not always things to be avoided.)

I think the issue in photography discussions is frequently about the balance among issues that affect the quality and effectiveness of a photograph. Here, it is not uncommon for some folks to exhibit a misplaced focus on the technical stuff, accompanied by insufficient attention to other things that are more important to their success as photographers. Continue reading Misplaced Focus (Morning Musings 12/3/14) →