One of the reasons I’ve craved a Canon 5d for so long, and now of course the Nikon D3, is their “advantage” of full frame sensors. The advantage of the sensor isn’t just not having to deal with crop factors, no the real advantage is the ability to (all things being equal) take better pictures. Because the sensor is bigger, you have more light falling on the sensor, which means more light on each pixel, which leads to greater pixel accuracy. The net effect is bigger prints without a decrease in quality (sharper and more fully resolved) with less noise. How could you not want that? This brings me back to the Canon 5d. At $2128 new, it’s currently the cheapest way to get full frame with 12 mp right now. That’s only a few hundred dollars premium over a cropped Nikon D300. . If a new Canon 5d replacement is announced running up to the 2008 PMA (the 5d mark II, or 6d, or 7d) you could assume this price would drop much further, and that would be pretty tempting.
Back to the title now, over at Ken Rockwell’s site, he has much better explanation of why full frame matters, just slightly more technical than my explanation with some pictures to boot. And yes the full frame examples are provided by Canon’s 5d. You can get that article here.
-Patrick
Canon EOS 5D 12.8 MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)
{ 0 comments… add one now }