Future: cheaper FF DSLRs by Nikon

[Martin C]

Martin...hmm...I am confused.... what part of my responses say to get a 18-200mm...that is a DX lens. I don't like those...nor is switching to Canon a deal. Jeeze dude, read the post from the top and work your way down.

Uh, I did. You said, "so slap on a great lens and use the camera." The 18-200mm is a great lens according to many reviews.

 

[compuwar]

smaller sensors dSLR take OK pictures and I pretty much disagree with everything in the prior post. Running by that logic, so do even smaller sensors on PnS...I don't buy that logic, especially when there is no good reason for not having full-frame sensors in all dSLRs.

There is one massively good reason, two quite good reasons and one depends-on-your-perspective reason for not having 35mm-sized "Full-frame" sensors on *all* DSLRs.

1. Economics. The sensor is the single-most expensive discrete component in the body. You can get more smaller sensor from a wafer than you can larger ones, and larger ones require fewer flaws-per-wafer- therefore APS-C sensors make _significantly_ better economic sense for camera manufacturers than 35mm-sized ones than 645-sized ones... (Let's not forget that "full frame" in Medium Format is 2.54 times the size of a 35mm frame _at the smallest size_.) Lenses also cost more, as they require more glass. Overall though, if you look purely at the sensor costs, a 35mm sensor is going to cost around 4x the cost of an APS-C sensor and you're going to get around half as many good sensors out of a wafer. (Edit Also, according to Canon, the 35mm sensor is going to need multiple passes, increasing the production costs so that even if you do multiple wafer sensors, you're still going to eat up manufacturing costs and capacity more than just the additional cost of the silicon.

2. Environment. Cooling as well as dust control gets more difficult as the sensor size goes up.

3. Power. Larger sensors require more power.

4. Size. Larger sensors require larger lenses, lens mounts and camera bodies. The whole system gets larger as a result.

Honestly though #1 is all the camera manufacturers need as a reason.

APS-C sized sensors aren't going to disappear, they're "good enough" for most photography and frankly you're significantly better off at 22MP with a 645-sized sensor than you are a 35mm-sized one- however we don't see significant growth in the MF digital market- so if we look at that, and we look at the relatively poor sales of Canon's 35mm-framed bodies we see that, just like with film the future doesn't look rosy for the larger formats. If we look at Nikon's recent sales the D40 and D40x are run-away successes, the D200 seems to have been significantly more successful than was planned for as well- so whilst we're seeing a slight resurgence in the 35mm frame sized DSLR market, I wouldn't bet on it for the long haul (which is probably how the 4x5 market felt when the MF cameras came around.)