kingdong23

A full sized sensor rocks, but put it in a camera I can afford, for instance, in a $1200 body.

And now that you've imagined it...

Windhawk

Wilson Rothman

As for your statement that smaller pixels have noise that is "easier to manage", this is simply wrong.

TommyImages

ZitosGhost

uberfu

For all your noise complainers: first, this is a CMOS sensor, and second when the pixels are smaller the noise is easier to manage and correct for.

~Sorry about my negative comments lately, but I pick suitable targets hopefully~

Wwhat

Making a silicon wafer is a fixed cost. It doesn't matter how many transistors you stuff on the silicon, if your device is silicon-area based, the cost is constant. Price comes down a tiny bit as R&D costs are recouped, but the biggest gains come from making the die needed smaller.

Larger dies also have the issue that it's more likely to have a bad sensor, reducing large die yields significantly. Thus the sensor itself has to pay for its manufacture and the failed manufacture of others on the same wafer.

Worf

Its not the megapixels that cost money, its the size of the sensor. You can have a 1MP full-frame sensor it'll still cost a lot. If you want a lower-resolution full-frame sensor, the Nikon D3 has a 12MP sensor. It'll still cost your $5k.

Also, there is a reason why you won't see a full-frame in a subcompact or amateur camera. The main reason being that you need larger glass to get the equivalent reach of the smaller crop camera. This adds weight, size, and most importantly cost. Beyond that cheapo bodies like the Rebel aren't designed to take the weight of longer telephoto pro glass.

The reality is, an APS-C size sensor is more then enough for the amateur/prosumer market. The prosumer's best bet is the 5D(and its replacement), and Nikon is rumored to have a FF prosumer as well. But even those cameras will cost around $3k.

Scaramanga

Add to that the logistical problems of high megapixel sensors. I can easily shoot 5000 photos on a 2 week assignment. This becomes a real headache in trying to manage and the large files really bog down your laptop. That's one reason why I'm holding off from getting a MkIII.

I don't know many other pros that are pressing for more pixels out of a 35mm form factor body(aside from studio/product/etc... photogs but they usually use medium format or large format film anyways), most of us would rather have lower noise.

As to why we like "full frame" sensors:
1) Maintaining the focal length of our lenses
2) More control of DoF
3) Larger sensors = less noise (given the same # of pixels, quantum efficiency from the sensor, all other things being equal, etc..).

But high MP count sensors sound cool, and that sells, even when you're dealing with high end equipment, your customer base is often people who don't know what they need and buy based on bells & whistles.

TommyImages

An analogy would be to set out a bunch of buckets and a bunch of small bowls during a rain shower. Each bucket will catch more water than would a small bowl, and if you then measured the rainwater you'd get more accuracy overall with the buckets than the bowls since your measuring variations will be smaller relative to the amount of water per bucket than per bowl.

On the other hand, finer grained noise from smaller pixels tends to blend together more like film grain in actual prints than does the coarser grained noise from larger pixels. So there's that as a trade-off too.

And finally, just to complicate things even more, with DSLR's we're past the point where the sensors are out-resolving the consumer lenses. Even with the current non-fullframe DSLR's, you need to be using the top end ($1000+) lenses to get the most out of the sensors. 24MP behind a cheap lens just gives you 24M blurry pixels.

deeddawg

Interesting Fact- the Mars rovers have 1 Megapixel cameras. The sensor is huge, but its only 1 MP.

ARP

theespacepope

It will probably not serve the instamatic flash pics late at night round the table and the wine bottles - but for anybody who sometimes takes pics of great scenary (for example) this will be like having a pocket Hasselblad. Something to dream of...

If it means more noise - I don't know. It will be great is someone who knows about that can comment.

Rustydog

Contax was the first company to sell a full-frame DSLR with the 6mp N Digital in 2000. Canon followed with the 1Ds in late 2002/early 2003. Right now they have a 22 megapixel full-frame camera available (1Ds Mark III).

This new Sony sensor simply crams more pixels into that form-factor. That's a good thing from a resolution perspective, but bad from a light-sensitivity/noise perspective.

phoenix96

daversW

Patchouli

Littlebitsofpaper

But anyway: there's a lot of Sony-haters out there. All they mention is how Sony invents various formats and tries to force them on the public. But you know what? The Sony haters never think about or comment on cool stuff like this. Sony's a big diverse company, and I think that this image sensor, while completely unnecessary for folks like me, is a pretty cool development. That image sensor is huge...and a bigger sensor (with bigger individual pixels) means less of a problem with noise, etc, right?

EQC

There is a need for cameras with resolution like this - but only for high-end studio and location photography.

NeoPoliticus

When we want to upgrade the imager, we just swap in a new one...like memory chips :-)

Imagine having to get a different camera body to use different speed films???

RainyDayInterns

Megapixles are KILLING the DSLRs
give me a 8mp camera that does 16bit with noise preformance similar to a nikon d3 and put that in everything then we will get somewhere. more megapixles means more noise slower capture rates ect

BionicSniper

thomasora

Pretty obvious, "those pro guys" have a good reason.

coolal