Please Canon, release a FF D-SLR for less than $2000!

I see the Canon folks have just announced a new "flagship" hi-speed (ie,
FPS) d-SLR, the EOS-1D Mark III. All well and good, but I'm STILL hoping
for a successor to the either the 5D or 30D that is full frame and retails
for under $2000 (body only). Oh the humanity of it all, is this too much to
ask?? ;-)

TLG

 

Canon 5D is $2800 at B&H right now. Why not just save the extra $800
and buy it?

 

Probably, yes it is too much to ask. Notice that each camera body Canon has
introduced lately has been an improvement over the previous model, but at
the same price, or nearly so, but not appreciably lower.
I'd expect the 5D successor to embody many of the improvements of the 1D
mkIII at a price pretty much in line with the $3000 intro price of the
current model.

 

Wait until the 5D is replaced, then buy a used one.

 

On the other hand, if Canon releases the 5D Mk II, or the 6D, or
whatever, it's reasonable to assume that prices for the remaining stock
of 5Ds will decrease. Ditto the used market.

Not list retail price under $2k, but possibly available at that price.

-dms

 

I held off going digital for years, waiting for an affordable full frame
DSLR. I finally concluded it wasn't going to happen soon and bought a
20D. Now I can't remember why full frame seemed so important.

What's so important about 36mm x 24mm? Or is it simply Luddite refusal
to adjust one's habit of equating a given focal length to a particular
field of view? I'm honestly puzzled.

--/<eith

 

It means the lensmount-to-sensor-plane distance is properly matched to
the frame size, which helps wideangle lens design. It also means that
you use all the expensive light-collecting ability of your big fast
lenses that you paid mucho bucks for. The smaller sensor camera
throws away half of the photons coming in from those lenses. It
effectively gives your 70-200/2.8, 600/4 or whatever an extra full
stop of speed. It further lowers the magnification you need to get a
print of any given size and dpi. That means making a large sharp
print puts less demands on the lens sharpness. Finally there are FF
lenses that don't have small-sensor counterparts, either for technical
or marketing reasons. The Nikon 17-35/2.8 is a FF professional
workhorse but the 12-24/4 DX with similar coverage for small sensors
is a full stop slower; similarly with Canon's counterparts to those
lenses. Canon has a 35/1.4 AF counterpart to the classic 50/1.4, but
the 35 is over 3x as expensive, and Nikon doesn't have an AF 35/1.4
(they discontinued the 28/1.4 that was in the $2000 range). Neither
Nikon nor Canon has a small-sensor equivalent of the 55/2.8 (or
thereabouts) macro lenses.

 

I find I've replaced all my most-used lenses since going to 1.5x digital
(Fuji S2, then Nikon D200, from misc. Nikon film bodies). A 28-70mm
f/2.8 is no longer a useful walkaround lens for me in the new format.
So much of the benefit of a DSLR compatible with my old lenses is lost.
(The longer extreme lenses remain useful, even become *more* useful,
so it's not a total loss.) FF would have avoided this.

But it was technically difficult and expensive both then and now. And
my lens changes cost less than the cost difference between my D200 and a
Canon 5D (and never mind that that would require much more drastic lens
changes).

I've never understood why it's such a visceral issue to so many people
either. Weird. Maybe they never used any other format? I've shot 127,
616, 35mm, 110, 6x4.5, 6x6, and 4x5 sheet film at least, before I ever
hit digital. Other formats are other formats, no big deal.

 

Except Canon's full-frame sensors are widely reported to have *more*
trouble than smaller sensors with wideangle lenses.

This is simply wrong. The f-stop of a lens remains what it is, your
exposures don't change. Sure, some of the photons aren't hitting the
sensor, and in that sense are wasted, but you don't have to increase
your exposures.

Furthermore, using the small sensor extends the reach of your fast
telephotos for no extra money. It's like getting a free 300mm f/2.8
(for those of us who have a xx-200 f/2.8 zoom).

True, and it'd be good if they did some work on that.

 

I agree mostly here except for the loss of lens speed. If I take a
reading on my hand held light meter and use a 35f2 on my Canon F1 or a
24 f2 on my D200 the exposures are both correct. I get a little more
DOF with the 24 at the same f stop, but that is the difference. I know
I'm going against the current trend but I like a lot of DOF. My 55
f2.8 works wonderfully with the APS sensor one of the sharpest lenses
I havew ever used. Same size mount same so there is really no
restriction on the light, just the target is half the size at the same
intensity as if it was 35mm frame (have you seen the latest Hassleblad
commercials on fullframe). Wish Nikon would bring out some of there
faster wides in AF.
Because of the costs of 35mm sized sensors, and the quality of images
from APS sensor, I suspect there will be parallel development for a
while longer.

Tom

 

Think of a 200mm/4.0 Nikkor for FF 35mm and the comparably priced
200/8.0 Nikkor-M for 4x5 sheet film. If you find a way to mount that
LF 200/8 on a 35mm SLR, it's still a 200/8, ridiculously slow for an
SLR lens, because you've paid for the ability to spread those photons
over a whole LF frame and then you're throwing away most of them. By
choosing to cover only a 24x36mm area, Nikon's designers were able to
make their 200mm SLR lens two stops faster than the LF version,
without increasing the cost.

The exact same thing happens with FF telephoto lenses on a DX camera;
It's like mounting a LF lens on a 35mm camera, just not as severe
(you're throwing away only half the photons instead of over 90% of
them).

 

The 35/2 is a vanilla lens but 24/2 is relatively exotic. The price
of a 24/2 could nearly buy you a 35/1.4, giving you a full stop.

 

But Canon seems to be (finally) addressing this problem.

The EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM is set to become the ultra wide-angle
zoom of choice for professionals. With vastly improved peripheral
sharpness, it replaces the popular EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM as Canon's
leading wide-angle zoom. A constant f/2.8 aperture ensures exceptional
low light performance and depth-of-field control throughout the zoom
range.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Telecentricity? I know there are
some 5D users here who aren't complaining about the sensor with
wideangles. There's one Nikon partisan who thinks Canon's 16-35 is a
lousy lens and is using a 17-35 Nikkor on a Canon 5D for that reason,
but says the combination works great.

Ehh, it's a little more complicated. Say there's a hypothetical D300
with the same CCD technology and same number of pixels as your D200
(so the D300's pixels are larger). If you put the same 600/4 on both
cameras and the exposure doesn't change, it means you're shooting the
same ISO on both cameras, which means you've cranked up the D200's CCD
gain by 3 db because of its smaller pixels, getting noisier images.

If you crank up the D300 to the same gain as the D200, you're now
operating the D300 at twice the D200's ISO, which cuts the exposure
time in half for images with the same amount of noise. Or
alternatively, if you want to run your D200 at the same gain as the
D300, you have to cut the ISO in half and increase your exposures.

Nah, it's like getting pictures from a 200/2.8 and cutting the edges
off with scissors so you get the 300mm field of view. You can get the
same effect by running the FF image files through a script that crops
them automatically after you've uploaded them to your computer.

One variety of full-frame-D3 rumor in fact states that the D3 will
have a button that makes this DX-like crop happen in the camera, and
also flips in a viewfinder mask so you see the DX portion of the
images.

 

Well no, for this to work you'd need to have exactly the same pixel
density, in which case you'll have the same noise behaviour. You can't
have it both ways: you need to choose between pixel density and noise
behaviour; so you can claim either that the bigger sensor has better
noise characteristics, or more pixels (ie you can reproduce the
"reach" of the smaller sensor simply by cropping), but not both. But
I'm sure you know that. Anyway, this whole FF thing is getting a bit
old.

Well since the D2x has this in-camera cropping feature (with a higher
frame rate), I think it's a good bet that if Nikon makes a camera with
a larger sensor it'll again allow this.

 

Don't rush to be a complete jerk, Keith--the fact that my $1500 17-35mm f2.8
lens is now a medium wide angle zoom, hurts. It hurts in that I now have to
buy another lens, the cheapest of which appear to start at $500, and it's
assured that the quality will not approach that of the lens I'm having to
replace--not even the best of them available can do that.

 

Which is no loss to me at all; the lens is still f/2.8.

Now, you're right that they could design *faster* lenses more easily,
since they only have to cover the smaller sensor. This has been my
biggest disappointment, really, with APS-sized cameras -- that not
enough is being done with the potential for faster lenses (although the
Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 DX is cheaper than the 17-35mm f/2.8 and has a
longer zoom range, so perhaps that's *one* example of our benefitting).

 

So they're catching up with Nikon's 17-35mm that was so popular, finally?

But not yet really taking a swing at the 17-55mm f/2.8 DX?

 

To get close to the FOV that a 50mm lens gives me on a FF camera I had
to go to a 28mm lens. I can get a pretty good 50mm f/1.8 lens for
about $70, the 28mm is slower at f/2.8 and cost several times as much.

I am very much looking forward to the day that I can use my 50mm lens
on a FF camera. This is not to say that the 50mm is useless on the
20D, but for overall shooting a FF sensor would be a much better
match.

Scott

 

In head on tests, the horrible 17-40 on the 5D is sharper at every point on
the frame than the wonderful 10-22 on the 20D at the same aperture for all
apertures. And that was without even testing the 17-40 at f/11 (its best
aperture).

With the larger sensor, you get larger pixels. So the 5D is a full stop
faster than the APS-C cameras.

You pay a full stop in sensor sensitivity for that reach, almost completely
negating the advantage thereof.

They can't do anything about the sharpness problem.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan