4OX wrote:
Thanks everyone. Good info. I have a Cannon EOS 70D. I have a 1.8 50mm lens, a 70&200 2.8, and a couple of kitchen zoom lenses. I am doing studio portrait work, using various types of strobes and soft boxes, beauty dishes etc. Outdoor portraits with portable lighting. And my son's college football games. My lenses are "EF". I don't know what that stands for. I've spent my dollars on lighting etc and understand the pros and cons of my crop camera, vs FF. I eventually will have both. Just needed to know if I'd need all new lenses when I buy FF. Sounds like I won't.
Thanks everyone. Good info. I have a Cannon EOS 70... (
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Thanks for getting back with more info... It was pretty much impossible to answer your previous question without that.
Your 50mm f/1.8 and 70-200mm would work fine on a full frame Canon camera. Both of those are "EF" lenses, which indicates they are full frame capable.
You didn't specify the other lenses you have, but if they are Canon "EF-S" they will not even fit onto a Canon full frame camera. Canon uses a modified mount on the EF-S lenses that physically prevents them from even being attached to the camera. If they did fit, they would strongly vignette and might even interfere with the mirror in the camera, which is much larger in a FF camera than in your 70D.
If those "kitchen" zooms are third party such as Sigma, Tokina or Tamron, they might be usable on full frame. Tamron "Di", Tokina "FX" and Sigma "DG" lenses are all full frame capable. And, unlike Canon, the third party manufacturers do not install anything on the mount to prevent a "crop only" lens from being fitted to a full frame camera. They use the same mount regardless, so Tamron's "Di II", Tokina's "DX" and Sigma's "DC" lenses.... which are all designed for use on APS-C cameras like your 70D... can actually be mounted to Canon full frame cameras, might be partially usable, but will tend to vignette heavily at many settings. Just for example, the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 DX lens for crop cameras can actually be used on full frame at 16mm... but not any wider. Tokina's 12-24mm f/4 DX lens also can be fitted to full frame, but only zoomed to about 18mm before the vignetting gets to the point where the image is pretty much unusable. It will vary with other lenses from Tokina and the other third party manufacturers.
If you use a lens designed for APS-C camera on a full frame camera, or even take a shot with a full frame capable lens and then crop the image down to APS-C size... you'll actually be worse off. Your APS-C 70D is a 20MP camera. If you were to take an image with a 30MP 5D Mark IV instead, then crop it down in post-processing to match the angle of view of the APS-C camera, you'll actually only have about 12MP of that image remaining! You get "more reach" with the 70D... "more pixels on target" for telephoto work. Full frame, on the other hand, excels at wide angle work. A 16mm lens that's only moderately wide on your 70D would be an ultrawide on full frame (but you don't mention having or using any truly wide lenses... the two you mention behave as short to relatively long telephotos on a 70D).
For some of what you say you shoot, there may be some advantage to full frame. It would be good for the studio work, for the large part. Whether it would be any better than your 70D... who knows? HOWEVER, it REALLY depends upon what you need to do with the images. If you (or your clients) don't make big prints from them, you're unlikely to see much or any difference.
Another thing... you mention doing studio work with strobes, etc. Your 70D has a flash sync of 1/250 and probably syncs with your strobes at 1/200. With most of the full frame cameras the flash sync is 1/200 and it's recommended to use 1/125 with studio strobes. Faster shutter speeds might not fully sync. There's some variation, depending upon the particular camera model and strobes... but basically with a FF camera you would need to use slower shutter speeds with your strobes and need to be able to work with that.
For the sports photography you mention, I bet you are using your 70-200mm f/2.8 a lot. While that's a full frame capable lens, it will behave considerably "shorter" on full frame (see above about cropping full frame images). To use full frame cameras for sports and other things that require telephoto, you will need longer telephotos which are typically bigger, heavier and more expensive. For example, Sigma makes a 120-300mm f/2.8 zoom... it weighs more than double your 70-200 and is much larger... and it cost around $3500, last time I looked. Canon doesn't make a zoom like that, but they do make excellent 300mm f/2.8 and 400mm f/2.8 lenses... figure $8000 to $10,000 for one of those. There are one or two stop slower and more practically sized alternatives in the $1300 range: Canon 300mm f/4 and 400mm f/5.6. Or, if you are mostly only shooting day games, Canon's 100-400mm IS "II" is excellent and costs around $2000. There are also Tamron and Sigma 100-400s that are considerably less expensive (around $800), but are also around a stop slower than the Canon zoom through much of their focal length range, so require even better lighting conditions. All these are "EF"/full frame capable lenses.
Finally, if you think a full frame camera will somehow "take your photography to a new level".... it usually won't. Lens quality actually makes more difference than the camera they are used upon. And there are some fine lenses for APS-C cameras, which are often smaller, lighter and less expensive than FF lenses. Plus crop cameras can use full frame capable lenses and when that's done the APS-C cameras only use the central area of the image, which has the highest resolving power in most lenses. In other words, they "crop away" the weaker corners and edges of full frame lenses.
And a "good" photographer can make great images with an APS-C, pretty much just as well as they can make them with full frame. OTOH, if you have clients who are paying you to make images they can use very large, a full frame camera might be good to add to your kit (just don't get rid of that 70D... you'll probably still want it for the sports photos). Full frame are popular with wedding photographers, for example, because of their better high ISO, low light shooting capabilities. It's not uncommon for a FF camera to be able to make usable images a couple stops higher ISO than a crop sensor camera (but more recent APS-C such as 7D Mark II and 80D are also able to use higher ISO than your 70D... about one stop). Full frame cameras also give somewhat more control over depth of field... can render stronger background blur with big apertures for portraits, or can be stopped down to smaller apertures for greater depth of field in landscape shots. Actually both formats render images the same... the reason large apertures seem to blur more strongly on FF is because you either need to use a longer focal length or move closer, to fill your viewfinder the same as you did with the crop camera. And at the other extreme, a FF camera can be stopped down a little more before diffraction becomes an issue, only because to make any given size of print the FF image is less magnified than one from an APS-C camera.
In general, a full frame camera kit is bigger, heavier and more expensive. You also have somewhat fewer lenses to choose among (though to be fair, the Canon system is pretty large and comprehensive, even for full frame). But while your 70D can use both EF and EF-S lenses, one of the full frame Canon cameras would be limited to the EF lenses. (Note: There are now also some Canon "EF-M" lenses for the APS-C mirrorless M-series cameras and some "RF" lenses for the new full frame, mirrorless EOS R camera. Neither of these series are compatible with any of the DSLRs. But both these mirrorless systems can use EF and EF-S lenses via adapters. The latter are cropped on the full frame mirrorless, though.)
There are advantages to both APS-C and FF... as well as disadvantages to each of them. And only you can truly say if adding a FF to your kit would be worthwhile or not. I suspect a lot of people spend a lot of money for "full frame goodness" actually get pretty little benefit from it... They may well be the only person who ever sees their images in all their FF glory, while viewing them on their computer monitor at 100% during post-processing. By the time they've resized their images for display on Facebook and Instagram... or attach to an email or even make a 13x19" print... other people viewing those will have no clue camera was used, it makes little difference whether it was FF or not. Ultimately, what you shoot, the end use of your images and your budget really should be your guide... whether or not you "need" full frame.