First of all, you can't capture life as it really is with a camera. Life is three dimensional, moving, breathing, living, singing, crying reality. No camera can capture it. The best you can hope to do with a camera is to capture your two dimensional, stationary, silent, interpretation of life. You can add movement and sound with video for an interpretation closer to reality, but still not there. The degree to which your interpretation will ring true to the viewers of your photographs has much more to do with your skill and insight than it does with what camera you use. Sony, Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Panasonic; they can all be tweaked to give accurate and realistic colour, and beyond that they are all equally adept at presenting your interpretation of reality. The way to increase the reality of your pictures is to increase your skill and insight. Study the work of photographers whose pictures you think accurately depict reality. Practice, practice, practice. Submit your photographs for critique. The answer to your question is not in hardware.

It is personal for sure. I go back 10 years with DX. I never liked the digital camera designs as far as the bulkly bodies and having to hold down one thing then look at another thing to see a setting, and not being able to see my most of my settings at a quick glance, also not being able to use my lens fstops. I have shot for 30 years with larger formats, and with nice bright viewfinders, so it was harder for me to shrink down to DX. When I finally got my Df, I felt I finality got the camera I always wanted, it bringing back many features I liked.

The approximately 30,000 professional school photographers in the USA use MOSTLY APS-C Canons and DX Nikons. Add thousands more in the rest of the "portrait and social" segment of the pro market who use APS-C/DX, and that's a lot!

WHY? — It is a good question. It comes down to real-world needs:

When that industry made the switch to digital, there were no full-frame cameras. A number of factors kept us away from full frame for most of our work:

We needed to keep costs low. The big companies had hundreds or thousands of film cameras to replace quickly!

We needed to keep the price under $2500 to avoid capitalizing cameras that would prove to be disposable before they were depreciated. Remember, cameras were evolving quickly!


We needed to make prints up to 8x10 on a regular basis, only going to 16x20 or larger less than 5% of the time.

We needed cameras that made reasonable size files, because of limited network bandwidth, processor power, memory, and network storage (in the early 2000s).

I'm sure if I thought about it, I could list other reasons, but there are few reasons to use full frame in that industry.

The ONLY application where I would use FF in that environment would be for large group photography — marching bands, teams, fraternity/sorority photos, senior class panoramas... For that, a full frame 30+ MP image provides facial definition not possible with APS-C.

In the broader market, full frame digital is most useful:

In very marginal (dim) lighting

When you need a high-end body for rapidly responsive sports or nature photography

For point-of-purchase posters and other commercial work that will be viewed CLOSELY.

For architecture and landscape work that will be viewed CLOSELY.

When you need very shallow depth of field for video.

When your insecurity as a photographer requires that you own a big, expensive camera with a big, expensive lens... to make up for small penis size...

(I'm MOSTLY kidding about that last one, although there are a few folks here and there that I wonder about... I call that the "sports car" syndrome.)

I have been using the DX format for three years now as a professional. I find it feels more like my old 35mm. I used Canon back then and saw digital approaching the mound. I primarily shoot sports and high school events as a freelance for a local studio here in Cincinnati, Ohio. I was one of the last hold outs for digital. I still feel that film even 16 mm has more range in color and B&W than the digital. I chose the DX because of advertising from Nikon and my electronics knowledge as well as my darkroom knowledge. The sensor in both the FX and the DX from Nikon is relatively the same only just different physical sizes. The FX when size is computed becomes 36 mpx and if you do the math. The 24 mpx sensor if made the size of the 36 mpx sensor has the same number of pixels. Some may argue that it's just like comparing 35 mm format to 2 1/4 square format. It is not. Pixels are electronic and film resolution is very tiny grains of dye and silver. There is still quite a spread between the two as far as resolution is concerned.
I took up the 24 mpx due to cost and ease of color management in the computer. I prefer to do art photography and with a good color printer or lab tech you get a nice print. You do have to pay more for the archival prints. I can see the pixels but most of the world cannot see the difference between film and digital. Which is why I got back into photography after retiring from having photographed more than 1500 weddings.
I will probably get some notes telling me that both sensors are really not the same. If you want to tell me that please do with some data to back up your claim. From the way I see it even the Hasselblad at 36 mpx square format has the same sensor and resolution as the DX. What we really need is to take the same square inch of sensor and increase its resolution to a finite number then film and DX will be close to the same.
Note:.. They get the resolution number by multiplying the short side of the sensor by the long side of the sensor in all of the sensors that are currently out there.