miked46 Loc: Winter Springs, Florida

I was always wanting to move up to FF, but now with my 80D, I am having 2nd thoughts. If I am not needing very low light, I can get excellent shots from the 80D.

charleswendt

I used to shoot with a Graflex Crown Speed Graphic using 4X5 Sheet film, laughed at dinky 35mm.

Collhar Loc: New York City.

So then all of the imagines that you exhibit are brought on by chance not by any particular skill level or experience or insight.

billt1970 Loc: Gambrills, Maryland

The main advantage for me is the ability to secure new clients. Several of my newer clients require output from FF cameras. So I now have both FF and Crop Sensor Cameras (Nikon D600 and D7100).

Delderby Loc: Derby UK

Not all landscapes require (or are better) with everything in sharpest focus. I sometimes wish to focus on the medium and far distance, but wish to include foreground which I want viewers to be looking passed rather than at. Good crop photography requires more skill than many pro photographers have acquired - they are not all NG level!

Delderby Loc: Derby UK

Rubbage! A raw file is not produced "based on the settings you chose" - other than the exposure triangle, which is usually an 'A' mode.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Old44

But does shooting in RAW with a crop-sensor negate the FF benefits?

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

I can see there is a passion here for a larger sensor as the best of the best. If an image made with the same lens, same aperture and same exposure is different from one camera to the other when shot with a full frame please educate me because I believe there is no difference in quality...assume both cameras have the same number of pixels.

On the other hand we have Olympus and Panasonic along with Leica that use a micro fourth thirds sensor, smaller than the sensor of a "cropped" camera. Could anyone here deny the quality of those small sensors? Perhaps someone could tell me why so many professionals use micro fourth thirds cameras.

I use both types of cameras, cropped and full frame and I do not see a big difference in their quality. Noise was a big reason for using full frame but that has been disappearing with the new generations of APS sensors. Wide angles were not available for cropped cameras but today they are plentiful. When it comes to sports and action a cropped camera is very hard to beat. Portraits are easier with a full frame but I have made many portraits with a cropped camera without issues. My Olympus bodies are used often for portraits and they have excellent lenses for the portrait photographer like the 45 and 75mm lenses both at f1.8. If faster lenses for portraits are needed they also have them.

Today a bigger sensor is what many professionals prefer but to me a bigger sensor is Hasselblad territory.

Ysarex Loc: St. Louis

No. You can shoot raw with a FF sensor.

Joe

Old44

Sorry, I didn't ask that clearly: Can you get as much detail shooting RAW with a crop sensor as shooting JPEG in FF?

agillot

one thing to add , if you own some older film era lenses that are your primary tools , a full frame would take advantage of that .

DebAnn Loc: Toronto

The truth is that unless you are shooting photos for something that must be shot FF (is there anything?), it doesn't matter whether you choose a FF or a crop sensor. I have both and I honestly can't tell you which photo was shot with which camera after I have processed them. I have blown up shots from both cameras for wall display and nobody ever says that one is better than another. Many people like to pretend that they only go for "the best" equipment but it's just talk. You should go with whatever camera works for you. You don't have to spend mountains of money to get good photos. Remember, the photographer counts more than the camera.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Of course. Pixels are pixels. Pack 30 million of them onto a cropped sensor and you have a 30 megapixel image, just like every other 30MP image, regardless of the physical dimensions of the sensor.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Only if both cameras have a "perfect" lens.

But above 12 MP the quality of the lens becomes the limiting factor.

If you use an ordinary lens, especially a zoom lens, the larger format will give you a sharper image.

That's not to say that there aren't some good crop sensor lenses. But the true measure is line pairs per picture height (or width).

To get the same sharpness from a 1.5x or 1.6x crop sensor lens as you would with a full frame lens it would need to be able to resolve 50% or 60% more lines.