Albino wallabies are common on Bruny Island, Tasmania. Canon EOS R7, RF 100-500mm L |
Those who make, market and sell camera gear are very motivated to encourage us consumers to buy the latest and greatest full frame bodies and lenses.
The reason for this is clear enough. There is more profit
per unit on high price gear than budget equipment.
The main selling point of high end full frame gear is that
it promises to deliver better image quality than crop sensor bodies and
lenses.
I have both and find that for the most part that promise is
fulfilled.
In some situations especially in low light and/or when we
want to capture fast action my experience is that the full frame kit has a
clear advantage.
But when we have a medium to high level of ambient brightness
and the subject is not moving at high speed, there might not be much advantage
to full frame at all.
If most of our usage cases are in this second category then
crop sensor gear will do a fine job with full frame only marginally and
arguably insignificantly better.
Here are two photos captured hand held within a minute or so
of each other.
One was made with a Canon EOS R10 and RF-S 18-45mm f4.5-6.3
IS STM kit lens, new retail price in Australia $1399.
The other used a Canon EOS R5 with RF 24-105mm f4 L IS USM.
When purchased together as a kit this costs AU$5988, which is over four times
as much.
I chose a subject which has considerable fine detail (to
test resolution) , backlit foliage (to test for color fringing) and overall
high subject brightness (to test dynamic range).
When I bring both images to the same output size in
Photoshop I can, by pixel peeping at 100% on screen, just detect that the full
frame high end kit delivers slightly more acutance and sharpness in fine
subject details towards the periphery of the frame. Otherwise they look almost the same to me,
with very closely matched colour, contrast, highlight and shadow detail. Any small differences could easily be corrected
in Photoshop if desired.
I don’t know whether the differences will be visible in the
images which appear on this blog.
The message ?
Current model APSC crop sensor cameras, even entry level
ones, can in many conditions deliver results which are almost as good as those
from those high end full frame equipment.
And most viewers will not notice the difference.
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