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Comment by perardi | Hacker News Reader

As a camera industry meta-commentary, it sure seems like the Big 3 really only want to sell full-frame cameras.

Sony, Canon, Nikon, they seem to have roadmaps for a full range of lenses for full-frame, from wide-angle to super-telephoto.

But APS-C? Meh. It’s a little confusing as to what works with what (hi, Canon, with your EF-M mount), and given that they never fully fleshed out a set of compact-but-performant sports lenses for that sensor size…it all seems perfunctory.

They seem to want to only sell full-frame, as that’s where the sweet meat of the margins can still be found in camera sales. All their APS-C cameras feel like “get the value buyer in the door”, but, that seemingly hampers growing into the rest of the system, as they only have a middling set of crop sensor lenses.

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They want to differentiate themselves as much as possible from smartphones to survive.

As smartphones have continued to get better (first via optics, then via software/computational processing) it has been the physics that has kept full frame (and medium format) relevant.

Personally I was a huge fan of m4/3 for the lower weight/smaller/open format interchangeable lens system but one cannot deny the cross-over between it and smartphones is perhaps too close to survive (Olympus is already out).

APS-C isn't as bad as m4/3, but why invest tons of resources/time into a format that can also get swallowed by the megafauna that is smartphones (via e.g. periscope lenses)? Instead, they can offer consumer grade/entry level FF cameras, with no lens system dilution or headaches trying to implement an inter-compatible flange focal distance (between APS-C/FF).

Can you blame them? The lower performance camera market got absolutely obliterated by smartphones. There is almost no market left for them in that area.

I recently bought a Sony A6000 to see if I would enjoy having a dedicated camera over my smartphone. Overall I like it, but I'm really shocked at well my smartphone does in comparison for 90% of photos.

There are certainly some major benefits to a dedicated camera such as low light performance, depth of field, better focusing, etc. But, honestly, for 99.9% of photos people are going to take (portrait photos of friends/family and etc), a decent smartphone does a better job.

Sony seems pretty committed to a variety of sensor sizes. The RX series of 1" sensor cameras and the 6000 series of APS-C cameras don't seem to be going anywhere. In part because there are strong reasons to use smaller sensors for video -- particularly greater depth of field at wider apertures being useful in low light.

There is a great deal of "super 35" cinema glass that commands non-consumer prices due to the quality of the optics. For stills, "full frame" lenses make more sense since they serve APS-C as well.

Afaik all major full-frame lenses work with also their corresponding crop mounts. Canon EF lenses work on EF-S, Sony FE lenses work on E mount, Nikon FX lenses work on DX bodies. This explains why there is somewhat limited interest for crop lenses.

But you end up paying for and carrying around a lot more glass (literally) than your sensor needs, right? Fortunately there's third party manufacturers like Sigma that fleshed out the E-mount market.

Size of tele lenses is also mostly determined by the size of the entrance pupil so there is little point in offering dedicated DX telephotos beyond 200mm/f5.6 or so where it still makes a difference.

Except, confusingly, you seemingly cannot mount a full-frame Canon RF lens on a Canon EF-M mirrorless camera.

Also, you can't mount EF-S lenses on a EF camera.

APS-C was a compromise format. It aided in making both bodies and lenses smaller and lighter, thereby enabling a cheaper product that could be marketed at the consumer level (amateur and family photogs). Pros who came from the film world almost entirely migrated to the full-frame format, noting that full-frame is actually smaller than 35 mm film, and 35 mm film was on the lower end of film size itself (compared to medium and large formats).

APS-C is compatible with super 35 format (approximately 24mm x 18mm). It appears in digital consumer cameras because APS-C size sensors make sense for film-making...because super 35 made sense for film making. It made sense for movie film because wide-screen images could be made on 35mm film using spherical lenses which are simpler and hence cheaper than anamorphic lenses.

Digitally, APS-C sensors made even more sense as television (and video) moved away from 4:3 ratio. APS-C stills cameras introduced by Kodak in the days before digital became common is another story...or the same story of Kodak trying to lock in a proprietary system (that story goes back to the first Kodak cameras).

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