Lens guides

[Flibb]

Problem with buying glass as a lifetime purchase is that many of the current digital specific lenses wont work properly on future cameras if they increase the size of the sensor.

[fuddam]

Problem with buying glass as a lifetime purchase is that many of the current digital specific lenses wont work properly on future cameras if they increase the size of the sensor.

True. Most of my lenses, ie other than the kit lenses, are for 35mm F mount nikon, so I expect them to be compatible for a long time to come. The 18-70 that came with my D70 shows hideous vignetting when I try it on of my 35mm cameras.

ho hum

at least with Nikon they seem to be on a mission NOT to go to full frame 35mm digital SLRs, for various reasons.

[shiato storm]

nikon still use ccd sensors in all their cameras, canon use cmos in their dslrs and highend compacts and ccd's in the rest. ccd's are cheaper to produce the down side is the increased noise at the same iso as a cmos sensor...at the moment canon's cmos sensors are designed and produced 'in house', nikon has to have theirs made outside (usually sony but recent problems with the sony ccd has caused a few issues...), the advantage to canon (and downside to some extent) is all benefit of a new technology goes to them unfortunately the cost of creating a full frame sensor is astronomical due to high failure rates...
imagine if you will a wafer thin piece of sensor material, this will be a certain size, from which you can cut maybe 12-16 1.6x sensors, 8 1.3x sensors or only 3 full sized. of those produced the failure rate may leave you with only a few 1.6x, 2 at 1.3 and one full...so all the rest are junk and you start again. that wafer was expensive - whoe brunts the cost? us. with a bigger sensor comes more mpix but as mpix go up and sensor size stays the same noise tends to creep up due to photodiode distance reduction...
nikon have stuck with the dx sensor for a few good reasons; proven technology that has shown you don't need a full frame sensor to get good results, cheaper to make - perhaps more controlable that may in terms of consistency too. I believe nikon's new D200 is about as high in mpix you can go with the dx sensor before you need to increase its size. ans to be honest who needs more than the mpix its offering anyway?!! you can get decent prints to A2 with 6/8mpix...and how often will you do that?

there is as yet no sensor standardisation - as with all film - and given its upto the manufacturer I suspect we're not about to see a change in that for a long time if at all...