What will be the mirrorless full-frame mount?

[AvTvM]

exactly. i am happy for birders/spotters/zoo/wildlifers that they have big fat lenses and i knderstand why they don't mind or want big fat cameras. they have lots of choice, which is fine.

all i DEMAND is a similarly good choice of small AND powerful camera systems (mirrorless, APS-C and FF sensor) and native lenses in most frequently used fl range (24-200mm / equivalent). i am wiling to trade some aperture (no f/1.2 or 1.8 but f/2.0 or f/2.8 and f/4 zooms) against compact size, decent iq and affordable price of lenses. EF-M glass fits that bill perfectly for me. EOS-M cameras until M5 unfortunately not. M5 now is more bulky than necessary and desirable. mirrorless FF system is nowhere in sight from Canon or Nikon. Sony has some fairly decent FF cameras, but no compact, good and affordable lenses (because of E-mount limitations for FF inage circle).

that's where my impatien e with canon and the incessant canon defense league action in this forum originates.

 

[Mikehit]

What do you see as the viewpoint of the 'Canon defense league' and can you give examples? And by examples I don't mean people saying 'I would not find that useful'.

 

[Luds34]

Like 99% of other photo amateurs, I do not use big glass very often.

Wow I didn't know I was such a rarity, you know, an amateur who regular shoots big glass.

Oh-oh, wait a minute... Does this make me part of the one percent then? Will there be some sort of movement and protest against people like me? Yikes, I better consider switching to slow, normal zoom or something.

Not sure I'm with AvTvM on this, but it depends on what he/she means.

If by big glass, they mean $10k+ superwhites, then sure. Few amateurs other than very serious birders/wildlife folks own those.

But if by 'big glass' they mean your run-of-the-mill 'reasonably-sized pickle jars', like an f/1.4 prime or an f/2.8 zoom, I see enthusiasts with those all the time. (Think about it -- why go to the trouble of buying a FF rig if you are just going to put dainty f/2.8 primes and modest f/4 zooms on it?)

- A

Ahhh yes, if he meant "great big whites" then I'd agree. Of course that would be a complete deviation of the discussion.

See, the discussion was about how Sony was better because it was smaller and gave one a more compact system. So I was referring to "big glass" meaning f/1.4 primes, f/2.8 zooms. To me that is the one real big advantage of FF over APS-C is the ability to get that subject isolation, narrow DOF that just isn't achieved on any of the crops. So if one's argument in favor of a Sony A7xxxx is the small/compact size, shooting say a 35mm f/2.8 prime, then I feel you have made the wrong choice. At that point pick up a Fuji camera and grab the 23mm f/2 lens and you'll have essentially the same light gathering, the same DOF, and it is in a much, much smaller package. Or grab the 23mm f/1.4 and you still have a smaller package while achieving greater light gathering and more subject isolation and frankly beautiful rendering, bokeh, etc (those parts subjective of course).

Not to beat a dead horse, but again it is more and more looking like the mount Sony is using is just too compromised and is leading to some real challenges in delivering a lens lineup that the full frame market/people are use to seeing. The Sony FF mirrorless size saving would appear to be a myth.

 

[AvTvM]

the difference is: a compact FF MILC kills 2 birds with 1 stone: compact sized and highly economical gear as long as you keep to moderate aperture promes and zooms and all FF sensor goodness for those times, when you really need it. i am more than haüpy with the ubkect isolation i get with "moderate apertures" on FF.

i would never buy a number of fairly expensive f/1.2 and f/1.4 (Fuji) *crop-only* lenses that yield only more or less the effects of a very affordable and compact FF 35/2.0 or 50/1.8 or 85/2.4 lens.

also, the size afvantage of a fuji x-pro 2 with an f/1.4 lens over a Sony A7 with lenses like 35/2.8 is rather negligable. actually even a m43 camera like Oly M5/II is pretty much the same size as a Sony A7 (1st gen). it is nowhere near proportional to half- or quarter-sized sensor area.

 

[Luds34]

the difference is: a compact FF MILC kills 2 birds with 1 stone: compact sized and highly economical gear as long as you keep to moderate aperture promes and zooms and all FF sensor goodness for those times, when you really need it. i am more than haüpy with the ubkect isolation i get with "moderate apertures" on FF.

Highly economical??? I don't think those words mean what you think they mean.

Listen, if you like the Sony's because of their features, ergonomics, performance, menus, the way the camera looks even, whatever, that's great. But leaving out subjective reasons, and going with the abstract argument that it is full frame and small just doesn't hold water. That is all my point was. You are losing the one, main/true advantage of full frame with the current Sony lens lineup, and the size (saving) argument doesn't hold any water either. Basically getting the worse of both worlds, slow lenses, and large (relative) size.

 

[H. Jones]

I think that the users of big/long glass are a small proportion of all shooters, and that small group comes mostly from affluent amateur photographers.... the birding/wildlife/plane spotters... I do not know a single pro who uses them for work, but the birding community has them in spades!

Actually, I'd honestly say that pros make up most of the market for long glass. The Associated Press alone has hundreds, if not thousands, of the 400mm f/2.8, 200-400 f/4 1.4x, and 600 f/4 just in the US and that's just one photo agency. They buy them as soon as they come out as well, and replace them as soon as they break. Now if you think about Getty, Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, and everything else out there, there's a hell of a lot of these lenses sold to newspapers. Sports photographers would probably also outnumber birders in general, and when you get into that, there's thousands on thousands of college, high-school, and professional sports photographers.

The newspaper I mainly work with specifically has the Nikon 300mm f/2.8 and 200-400 F/4, and that's a smaller-sized paper.

I'd say Canon makes most of their sales of 1DX and big white lenses off of these sports/news agencies that buy them in bulk. Getty Images brought about 35 big whites to the Olympic games, for example, and that's definitely a tiny part of their whole agency.