Camera Gurus: Need help - switching to FX worth it?

[eguiyab]

Hey Guys

I'm looking to find a replacement for my trusty Nikon D90. It has served me well for all the years that I have owned it and still works great to this day. I am now finding it a bit limiting and am looking to upgrade. I need something with faster focus, more focus points and better low light/Hi ISO performance.

I have been fortunate enough to be able to collect a few good pieces of glass over the years, including my pride 17-55 2.8. The rest of my kit rounds out to a DX35 1.8, 50 1.8, 18-200, and a Tokina 11-16 2.8. I like my current set of lenses, and it has served me well thus far. I plan over the next little while to hopefully complete my collection with a 70-200 2.8 and a 28-70 2.8.

I am at a cross road at the moment, as the new D600 has been released, and presently can be had for a great price with a kit lens. I'm just not completely sold that FX will give me a greater photographic advantage over DX?? Or am I misinformed? The only lens I could really carry forward would be my 50 1.8 and the remaining lenses would force a crop on the FX body.

For those shooting FX or those who made the switch from DX to FX.... I'd like to hear what was the factors or what made your decision

[stevenma188]

Not sure if you've seen this yet. The guys are goofy, but there is good info in there.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtqMDeZ3fig

[Aitch]

I'm a Canon user, but I made the switch a few years back and wouldn't go back. I love narrow depth-of-field and full frame can't be beat for that.

[CelestSpeed3]

I have a 5D mark2 and a few primes. It's such a steal now that the 5D mark2 is discontinued. Full frame is by far worth the upgrade in my opinion. If you like shooting telephoto I would keep the crop body.

Reasons from switching:

1. you don't know what shooting wide really is until you go full frame
2. the depth of field gets shallower with full frame


My 5D ark2 isn't the fastest with respect to FPS or auto-focus but I just learn to deal with it. It has never stopped me from taking good photos. Sure I "might" be able to get more good photos with a 1Dx or something like that but if you truely learn your gear you will be fine. After all people were making a living doing this before with manual everything.

[Xerox]

I switched to full frame in 2008 and never looked back. All my cameras since then are all full frame and very likely that cameras in my future will be too (at least with DSLR format). I realized early on when I had my Canon 30D (1.6x crop) that all the great lenses are meant for full frame so I didn't invest in crop lenses (unlike Nikon, Canon's EF-S crop lenses can't be used with full frame at all) with the plan to eventually switch to full frame which made the transition less costly.

With all things equal, full frame will give you shallower DOF, better low noise performance due to less pixel density, better dynamic range, and larger brighter view finder. Not too many people talk about the benefits of larger view finder but in my opinion it's extremely refreshing to be able to actually SEE this every time you put your eyeball upto the view finder.
(Shoot full frame for a while and then try shooting a crop body - it feels like you're looking through the viewfinder of those old compact point & shoots cuz the viewfinder is so damn small. It's like watching blueray/HD and then going back to VHS. It's a pretty drastic difference once you get used to something "better")

But full frame isn't for everyone. It sounds like you're happy with your DX lens collection so switching to FX may not be as beneficial since you're just shoot DX mode anyway (although you should still benefit from better low noise performance). Or, to convert your DX lenses to FX might become costly.
But if you shoot a lot of landscape and people, I would suggest you seriously consider FX.

[Aitch]

Funny enough, when I made the switch I hadn't got any EF-S lenses as I'd tried to stay away from them. Although now I don't have any of the lenses from that period either!

[aZuMi]

I had the D90 before moving over to the D600. But during that time, I pretty much had all FX lenses. The good thing about Tokina 11-16 is that you can still use 16mm as an UWA for FX. 11-15mm can be used for creative shots. As for 17-55 2.8 and 35mm 1.8, you'd have to sell those to fully utilize FX format. The main reason I switched was overall IQ, 24MP against 36MP of D800 (between D600 and D800), body build is much better than D90 without being too big, and of course - ISO.

http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/Cameras/Compare-Camera-Sensors/Compare-cameras-side-by-side/(appareil1)/834%7C0/(brand)/Nikon/(appareil2)/439%7C0/(brand2)/Nikon

The lenses I currently have are Nikkor 28-70mm 2.8AF-D ED IF, Nikkor 50mm 1.8G and Nikkor 80-200mm 2.8AF-D ED IF. It's a kind of jump that makes sense from a D90, IMHO. And once you sell your DX lenses, you'll be able to get the 24-70mm 2.8 at least :)