If you’re new to photo and still hazy on what crop factor is, we recommend you give this a watch.

As those of you with a grasp of modern optics and physics might expect, the 24mm f1.4 is rather chunky, basically a 3.5″ cube and weighing in closer to 1.5 lbs. It’s also not a budget prime, and it’ll enter the market at just under $2,200. The 16-35mm f/4, being a slower aperture zoom, slots in as Nikon’s affordable alternative to the 14-24mm f/2.8 (well, sorta, it’s obviously not apples-to-apples), weighing in at $1,260, or approaching 600 bucks cheaper than it’s bigger bro.

They’re both up on our preorder waitlists, so you should go here and add your name: https://www.robertsimaging.com/preorder.jsp

Now, getting past the sentimentals, here’s what you need to know:

1. The Mark IV continues the tradition of the 1D line in using an ASP-H sensor with a 1.3x crop factor. The full-frame chips remain a hallmark of the studio-oriented 1Ds line, and of course the 5D series. It’s up now to 16.1 megapixels, and keeps dual-processors (now the DIGIC IV models).

2. It has an all new 45-point autofocus system (39 of which become the more accurate cross-type points with an aperture of f2.8 or wider). Did we  mention it’s all new and reportedly exhaustively field tested?

3. Canon is showing a rare conservative streak, and the continuous shooting mode is throttled back to 10 frames per second (versus the blistering 14 of its predecessor).

4. 1080p video. Really, were you expecting them to leave this out after the 5D Mark II, Rebel T1i, and 7D all got it? If you were, shame on you. If you weren’t, ta-da! HD video for everybody!

5. Expanded ISO. The Mark IV sport an expanded ISO range of 100 – 102,400 (which seems somehow familiar)

Those seem to be the key points, a lot of it is the stock stuff you’d expect from a camera at this price point. It keeps the 3″ 920,000 dot LCD, build, 1/300s EX shutter sync, 100% viewfinder, you get the point. Continuing the trend started with the EOS 7D, Canon’s announced a new wireless file transmitter for this beastie (and one for the 5D Mark II, too), for those of you who dig sending photos straight to a computer.

I shouldn’t have to say Get On Our Wait List Today, but it looks like I just did.

The king of the show (of course) is the M9, sporting a Kodak-designed 18 megapixel full-frame sensor (which solves one problem of its predecessor, which made wide primes behave notably less wide thanks to a crop factor). The sensor once again lacks an anti-aliasing filter, which I hear resulted in insanely sharp photos from the M8s and which meshes well with all expected physics as well. This time Leica has seen fit to put the cut-off filters back over the sensor, removing the sometimes criticized need for a gamut of such filters for your lenses. Bravo, Leica. Combined with the body tweaks done on the M8.2 to solve a few problems with the day-to-day, in-the-warfield use, Leica’s getting its M series very much to a nice zenith for the digital age. Mind you, I think you still have to take the baseplate off to switch memory cards, but there’ll always be trade-offs for award-winning body design, yeah?

The other camera, a compact body with a 12.2 megapixel APS-C sensor and a fixed 24mm f2.8 lens (kinda like Sigma’s DP2), brings the clasic M series aesthetic to the compact market, while simultaneously creating a new price tier for digital compacts. It features an available grip, and a built-in flash (which is quite cute and cylindrical), full-manual controls (including aperture and shutter dials), RAW, etc.

Both bodies have decided, in a bold and applaudable move, to forgo in-house software and instead come with Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom. Bravo, Leica. Seriously. I’ve used quite a few RAW and managements softwares, and Lightroom is easily the best of any of them, and makes taking pictures from good to fabulous a quick and painless chore, complete with robust filtering and organization options. More people could follow Leica’s lead here and I would not be hurt in the least.

I’m trying to make it clear that the website this year is taking a stance that more reflects the Roberts experience that has kept us as the leader in photographic equipment here in the Midwest for many many moons.  We’re bumping up all sorts of stuff on our site so that not only can you find the product you’re looking for, you’ll even be able to get guidance right there online as to what the darn product you should be looking for even is.

And these whitepapers are the newest in this push. We’re tackling all the big, hot questions that are doddering up the forums. Crop factor, white balance, resolution, MTF, RAW vs JPEG, reading histograms, understanding sharpening, we’re working on getting it all up, and on writing it for photographers of any experience to start approaching.

Hmm. OK, now, I’m contractually required to use the phrase “Photography Learning Indianapolis” somewhere in this post. And now I have. I’ll be with you all soon, and I’ll be bringing a mighty new learning resource with me.

Unlike Nikon lenses or Canon lenses, the Four Thirds and Micro Four Thirds have a crop factor of 2x, which makes this first offering effectively a 90-400mm lens, which isn’t too shabby for something measuring all of 4 inches long.

The review so far indicates that it’s a solid if not spectacular lens, but it’s a kit lens coming in at around 350 bucks, so I think that’s perfectly acceptable. And, for people looking for a pocketable telephoto zoom, this is the biggest step forward yet.

Looks like we should be getting stock on some soon.

I remember hearing a saying for people in Hollywood: the gross is a dream, ask for a cut of net. In cameras, the idea is “the digital zoom is a lie, ask for the optical.” The amount of zoom is one of the most important digital camera comparisons, and most point-and-shoots will list 2 different zoom values for their cameras, like “3x Optical 5x Digital.” Some of them will tell you this gives the camera a full 15x of zoom, which sounds great. But, there’s a but.

ISO 800+. Let’s set all arguments about high ISO noise and the sensor format wars aside for a moment. Show of hands, ten years ago, who was shooting above ISO 400? How abut ISO 800? By the time this line of thinking gets to ISO 3200, heck, we barely even stock ISO 3200 film. While it’s nice to have increasingly better high ISO performance, let’s not forget to remember that for most practical purposes anything above ISO 800 is a gift given to us by digital anyway, regardless of its chroma noise.

High Speed Flash Sync. I just recently got my Canon AE-1 Program back form a friend who had been borrowing it. As I was looking it over I saw the familiar old lightning bolt next to the 60 on the shutter dial. I think about a thread I read recently on a forum, where some user was livid that the new wave of Nikon digital cameras How dare Nikon only give the D700 a maximum flash sync of 1/250 of a second with a focal plane shutter? My E-3 can sync between 1/30 and 1/250 of a second. It may not be perfect for every need, but boy, it’s certainly more versatile than that old lightning bolt.

Image Stabilization. I’ve mentioned this before. It’s starting to get where a lot of us take for granted what I’d consider the biggest aid to photographers since auto-focus (at least for convenience). I don’t care how it’s implemented, IS like Canon lenses, Nikon lenses’ VR, Panasonic’s Mega OIS, Olympus’ in-body IS, Sony’s SuperSteady Shot Included (which wins points for the most marketing-speak branded term), Pentax’s Shake Reduction (winning the award for most pertinently named), etc.. The ability to shoot static scenes up to 5 stops slower than the conventional 1/x rules tells me I can is a serious advantage which has become almost as common as shutters in the digital age. According the the old rule, (modified by taking into account crop factor) my dear 50-200mm (100-400mm equiv) should need at least 1/400 second, but I’ll frequently use it down to 1/60 thanks to IS.

White Balance. OK, I understand it’s a popular pastime on some sites to complain about how mediocre the auto white balance feature on most cameras (which I find a bit unfair, if you pay attention you never actually see the world as being totally white). But, the way I see it, we have it at all now. When I was learning photography, I was basically told I could buy tungsten or daylight balanced film. Then, I had to remember which one I had loaded at any given time. Later, I learned about color-correcting filters, which brings white-balance options up to a dozen or so. But, now we have cameras that will attempt to figure it out for us, give us a half dozen presets, and typically even let us dial it in in ridiculously precise steps ourselves. And we can change it by shot!

Sorry, I was getting a little too excited about white balance there. Ah, *ahem*, right. Next time: Stuff!

Let me get this out of the way right off the bat: to the best of my knowledge bokeh isn’t directly affected by sensor size. I say “to the best of my knowledge” because, despite popular opinion, I’m not all crazy omniscient (crazy, yes, omniscient, no).

“But,” you say, “Derek! You told us way back when that sensor size affects bokeh!”

Why, so I did, good job paying attention. Here’s the thing: remember our lesson on Depth of Field? And I told you sensor size was a part of it? Aha, now we’re getting to the point.

So, again, there’s a lot of math involved in this (which I am definitely not qualified to talk about, but if you want an astoundingly complete and rational essay on the effects of sensor crop on various aspects of an image I will point you to my favorite reference page here), but what you basically need to know is that depth of field has what would be called an “inverse correlation” to sensor size. Basically, the smaller the sensor, the deeper the depth of field.

OK. Grab a Nikon digital SLR camera (like the new D90). It’s a DX, which has a crop factor of 1.5. Once again, we’ll compare things to the bad-old standard of 35mm. You used to shoot at 50mm f5.6 all the time on your film camera. But, now you have the D90. So, remembering what we said about field of view, you look through your Nikon lenses and you pick up that new 18-55 VR and rack it out to about 33mm (because now you know that’ll give you a field of view the same as your 50mm did) and you set your aperture to 5.6. You snap the shot and… well, and there’s less out-of-focus area in the shot then the one you shot with your 50mm. As a matter of fact, it looks pretty similar to about f8 on your old camera. That’s because of the 1.5x crop factor on the D90. If you take 5.6 x 1.5 you get a value 8.4. If you want to imitate the same DOF as the old 5.6, you have to divide it by the crop factor to get the aperture you’d need now (5.6 / 1.5 = 3.7, by the way. f3.7 on your D90 will have the same amount in focus as your film camera did at f5.6)

Kinda like with the field of view, this “conversion” is just for the depth of field. The lenes still collects as much light as an f5.6. There’s an oft-made argument that this is a crop-sensor DOF “advantage”, because it has the DOF of a slower aperture at a faster one. This is countered by it being hard to get very shallow DOF (which helps with bokeh, less we forget why I’m even on this topic at all), and by the fact that smaller sensors have more problems dealing with noise management. It is the opinion of this blogger that it can’t be called an advantage or a disadvantage, it’s just a fact that you should be aware of so you can work around it.

OK! More examples, to make sure you got it. My beloved Olympus digital cameras, the E system, have a 2x crop factor. If I shoot f5.6 I get the DOF of F 11 (5.6 x 2 = 11.2) on a 35mm system. Pick up a 1D series Canon digital SLR camera and you’ll find a 1.3x crop factor, meaning f5.6 is closer to f7 (5.6 x 1.3 = 7.28). Getting the hang of it?

Those formulas again, real quick, for reference:

Going form crop-sensor to 35mm: aperture x crop factor
Going from 35mm to crop-sensor: aperture / crop factor.

To tie it back down to bokeh. We know that wider apertures give better bokeh, simply because less is in focus. If you want even more soft bokeh, then you might consider getting a system with a larger system (the so-called “full frames” like the A900, 5D Mk II, and the D700.) If you hear someone say that full-frame cameras have film-like bokeh (which is what started these articles in the first place), this is what they mean. F2.8 on full frame sensors looks just like the f2.8 did in film SLRs. Does this mean your Canon Digital Rebel camera can’t get that same bokeh? Certainly no, but you’ll need a lens that can open up to f1.8. Just something you should be aware of.

OK, this next bit is lengthy so we’ll split it into two posts. We’re going to talk about crop factor. For those of you who already know what this is, feel free to skip this post and check back the next one when I go into why this matters for bokeh. For the rest of you, read on!

OK, so. Way back in the bad old days of photography people used all sorts of fun and exotic stuff to capture images on. Most of these were big, and I mean really big, and had to be prepared by hand and used chemicals you’re probably not allowed on an airplane with these days. Eventually, these things were replaced by film, which found it’s most popular form by far in the 35mm negative. Then, near the end of film’s rule as king, and right before the dawn of digital, there was a format called APS-C (the history of which I’m not going to get into) which was somewhat smaller than the frame of a 35mm negative. More or less, and for various reasons, this smaller format became popular with DSLRsand we’re only now starting to see a resurgence of 35mm-sized sensors. But, alas, APS-C isn’t the only smaller sensor size, and for a whole slew of reasons you’ll find that pretty much every camera maunfacturer out there uses a different sensor size, most of the time smaller than 35mm.

Now, since 35mm was used for so long, its way of thinking and seeing is basically the common language of DSLRs. In 35mm, a 50mm lens gave us a Field of View (FOV) of 45 degrees, which as I’ve mentioned is about the same as what we as humans actually see in real life. But, these smaller sensors, they effectively “crop” from the center of the image the lens is projecting, which changes the FOV we see. For example, let’s look at the picture on the right. The big picture there represents a “full-frame” picture with a given lens. The yellow area represents the difference in size for a standard APS-C sensor, in this case the same difference in size as you’d find in the avergae Canon Digital Rebel camera. You can see how less of the image falls onto that sensor. But, since only what hits the sensor is shown on the final pictutre, it looks like it was shot using a more telephoto lens. See the crops below for an example of what the final output from the two sensors would show for the same lens.

So, let’s say the lens was a 100mm. In the “full-frame” 35mm shot it gives a field of view of around 23 degrees. Put that same 100mm lens on an APS-C sensor (which has a 1,6x crop, that is, the diagonal size of the APS-C sensor will go into the diagonal size of the 35mm 1.6 times), and that field of view is now 14 or so degrees. The length of the lens didn’t change, but since we’re only seeing a chunk out of the middle it looks like it did. Now, since most people don’t know what 23 degrees FOV looks like, but a lot of people know what a 100mm on a film SLR did, it’s the frequent practice to express field of view in 35mm equivalents. To do this, you take the actual length and multiply by the crop factor. So, the APS-C picture looks like it was taken with a 160mm lens in 35mm equivalent.

Now, there are a lot of sensor sizes, as I mentioned, and they all have different crop values. I made up a little chart you can click on there to the left and see the different sizes relative to each other, as well as their crop values. Looking at it you can see, for example, that Olympus digital cameras like my E-3 have a 2x crop. That 100mm lens on my camera will give me the same field of view as a 200mm would have on a film SLR. (Please note only the FOV changes as a result, most of the rest of the lens is still just a 100mm, we’re just seeing it different now). A DX Nikon digital camera system as you can see has a 1.5x crop, so that 100mm will have the field of view of a 150mm from the film days.

It’s important in this age of modern cameras to understand this, because the real focal length of these lenses never changes. A 100mm lens always has a focal length of 100mm no matter which crop factor you use it with. Crop factor merely changes the field of view.

Crop factor also has a few other effects on the final image, and I’ll talk about those next time now that we have the basic groundwork in place. If you’re still confused please do a Google search for “crop factor explained,” or read these posts here or for more in depth and complete information, here.

Next time, crop factor and depth of field. Your questions answered, your mysts demystified.