> > "The customer is always right" > > That seems to be forgotten by almost all the modern > > mega-corps of today, Canon included.
>The thought that a sensor needs to be the same size as a > certain quantity of film will only have importance until the wide-angle gaps > are covered. Actually, when I go to buy a wood floor I want the shop to supply me with a wood floor. I don't want a list of excuses about how laminate is "21st century", how it's more durable, how with the quality of the "grain" I won't be able to tell the difference. I'd not warm to the flooring industry either if next time I tried I discovered that the manufacturers, despite having the technology to hand and a demand from consumers for wood had decided not to sell it anymore [presumably because profit margins from lamiante are higher - lower manufacturing/supply costs]. > The truth is that sensors aren't getting any bigger in any > line of cameras. So while it might have become true that "the manufactures are not selling wood anymore" that does not remove my distaste of being forced to buy an ersatz alternative by corp that is unwilling rather than unable to fulfill the demand. > Those awaiting an evolution > to larger sensors aren't basing their hope on reality, 'cause it ain't > happening. In fact, if you look at the history of photography and cameras, > the size of the sensor, be it film or electronic, has done nothing but > shrink over time. Why would that change now? Actually, historically there was an overshoot (even before APS). There were smaller than 35mm formats that all but died out decades before APS because they flunked on the quality axis. I've got a "quarter frame" mass market bakelite camera that was one of those evolutionary dead ends. Also, at the time of APS there was a mini migration to Medium format cameras in progress. In hindsight, or is it conspiracy theory?, I wonder now if the marketing flop that was APS was actually a loss leader to conditioning the film using public to accepting a smaller "full frame" in advance of the planned move to APS sized sensors that were under development all along? "Full frame" sensors that some of us still hanker after are not technologically impossible after all: the D1s works. What was missing was the will by the industry to introduce them. Smaller sensors mean a new format, an the opportunity I suspect to refresh a whole new generation of smaller lenses - where most of the money always was anyway. The challenge for the industry was in creating the demand and I'll confess they have done a great job at that. There will be larger format mass-market digital sensors for sure: but I suspect they will not be released until the current generation have totally saturated the market plce :o) * **** ******* *********************************************************** * For list instructions, including unsubscribe, see: * http://www.a1.nl/phomepag/markerink/eos_list.htm ***********************************************************
