Sensor Size Cheat Sheet Update
After some discussion on dvinfo, I added the 1/2” chip size used in the Sony EX1, as well as this weird format I just heard about called 35mm motion picture film (Super 35).
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Slugline. Simple, elegant screenwriting.
Red Giant Color Suite, with Magic Bullet Looks 2.5 and Colorista II
After some discussion on dvinfo, I added the 1/2” chip size used in the Sony EX1, as well as this weird format I just heard about called 35mm motion picture film (Super 35).
When preparing for my guest stint on This Week in Photography (I know, I managed to disguise well the fact that I’d prepared), I made myself a little cheat sheet for some popular sensor sizes. It occurred to me that y’all might find it useful.
The RED Mysterium sensor is very close to the size of motion picture film (Super 35), which is as wide as the full-frame 35mm SLR frame is tall. The “small” DSLR chips are very close to this size, meaning that an inexpensive DSLR can have very similar depth of field characteristics to the movies.
On the other hand, if you want to get a sense of what the DOF will be like on the Scarlet, you could do worse than to play around with a Panasonic LX2.
Here’s an image that shows how a lens of a given focal length projects onto the various sensor sizes. It’s easy to see the “crop factor” at work here, and how a 50mm that is “normal” for a 5D would be a super telephoto if you could somehow slap it onto an LX2. It takes a 35mm lens to project an image onto a DX chip that matches the Angle Of View of a 50mm on the 5D or D700. You can visualize this by imagining what happens when you move a projector closer to the screen: the image gets smaller. If you wanted the above image to fit within the DX sensor, you’d have to move the lens, which is very much like a projector, 15mm closer, making it a 35mm lens.
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I was the guest on This Week in Photography podcast #42, where we geeked out about camera sensors and complained about the megapixel arms race.
If you're new to ProLost via TWiP, you can check out previous posts tagged with Photography. You might be particularly interested in my Lightroom 2 speed session, where I compacted six minutes of photo editing with the public beta (including lots of local adjustments) into a time-lapse screen capture.
I take tons of pictures for work, but mostly for the sheer pleasure of it. My flickr feed is here, and I update it often. Lately I've been posting older images that are suddenly of interest thanks to Lightroom 2.0's local adjustments.
My cameras include the Canon 5D with f/1.4 50mm and kit zoom and the venerable Panasonic LX2.
Jim just posted this mock-up of a handheld configuration (the handle is meant to be an optional accesory), and I love it. It reminds me in a weird way of the Canon A1 Digital camcorder (there was not much digital about it, being a Hi8 camera). It had a vertical handgrip on the back like a big SLR, and it was the best camera I ever used for handheld work.