Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/03/26

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Subject: RE: [Leica] extremely limited use of leica M cameras by iraqistate media
From: "Austin Franklin" <darkroom@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 21:30:23 -0500

Hi John,

> > The Canon 1D is not full frame, it's barely larger than half
> frame.  The 1Ds
> > is Canon's first full frame digital camera.
>
> Austin my man,
>
> The 1D is a 1.3 which is not "Barely Half Frame".

OK, here's the numbers, Bubba:

Full frame == 24 x 36
Canon 1D ==  28.7 x 17.8

But, you have to realize, that is the overall dimension of the sensor, not
the actual area used for imaging.  The camera actually only uses 4.06M
sensors out of the 4.48M sensors, so you need to divide by 4.06/4.48 (and
possibly even more because there is always area outside the sensor area, and
we don't know if they take that into consideration in their size numbers or
not).

Hum...let's do the arithmetic - Full frame = 24 x 36 or 864 sq mm.

Canon 1D = 28.7 x 17.8 = 510.86 x .90625 = 463 sq mm.

So, 463/864 = .536...or, as I said, barely half (%7 more than half).

> Half Frame would be a 2x
> multiplier.

Something with 2x the area is nor necessarily 2x the size in the horizontal
dimension.  Anyway, the 1D has a 1.3 multiplier, and the "multiplier" is a
factor of the horizontal size as % of a 35mm frame, which does not take into
account the vertical dimension, so it isn't an indication of area, but of
only one dimension.

> So you could say a 1.9 is barely a half frame. The 1.6 is even
> better than a half frame, you could almost say it's a thirtyone fiftieths
> frame, well not quite. The 1.3 is like a three quarters frame
> !!!! w00t !!!!
>
> And if I'm wrong, you can't say I didn't try to be right ;)

Well, yeah, you wrong.

Regards,

Austin

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