There are two main reasons why 35mm film became the industry standard in 1909: This film size might seem a bit arbitrary, but it's not. (For the last 100 years this has been a 24mm x 36mm rectangle.) ![]() Full Frame SensorĪ “full frame” sensor is a sensor that is the same size as one frame on 35mm film. While there is some truth to this, it's definitely not the whole story.Ĭreating a “good” photograph has a lot more to do with the skill of the photographer than the equipment they choose. When you press the shutter button, everything in view of the lens is recorded by the sensor – the amount of light, the colors, the focus.īecause the bigger sensor in a full-frame collects more data than a smaller crop sensor does, you might think that the best choice is always going to be a full-frame camera. The sensor in your DSLR is the part of the camera that captures and records light. ![]() So how do you know which sensor is better for your needs? It's the matter of asking yourself a few simple questions.īut before we get there, let's talk about what the differences are between the two sensor types. Well, the truth is that one type of sensor isn't necessarily superior to the other. And that is only in situations where the available light is low enough that the noise is an appreciable percentage of the signal generated by the limited light.Full Frame vs Crop Sensor Cameras : Which is Right For You?Ĭrop sensor or full-frame sensor? New and experienced photographers alike often struggle the question of which sensor format is better. How you choose to apply noise reduction will likely have a much greater effect than the small differences each system is natively capable of in terms of handling noise. ![]() All of these factors would come into play, but just like the question of aperture, they are all probably so insignificant in their differences as to be negligible in terms of a detectable difference by an observer at standard viewing conditions. We know the relationship in terms of overall size between each, but we don't know the pixel pitches of each, how much 'gap' there is between the pixels for each sensor, nor the overall resolution of each sensor. We must then consider the relative resolutions of each sensor. So to even be able to calculate the minute theoretical difference we would need to know the absolute measured apertures of each lens at the indicated settings, the absolute measured ISO sensitivities of each camera, and the absolute measured shutter speeds of each camera (compared to the set Tv). The minor difference between the two is probably less than the difference between actual aperture and stated aperture of the two lenses in question. The entrance pupil of a 50mm lens at f/1.4 is slightly smaller at 35.7mm. The entrance pupil of an 80mm lens at f/2.2 is 36.36mm. This would take away the most significant advantage that the full frame camera has: collecting more light when using the same f-number as used with the APS-C camera. If we want the images to be the same brightness we need to either increase the exposure time or increase the ISO to compensate for the lower f-number. The same amount of light is being spread over a larger area with the FF camera, making the image dimmer. But the field density of that light is not the same. Since the full frame camera is stopped down to f/2.2 compared to the APS-C camera at f/1.4, under the same lighting conditions the same amount of light is falling on both sensors. In part because these things are measurable, we can debate them objectively, but it is far too easy to lose sight of what matters (and is much harder to objectively discuss), the final images. I have an engineering background and it is easy to fall into rather meaningless discussions about various differences, which in truth have very little impact on actual images. Crop/FF, Canikon/Pentax/Olympus matter far less than good composition and light. ![]() on screen display and prints, even discerning viewers are going to have difficulty distinguishing well exposed photos from one sensor to the next. Ignoring DxO, pixel peeping, and other counting of angels on pinheads and paying attention to real use cases, i.e. more photons and more area on the die.īut (and this is the reason I wanted to add another answer), for the last couple of generations, today's sensors and cameras have become absolutely remarkable. This gives the engineers more with which to work, e.g. From the same generation of sensors, it is reasonable to expect that the full frame images will out perform the crop, as the sensor sites will be larger.
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