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Sensor Sizes: Compared

So the general consensus among most photographers is that a bigger sensor is better than a smaller sensor. What's it better at, well that kinda depends. It's got bigger pixels which generally will give you better, cleaner information. It's more space so you so you can have more pixels in that particular area. And as a result of all of that, you're going to be able to get a shallower depth of field because of the type of lenses to get the right angle of view on that compared to the smaller sensors. Now the smaller sensors are nice because you get to be having a smaller camera that's easier to carry around. You'll get a camera that costs less money. Smaller sensor, everything gets smaller, there's less glass in the lenses. And finally, you get more depth of field and in some cases this is what we want. In certain types of photographs we do want more depth of field, but sometimes we want shallower depth of field. And so that's going to be a little bit of an issue. So, comparing the camera...

size of three different cameras. Now I've chosen a point and shoot, a micro four thirds, and a full frame SLR, and I've tried to get these as close as possible on screen to their relative size. You can see their weights down below. Choosing a sensor has long reaching implications about how big the entire system is going to be. And so there's a huge difference in the size of the product that you are working with and how much you are going to be carrying around. There's also gonna be a difference in the size of the buttons and the controls on the camera. And yes, obviously most of us would like to carry around less and smaller size equipment, but when the controls become very hard to work with I would much rather work with a larger, more comfortable camera once I'm actually shooting photos. And so you have to balance, the carrying it around versus the actual shooting portion. How much are you going to pay for these cameras? Well, luckily you don't have to pay per pound in photography but it's sometimes related, the bigger those cameras, they're going to be costing more money. There's more going on inside them in many cases. And so, when you get to these bigger and smaller there's a lot of back and forth. But the one that has the most followers on the internet, screaming the loudest, typing the longest sentences, and making the most arguments has to do with the shallower depth of field. And this is something that a lot of serious photographers know, it's a very important tool to what they work with and there's a lot of people who just obsess over this. The shallower depth of field of the larger sensor. So let's take a look at some examples, and so in this case I wanted to shoot a scenario as similarly as I could between four different size sensors. And so all of these images are shot with equivalent focal lengths. They're actually different focal lengths but they're all shot at 2.8, and you'll notice in this little setup at how shallow the depth of field is on the photo on the left. And that has to do with the fact that I am using a full frame sensor and it's forced me to use a particular type of lens that has a very shallow depth of field in order to get this angle of view. Now, if I want to adjust the cameras, now here I'll actually share with you which lens I needed to use in order to get the same angle of view from the same camera position. And so in one case, I'm using an all the way down to an 18 millimeter lens to get the equivalent focal length. Now, I can change the aperture and stop down a little bit to f/5. and get a little bit more depth of field. And I get more depth of field in all of them but there is always more depth of field in the smaller size sensor because I'm using a wider angle lens, I'm using a less telephoto lens. Now if I want to stop down as far as that lens has the ability to, you can see even with the full frame sensor I'm able to stop down and get pretty much everything in focus. And so, if you do want everything in focus and this has more to do with the capabilities of that particular lens, I am able to do it on the full frame sensor so it does give me the better of both worlds, more depth of field and shallower depth of field. In fact, I think I have these at even faster apertures. And so, now because these lenses are more available, as far as fast lenses, I'm able to get a very shallow depth of field with the full frame sensor. So if you are wanting to get shallow depth of field, if that is the end all, be all of what you want, you want the largest size sensor. And maybe you shouldn't stop at full frame, you should go up to medium format 'cause you can get even shallower depth of field in some of those cases. And so how does this affect your photography out in the field? Well, if you like to shoot with shallow depth of field, the larger the size of the sensor, the shallower the depth of field that you can get. And there is a slightly different look. Now my guess is, is if you showed these three photos to random people walking down the street they wouldn't even be able to point out any difference at all. This is something that photographers kind of obsess about and it's really important to us. And in some case it does define a little bit of the look of our photography. Alright and so where this is most prevalent is when your doing portrait photography. Your subject is in focus and you want to blur that background out of focus. By shooting with the full frames, which forces you to shoot with particular focal length lenses to get that same look to them, that background goes more out of focus and becomes less distracting, and it's a valuable tool that is helpful for keeping your subject sharp and everything else out of focus. So compare the depth of field, and these are very different products that I'm going to be comparing here. I'm comparing different sized sensors and vastly different products but they're going to give us an equivalent angle of use. So the picture in general looks the same with the exception of the depth of field. And so there is a huge cost difference, $200 to $6,100 but we can get relatively the same shot. And so this is a relatively inexpensive option over here on the far, right hand side and a very expensive option on the left. And if you want that shallow depth of field, it's gonna cost you a lot of money. And so you could do this shot over here on the right for 600 bucks. That's a body and a camera, brand new, very cheap. You want to shoot with a little bit shallower depth of field? Then you can do that pretty cheaply as well, 600 bucks. You want a little bit shallower depth of field? It's going to cost you a bit more money cause now you need to get in to a full frame camera, or you need to get in to a faster lens, or you need to get in to an even faster lens. And so if this depth of field is important to you, you can do it. It's going to cost you money and you're going to need a larger size sensor. One of the biggest questions that people have when they start getting into photography is they start honing in on a full frame sensor versus the APS. And so this is a whole section to compare these two sensors back and forth. What are you getting, because it's not that one is better, it's that there is a compromise and a trade off of features between the two. First off, APS is a terrible name. APS deals with a film that I would bet practically no one watching this class has ever shot. There's only going to be a few people who've ever owned an APS camera. And what it is, is a film camera that was introduced back in 1996. They were trying to design cameras that were a little bit smaller and easier to load than 35 millimeter cameras, so they designed these very simple drop in cartridges that fit into these smaller size cameras. And we have somebody raising their hand, they own one of these and it was popular for about four or five years before digital started taking over. And they just happen to use kinda the same technology, they had some research done on lenses that fit that size and so forth. And so they kind of called it that because that was the closest thing that we knew about that size. Now, you're going to see APS followed by N and C, and to be honest with you I haven't really found an answer as to what the correct name of this size is, because I see it called different names all over the place. But typically you'll often see one APS or APS-N followed by the Nikon size. And this is used by Fuji and Pentax and a number of other manufacturers, and it's not technically a 1.5 crop, it's actually a 1.53 crop if you want to get exact about things. Canon has a 1.6 crop that is usually pretty close to its 1.60 markings. Sometimes it's less, sometimes it's more. It depends on the specific camera. And we're not gonna have an argument between these two because there's a millimeter difference and it's just really no need to argue about things. Let's just combine both of these and call it APS, okay. So doesn't really matter, it's that generally smaller size. So comparing this to full frame camera, what is the image area difference? How much difference is there in the total surface area of the sensor? And it's a pretty big difference. The full frame sensor is more than twice the size of the smaller sensor. It's a lot of imaging area, and so there is a pretty significant size difference. What you see in the viewfinder, at least on the SLRs, is often represented by the fact of how big of sensor it is. Let's take a very particular case of the Canon 5DSR versus the Canon 7D Mark II. If you were to look through the viewfinder, you are going to get a bigger viewfinder in the full frame camera. It is using a .71x viewfinder versus the 1 times viewfinder over here. And remember, well why is .7 bigger? Because they are comparing this to the full frame sensor and they're comparing this to the cropped frame sensor. It ends up being that the full frame sensor is larger by 12%. You get a 12% bigger view when viewing your subject. One more scenario, for you Nikon users, the D750 versus the 7200. Alright, let's compare these two in their viewfinder size. .7 versus .94 which means that you're gonna get a larger, bigger viewfinder with the full frame camera, by 14%. And so what this means in the real world is that when you look through your camera you get a bigger view, it's going to be easier to focus, easier to see your subject. And just more comfortable viewing through your camera. Let's talk about focusing. The focusing points on a 5D Mark III or 5DSR are not that different from a Nikon D810. They're heavily concentrated in the middle of the frame. With the crop frame sensors, the focusing points reach out to the edges much further because in some cases the Nikon D500, it has the same focusing system as their full frame D5. But here it covers a really high percentage of the area because it's using a crop frame sensor. And so this is a big advantage for somebody, for instance, doing wildlife photography. You could have a bird flying right up to the very edge and you're gonna have focus points tracking that bird over there. Wide lenses is another issue where full frame has a distinct advantage. These two lenses are equivalent, pretty closely, in their angle of view. That 10 millimeters is equal to 16 millimeters. They're not the same lens but they're going to have roughly the same view on their appropriate, different sensors. Now let's just say that you had a Canon system and you needed a wide angle lens that gave you about 84 degrees from side to side. And you were thinking between full frame and crop frame, what are my options? What will I be able to choose? With cropped frame you need a 12.5 millimeter lens or less and that gives you the options of three choices. One of which is a fish eye which we probably shouldn't even have in here but technically does fit. If you have a full frame camera and you still want 84 degrees look at all the different options we have. We have primes, we have zooms, we have tilt shift, we have fish eye. We have a lot of choices in there. So if you really have a lot of wide angle demanding needs you got eight choices versus three. And there, it's nice having those more choices. If you had a Nikon system and you wanted that same 84 degrees, is it any different with Nikon? Well, Nikon has not done very much to address wide angle shooting with a cropped frame sensor. The same with Canon can be said. If you got to the full frame system, you need about a 20 millimeter lens to get that angle of view. And they make a whole bunch of lenses there that do that. So there are more choices for somebody who really wants to get into wide angle photography. And so that's one of the advantages of full frame cameras. What about telephoto lenses? What happens there? Well let's imagine, and this would be a very likely scenario, if you want to shoot sports you're gonna need a lens that probably gets about a seven degree angle of view and it would be really nice to have an aperture of 2.8. That way you could work under very, relatively low light conditions. With Canon, you'd end up maybe with a 5D Mark III and a 300, 2.8, which gets you the right angle of view and the right aperture and it's going to cost you a fairly pretty penny. Now what if you said, well, I don't need full frame, maybe I can make it work with a crop frame sensor. Well, in that case, you can get a yourself a 7D Mark II. It's not the same camera. You can get a 200 2.8 which is not the same as a 300 2.8, but you do end up with a seven degree angle of view and an aperture at 2.8 for far less money. Now the version on the left is a much higher quality system. Now is it so much higher that you're gonna notice a huge difference, maybe, maybe not. That depends on what you're doing with your photos and how closely you look at them and you shoot them and so forth. But as far as just achieving that angle of view and that aperture, that's the benefit of the crop frame sensors. Telephoto becomes much, much more affordable. Let's look at a different scenario, buying an entire system. You're thinking about getting a Nikon camera, and you're kinda torn between going full frame and crop frame. Well, the 750 and the 7200 are both very good cameras. With the 7200, the 16 to 85 and the 70 to are what I think are appropriate lenses that would work well on that camera. If you buy a D750, I think you need to up the game on lenses. You need to get a little higher quality lenses and so I would recommend slightly different lenses that are appropriately fit for the focal length but they're gonna end up costing more money. And it ends up nearly doubling the price, even though the camera price didn't go up that much. It went up a bit but not tremendously. But it's those lenses that are really gonna affect the cost of those full frame shooters. And so when it comes to the question of should I buy a full frame camera, I've got a few questions for you to ask yourself. First one, do you need a professional quality camera? If you do, you should probably buy a full frame camera. If that's what you need your camera for. If you need the highest resolution that is currently available, you're gonna find that in the full frame cameras. If you want absolute, top of the line, low light performance, let's say you're gonna do wedding photography where you're working in dark reception halls. That best resolution under low light is gonna come with those full frames. And if you need good bokeh, we'll talk a little about bokeh, but that's the out of focus area. If you want that shallow depth of field look, those are all really good reasons to go with full frame. Let's ask this the other way around. Oh, we've got one more, if you have wide angle needs, you'll need full frame. Alright, so what about buying the smaller frame? Is this right for you? If you want a more affordable camera, if you have a somewhat limited budget, absolutely. Definitely go with the smaller frame on that. If you want a camera that just has a really good value, there is a lot that you can get for relatively small amount of money when it comes to lenses and cameras. If you need telephoto capabilities, there are top of the line professionals who are more than happy to shoot with crop frame cameras because they make their telephoto lenses reach out a little bit further. And so if you are new to photography and spending less than $5000, it's probably a no brainer that you need to go with APS. If you're new but you know you're going to getting into it, you're very serious about it, you only have, you know, so much money now but you know down the road, that's the road you're gonna be taking, then you should probably just go straight for full frame cause you're gonna end up there in most cases. A serious enthusiast could go either way on this, as well as the working pro. They're more likely to be shooting full frame but there are some reasons why APS makes sense. And if you are currently working with the smaller crop sensor now, the question about upgrading. Should I upgrade? Is it worth it for me to upgrade? Well, one of the biggest questions that you have to ask yourself, is do you have the money to buy all the extra lenses? Because you're gonna need a whole new set of lenses when you go up there. So you have to investigate as to whether it's worth it in the quality that you're gonna get, but can you really afford to do it. Because in many cases, as I said, it doubles the cost of everything that you're doing. So let's look at another example. Nikon D750, full frame camera and this is a lens recommendation that I would make. I think this is a nice little lens setup, you've got one wide angle, one telephoto, one fast, normal lens. And this whole system is going to cost you a little under $ and be a little under five pounds. Let's compare a equivalent, it's not the same system but I think a similar style system. The 70D from Canon. Same type of lens setup. And how much money does that save you? Quite a bit of money and a little bit of weight. When we go down one step further to the four thirds system, we're gonna be able to look at even smaller camera. All of the lenses are smaller and quite a bit less money and quite a bit less in weight. And so you kind of have to be considering all of these factors when choosing a system to get into because once you're into a system, it gets very costly to sell it all and move to another system.