Today i'm talking about sensor size and why it matters
since the birth of digital cameras and especially after the birth of the full frame sensor there
has been an ongoing debate about sensor sizes and whether it matters or not from people who refuse
to go anything bigger than a micro four thirds sensor crop sets are newbies to the full frame
snobs and weirdly there are a lot of full-frame snobs who have a little bit more attitude
than medium format users which is kind of strange as the whole pretense to the full-frame arrogant
seen every now and then is it bigger is better well size does matter and in more ways than you
might think i have everything from a tiny sector in my phone a small but useful sensor in my rx10 a
crop sensor in my a6600 to a full frame sensor in my a7 iii even though these are all sony cameras
we're talking about the size of the sensor more than the brand today each of these systems can
take amazing photographs but there are a few big advantages and disadvantages to each system
and what you'll find is that for every one of these points it all does depend on how you shoot
with large camera sensors for a given megapixel count the photo sights will be bigger this gives
them the chance to soak up more photons for the time that the sensor is exposed to the light
because they cover a bigger area so let's say you have a 24 megapixel camera phone with a tiny
sensor and an a73 with a 35 millimeter sensor for each of those megapixels each photo sight will be
physically bigger on the full-frame camera than the camera phone so each sight will be
exposed to more light this then means it'll be better in low light and it will have the
ability to soak up more light now this has its advantages when you might be walking around a city
through the evening handheld shooting whilst the light drops but if you're a landscape photographer
and predominantly shoot from a tripod at the base iso level of your camera it might not be as
important as you think so if you need to get the shot no matter what the conditions are
larger sensor cameras are better safe for family parties events and sports this is when it does
help to have a bigger sensor and this is why pro photographers in these genres of photography
will tend to have huge lenses and full-frame cameras because they want to get the best possible
quality also for specialized types of photography like wide field astrophotography even though there
are ways to reduce the noise by image averaging if you like to get everything in one shot again large
sensors are better in those low light conditions now on the flip side of this if you mostly shoot
in conditions where the light is good a camera with a smaller sensor can pretty much produce
as good an image as a full frame camera and even a medium format camera the key component comes
down to knowing how to use the camera and getting the best out of it for the conditions you're in
when it comes to dynamic range because those large sensors do have those larger photo sites
they tend to have a slightly better dynamic range than smaller sensors so for a single shot larger
sensors will be able to get more details in the brighter and darker parts of your frame
lessening the chance of getting blown out highlights and crushed shadows
with a full frame camera because of that bigger sensor you do have to get some big pieces of glass
for a given focal length or framing to cover that larger sensor if you need a telephoto lens to get
that reach to photograph something really far away the lenses are ridiculously big and ridiculously
expensive but with a crop centered camera you can have less glass and still get really close
to the framing you might want and fill the frame with the subject that you're trying to shoot
so with my a73 i'd have to get a huge 200 to 600 millimeter lens to match the telephoto end
of my rx10 mark iii and if i'm publishing my photos online no one really notices the
difference in fact a lot of my telephoto images on my social media sites have been taken with my rx10
and not one person has commented saying that it was taken with a smaller sensored camera
or they didn't say shame about the quality they just liked the photo that i took
and the photo that i shared also if i use my a600 over my a7 iii i can use a lens like
the 85 millimeter and get much closer to what i want to photograph so unless i'm on
a safari shooting from a vehicle with a tripod gimbal head to support the size of a huge lens
a crop sensor camera really does give some nice images and can get me really close to the subject
now this next feature is a byproduct of the system you're using more than anything cameras
aren't that different with weight and size these days if you look at the a7c and the a6600 they are
pretty much the same size what does change is the size of lenses and this is because of the size of
that sensor the lens needs to project onto a full frame sensor obviously needs more glass to project
that bigger image to the sensor plane compared to a crop sensor and this is why camera phones can
be so small those sensors are tiny so the lens on your phone can also be really small whereas
on a full-frame camera because the lens needs to project an image of 35.6 millimeters by 23.8
millimeters the glass cannot go below a certain size and this all adds to the weight of the system
now this is a section that might throw out all of the points i've already made about sensor sizes
as the years go by and this will become more and more powerful as those years go by with the likes
of camera phones gaining computing power every year computational photography is really having
an impact on what you can capture in good light and now even in low light these camera phones have
blending features in the night mode and it takes a series of shots and averages out those images
getting rid of noise and other issues in that photograph and this is down to the computing
power behind the lens i think if these features came across to entry-level cameras
it would really revolutionize the entry-level cameras that we have available and it would take
everything that's powerful from camera phones and add it to a really good quality much bigger sensor
and i think when that does happen that's when full-frame cameras and
medium format cameras will kind of be under threat
with a small sensor you will have to shoot with a wider focal length to get the same framing from a
fixed position than with a larger sensor this is why you might see that the actual focal length
and the full frame equivalent focal length are different with my rx10 mark iii it has a 24 to
600 millimeter full frame equivalent focal range but the actual focal range is 8.8 millimeters to
220 millimeters so an 8.8 millimeter lens with the rx10 will give the same framing as a 24 millimeter
lens on my a7 3 or any full frame camera so this comes back to the benefits of a smaller sensor
because the sensor is smaller the projected image doesn't have to be as big and therefore
the physical size of the glass can be smaller meaning that the whole system will be lighter
for a given aperture and a given focal length you'll get a certain look to the image but for
a different sized sensor and having to change the focal length to get the same framing from a fixed
position like i mentioned in the previous point you'll change the look of the image with the same
aperture now this sounds confusing but it doesn't have to be and i'll try to explain that now if you
have the rx10 mark iii which has a sensor size of 13.2 millimeters by 8.8 millimeters against
the a7 3 with a sensor size of 35.6 millimeters by 23.8 millimeters if i get them giving me the same
framing because the rx has such a small sensor i'd have to use that 8.8 millimeter lens whereas
on the a7 3 i'd be using the 24 millimeter lens at f 2.8 with both lenses the full-frame a73 gives a
much shallower depth of focus than the rx10 mark iii this is why camera phones have a hard time
getting the background out of focus but with that pesky computational photography coming into play
modern camera phones can actually work out what is the background and what is the foreground
or subject so they can blur out that background with a little bit of computational wizardry this
is a little bit hit and miss but the most expensive camera phones are getting closer
to producing those blurry background images on the other hand if you're a landscape photographer
having a deeper depth of focus does have its benefits and even though i shoot a lot
of my landscape images with the a73 and the a7c i also take a lot of them with my a6600
and also the rx10 so as you can see there's no clear winner each system has its own use and has
its own advantages and disadvantages and every type of sensor can be really useful in certain
circumstances the way i look at it is that it's all about using the right tool for the job in hand
so instead of worrying about sensor size brush up on your photography skills by learning
something new shooting regularly developing the skills you have and going out there and
building on your experience with the camera that you have in hand now what do you think
and what sensor size do you shoot with let me know in the comments below i always try to get involved
and reply to all of the comments you leave i don't always succeed but i do try my best so
let me know in the comments below it'll be great to hear your thoughts and if you like this video
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