Crop vs full-frame sensor 2021 – the truth about sensor sizes

Crop versus full frame or full frame versus crop sensor. when buying a camera or talking about lenses it is very important to understand what that means my name is Wolf Amri and as always I'm going to explain the difference between sensor sizes so that everyone will understand the pros and cons in our Facebook group we often get questions like I own a crop sensor camera is it worth upgrading to get a full-frame camera or will this lens I want to buy fit my crop sensor camera? let's start answering these first of all what does the word full in full-frame mean? that's easily explained back in the days people used film to take pictures and the standard film size was 36 by 24 millimeter. here is an old camera. back then you had to open the back to insert the film and here you see the frame for the film being exactly that size resulting in 36mm wide negatives or positives. in digital age full-frame means exactly that film size 36 millimeter wide and 24 millimeter high to understand the difference between the full-frame sensor and the crop sensor let me just show you this very basic representation of a camera that I tinkered for our YouTube photography course the attached lens projects the scene onto this white rectangle inside that has the size of a full-frame sensor so 36 by 24 millimeter if I used this rectangle instead that has a smaller size all it will do is show a smaller viewport of this projection it will crop out a part of the bigger sized image so the only difference of full-frame vs crop sensor is that the latter is smaller and that means it crops out a center part of the full image but in photography that difference creates some advantages and disadvantages advantage number one magnification if you want to photograph something in a distance like wildlife sports or something that is very small like macro cropping a part of an image always means that you kind of zoom into the scene and get a bigger image considering both senses have the same pixel counts so comparing a 24 megapixel full-frame sensor to 24 megapixel crop sensor some people would call that effective focal length others angle of view but the result is pretty similar. how big the magnification is depends on the size of the crop sensor not all have the same size and that's why manufacturers name the crop factor. canons crop sensor has a crop factor of 1.6x meaning if you use a 100 millimeter lens on a crop sensor you would need 1.6 by the focal length on a full-frame sensor which means 160 millimeter. Nikon and Sony for example have a slightly bigger sensor resulting in a crop factor of only 1.5x. that really gets important in sports and wildlife photography where you use long lenses enthusiasts often use a 600 millimeter zoom lens to get the same magnification on a full-frame you would have to use 960 millimeter and this is a range where lenses get really expensive that brings us to advantage number two of the crop sensor the price. a small pizza is cheaper than a large pizza and logically a small sensor is cheaper than a bigger sensor but it is not only the price for the camera that is cheaper but also for the lenses that you buy we have talked about lenses already but we'll talk a little more about dedicated crop sensor lenses in a few minutes advantage number three the camera size quite logically if the heart of a camera is much smaller the housing for the heart can be smaller too making crop sensor cameras smaller versus its full-frame counterparts but for people with big hands that may not only be an advantage some prefer larger cameras but we for example travel and hike a lot so I prefer smaller cameras to bigger ones if they offer the same performance advantage number four a crop sensor has more depth of focus that means when you're shooting for example macro you get more sharpness from front to back than with the full-frame sensor take a look at this example one shot with a crop sensor the other one with a full-frame sensor I'll explain why in a second because that bigger depth of focus is also a disadvantage well and here we are at the disadvantages of the crop sensor versus the full-frame sensor disadvantage number one loss of light if you have a full-frame sensor with 24 megapixels every megapixel has a certain size if you have a crop sensor with the same 24 megapixels every single pixel will be smaller in size and now think about a window a smaller window logically let's less light into your room than a bigger window would so a crop sensor camera with the same amount of megapixels as a full-frame camera has more difficulties in bad lighting conditions creating more noise particularly at higher ISO the difference will be around one to two stops of light so an image shot with the crop sensor ISO 400 will have roughly the same image noise than an image shot on a full frame camera at ISO 1280 or even 1600 I will link to a great camera comparison tool at dpreview down in the description so that you can see for yourself disadvantage number two loss of background blur or bokeh if you will actually a full-frame camera has the same amount of blur as a crop sensor camera because all you do is crop out a part of the frame but if you for example photograph a portrait from the same position first with a full-frame sensor and then with a crop sensor you will get a different composition because your subject will be much bigger in the frame remember advantage number one magnification so in order to get the same image you have to step back and well the distance between your model and the camera is one of five factors for background blur in the portrait we will soon have a video available about the five factors of background blur so stay tuned and subscribe. so by stepping back you will lose blur or in other words get a bigger depth of focus but how much blur do you really lose? you could even calculate that but let's find a visual comparison I have set up this focus target and some Christmas lights and I photograph these with a full-frame camera and then with a crop sensor camera for the latter I have to step back to get roughly the same composition if we compare the image shot at f/1.8 you clearly see that the full-frame image shows much more background blur than the crop sensor image if we for example compare this light in the middle I would have to close the aperture of the full-frame sensor camera by 2/3 of a stop to get roughly the same background blur so f/2.2 on the full frame gives the same background blur as f/1.8 on the crop sensor this image was shot with a 50 millimeter lens now what if we used a 135 millimeter lens instead here is the full frame shot an f/1.8 and now the crop sensor shot at f/1.8 again the difference is pretty remarkable to get about the same background blur I would have to stop down a full-frame sensor about a full stop this time that would be for example f/4 compared to f/2.8 if that is really important to you depends on what and how you'd like to photograph because if you look back at advantage number four, less blur or in other words a bigger depth of focus means more of your image will be sharp so while the full-frame sensor is great to blur the background for example for portrays the crop sensor is better when you want more depth of focus for example in macro shots as I said you can calculate that for every distance to subject, subject size, focal length and whatnot but I thought I give you a quick and dirty visual comparison if you are interested let me give you a link to a cool depth of field simulator in the description. Disadvantage number three less wide-angle capabilities remember advantage number one magnification the crop sensor zooms into the image well that's good if you want to magnify something but what if you want to do the opposite imagine you want to photograph a landscape or the interior of a building and you want to capture as much of the scene into one frame as possible well here the magnification obviously becomes a disadvantage the good news is nowadays you can get crop sensor lenses that are specifically designed to get the same field of view that you would get in a full-frame camera but unfortunately if you're planning to photograph the Milky Way ultra-wide-angle prime lenses for crop sensors are hardly available at all and that brings us to lenses. you already know that you have to multiply the focal length on a crop sensor with a so called crop factor to get the same angle of view on both sensor sizes another thing to consider about lenses is that lenses suitable for full-frame sensors can be used on crop sensor cameras - but not vice versa so if a lens is designed to be used on crop sensor cameras you cannot use it on a full-frame the truth is with some manufacturers you could but you would get this kind of image with a big ugly black frame because the lens is not made to cover the bigger sensor size crop sensor lenses in general are usually cheaper smaller and lighter but one thing you need to keep in mind when buying a new lens is if you consider getting a full-frame camera in the next few years you should also consider to get lenses that fit both sensor sizes so getting a lens that also covers the full-frame sensor so that you don't have to buy new lenses after the change one more note on purchase decisions for best low-light performance you cannot really avoid full-frame senses but if you have a certain budget don't automatically fall for a full-frame camera you can often buy all the full-frame cameras that are equally priced to newer crop sensors but sensor tech is improving really fast so a new crop sensor may be able to keep up with an older full-frame sensor so choose wisely and compare cameras for example with the dpreview tool I already mentioned so you see you cannot say one is better than the other it depends on your needs a longer crop factor can be an advantage or a disadvantage same with the depth of focus when I shoot time-lapse of growing plants for example I cannot predict in which direction the plant will grow but I have to set the focus before I start the time lapse and I need it to be sharp so I use cameras with smaller sensors to get a bigger depth and this is professional use so you cannot say full-frame is more professional than crop. same is valid for sports so think about what you need make an educated decision and then purchase your camera see you in the next video

Channel: Wolf Amri

Views: 170,718

Keywords: crop vs full frame, crop sensor vs full frame, crop sensor vs full frame explanation, crop sensor explained, sensor size explained, sensor size explanation, crop vs full frame explained, crop vs full frame tutorial, crop vs full frame sensor, wolf amri, wolfgang amri, photography course, photography tutorial, crop sensor vs full frame sensor, crop sensor vs full frame sensor explained, crop sensor vs full frame sensor comparison, sensor size comparison, crop vs full-frame

Id: L-vVL5uB1SE

Length: 13min 24sec (804 seconds)

Published: Wed May 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/mattgrum]

Deeper depth of field is not an advantage of a crop sensor, since you can just stop down the lens on the FF camera and still have the same total light hitting the sensor, and the same level of diffraction (relative to image size).

The claim that crop sensor lenses are cheaper only holds when you are comparing lenses that differ in equivalent speed, quality or build.

Also the claim that crop sensors have a disadvantage when shooting wider is a few decades out of date...

[u/mjs90]

Needs to be added to the ISO/shutter speed/aperture category of videos photography has more than 1000 of