Effect of a sensor size to image quality

[matej84]

Hi,
sorry for the longer question but i'm little bit confused about the effect of the sensor size (APS-C, full frame...) to image quality (IQ). Basically each (infinitelly small) part of sensor has the same amount of light, no matter how big the whole sensor is, right? Or to be less abstract:What I think is true is:

1. IQ doesnt matter on the focal length of the lenses (let's ignore shaking hands with long focal lengths and let's supose prime lenses only)
2. IQ is and 'overall' quality of the image, not just specific part (ignore vignetting, sharpness in center and similar details). In other words displaying the picture in 100% size shows better quality for image taken with FF than with APS-C on any part of the image (generally)

I guess the IQ of the picture from FF would be better. At least there would be less noise. Comparing ISO 3200 on R6 or 5D MK IV with EOS 90D shows big difference on pages like dpreview. But from my understaning the noise is caused by not having enough light, not by ISO itself. Higher ISO just increases the information on sensor and if signal to noise ratio is small, than higher iso also makes the noise more visible, correct? So this all would mean that image taken with FF has less noise because it somehow got more light than the one taken with APS-CNow for canon's cameras the crop factor is 1.6x, and let's suppose:

1. FF camera with 32MP sensor, 100mm f/2.8 lenses mount on it, ISO 3200, 1/100s. I take a picture from tripod.
2. I put the very same lenses to an APS-C placing it on the same tripod. Again, ISO 3200 and shutter speed 1/100s. Let's say the APS-C has 20MP sensor (so FF resolution and sensor size are both 1.6x more than the ones on APS-C)

In this situation I would have two pictures taken with the same lenses from the same spot and with same light conditions (and same ISO and shutter speed). For APS-C I would have the picture that 's perspective is 'zoomed' relatively to FF (the same picture that I would get on FF with 160mm).


Finally the question How would the FF have less noise? If I take the 32MP image and I just crop the 'middle' 20MP big center part of it I should have the same image like the one from APS-C (resolution but also the scene on it). But these 20MP comes from that part of FF sensor that is exactly as big as APS-C sensor itself. So the FF got the same amount of light for this particular part of image/sensor like the APS-C. So how can be that the noise is still much lower?

And another related question, is f/2.8 of FF equivalent of f/2.8 on APS-C in terms of light (please ignore the depth of field). In other words, in M mode, shutter 1/100, ISO 100, f/2.8 would the image be exposed equaly on FF and APS-C?


I hope I make some sense

Thanks

 

[chrisfisheye]

It is "equivalence". It says "size doesn't matter". If anything, it stopped me from buying a camera with a larger sensor. It told me that the only difference a larger format would give me was the access to more background blur.

Don't get your point with your last paragraph. Background blur is the only difference, really ?

What I meant to say, if you keep DOF fixed, there is no advantage for having a larger sensor. Having a larger sensor will only show its IQ benefits if you are prepared to give up some DOF. Then you can shoot at lower light or/and reduce noise.

You can keep DOF fixed and still use, in some cases, slower shutter speed. This means in some cases you can have a cleaner image, more dynamic range,..

Just want to understand your point. Maybe I missed something

 

[MrBrightSide]

No it doesn’t. I feel confident in saying less than 5 percent of the posts by the “equivalence” people mention any of the advantages of smaller sensors.
They’re not interested in helping photographers solve problems and work with the equipment they actually own. Their goals are to create dissatisfaction with current equipment and to dominate the discussion and relentlessly push their alternative facts about ISO, aperture, and exposure.

And equivalence isn’t “simply” a way of doing anything. It’s a cult with its own special language and beliefs.


I was baffled 10 years ago when I saw equivalence take hold on this site but now having watched conspiracy theories poison our political system during the Trump years and half of the US fall prey to vaccine misinformation during Covid I now understand how otherwise intelligent people can easily be flattered and frightened into believing nonsense.

“Equivalence” is an insidious marketing tactic that pushes the technically naive to obsess over cameras with ever-larger sensors and lenses with ever-wider f-stops.

Equivalence also teaches you to understand the virtues of a smaller sensor for serious shooting needs. Ask many sports, wildlife and bird photographers who ligitimately praise the extended reach of small sensor cameras. They also praise the smaller size and lower weight with high image quality for such contemporary equipment.

Obviously you choose to ignore and negate any thing that you don't understand nor like.

The reason it seems plausible to the uneducated is because the creators of this pseudoscience shrewdly limited their criteria so that it can be made to fit almost any set of facts.

In what way is it pseudoscience? Please explain

Equivalence is article of faith on this site not because it’s true but because it’s an idea that sells merch. It’s only use is to make people unhappy with their current camera so they will purchase new equipment they don’t need.

Is equivalence true or false ? There must be a reason.

Yet another example of why the people who push “equivalence” are destroying photography.

“Equivalence” has been a part of photography for many, many decades.

"f/stops" are all about equivalence. A 100mm lens with a 25mm aperture diameter puts the same light intensity on the film as a 50mm lens with a 12.5mm aperture diameter. We call both of them "f/4" so that the photographer knows that the 25mm aperture on the longer lens is equivalent to the 12.5mm aperture on the shorter lens. In this case, the equivalence is in the context of exposure.

Digital Interchangeable Lens Cameras were originally marketed using equivalences. That's the whole concept of "crop factor". When we say that a body has a crop factor of 1.5X, we are giving the formula for finding the equivalent focal length in the context of angle of view. Thus a 100mm lens on a 1.5X crop body, has a 150mm equivalent focal length as it yields the same angle of view as a 150mm lens on a traditional 35mm film SLR.

Of course, back in the days where a wedding photographer might be shooting both 35mm and medium format, they had to understand enough about equivalence to be able to mix and match between the two formats.

Remember, "equivalence" is simply a way of being able to match depth of field, motion blur, angle of view, image noise, diffraction issues, etc., across different sensor sizes. Armed with that knowledge, a photographer can make an intelligent choice about which gear to use for a particular task.

--
Sit!

 

[robert1955]

No it doesn’t. I feel confident in saying less than 5 percent of the posts by the “equivalence” people mention any of the advantages of smaller sensors.
They’re not interested in helping photographers solve problems and work with the equipment they actually own. Their goals are to create dissatisfaction with current equipment and to dominate the discussion and relentlessly push their alternative facts about ISO, aperture, and exposure.

And equivalence isn’t “simply” a way of doing anything. It’s a cult with its own special language and beliefs.

I was baffled 10 years ago when I saw equivalence take hold on this site but now having watched conspiracy theories poison our political system during the Trump years and half of the US fall prey to vaccine misinformation during Covid I now understand how otherwise intelligent people can easily be flattered and frightened into believing nonsense.

“Equivalence” is an insidious marketing tactic that pushes the technically naive to obsess over cameras with ever-larger sensors and lenses with ever-wider f-stops.

Equivalence also teaches you to understand the virtues of a smaller sensor for serious shooting needs. Ask many sports, wildlife and bird photographers who ligitimately praise the extended reach of small sensor cameras. They also praise the smaller size and lower weight with high image quality for such contemporary equipment.

Obviously you choose to ignore and negate any thing that you don't understand nor like.

The reason it seems plausible to the uneducated is because the creators of this pseudoscience shrewdly limited their criteria so that it can be made to fit almost any set of facts.

In what way is it pseudoscience? Please explain

Equivalence is article of faith on this site not because it’s true but because it’s an idea that sells merch. It’s only use is to make people unhappy with their current camera so they will purchase new equipment they don’t need.

Is equivalence true or false ? There must be a reason.

Yet another example of why the people who push “equivalence” are destroying photography.

Sounds like you've developed your bogeyman vision of equivalence into a fully fledged conspiracy theory.

 

[Mark S Abeln]

I wrote a long reply also. In retrospect, I think Mr.B-S is using a bit of satire or sarcasm, which isn’t always easy to detect, especially if you don’t normally think that way.

 

[Dem Bell]

It is "equivalence". It says "size doesn't matter". If anything, it stopped me from buying a camera with a larger sensor. It told me that the only difference a larger format would give me was the access to more background blur.

Don't get your point with your last paragraph. Background blur is the only difference, really ?

What I meant to say, if you keep DOF fixed, there is no advantage for having a larger sensor. Having a larger sensor will only show its IQ benefits if you are prepared to give up some DOF. Then you can shoot at lower light or/and reduce noise.

You can keep DOF fixed and still use, in some cases, slower shutter speed.

Thinking about it. You are right. One can only get cleaner images by increasing total light. When the small sensor is already reached its maximum exposure and cannot take any more light (ETTR), the exposure on the larger sensor that produces the same total light will be still well below the saturation point. Therefore a bigger sensor can take more light and produce cleaner images than the small sensor under the ETTR conditions. Indeed, for certain subjects one can just put the camera on tripod and let the slower shutter speed do the job. ETTR the large sensor. Can't get the same total light on the small sensor.

N.B. We assume that both sensors share the same technology, e.g. their pixels "get saturated" at the same exposure, have the same quantum efficiency, etc.. If one of the sensors is made of wood, then equivalence might not work.

This means in some cases you can have a cleaner image, more dynamic range,..

Just want to understand your point. Maybe I missed something.

No, that was me trying to oversimplify things and forgetting that there was a corner of the shooting envelope in terms of total light that the smaller sensor simply cannot reach.

 

[J A C S]

I wrote a long reply also. In retrospect, I think Mr.B-S is using a bit of satire or sarcasm, which isn’t always easy to detect, especially if you don’t normally think that way.

Unfortunately, he means it. You must have seen what he writes in the PST forum.

 

[Michael Fryd]

It is "equivalence". It says "size doesn't matter". If anything, it stopped me from buying a camera with a larger sensor. It told me that the only difference a larger format would give me was the access to more background blur.

Don't get your point with your last paragraph. Background blur is the only difference, really ?

What I meant to say, if you keep DOF fixed, there is no advantage for having a larger sensor. Having a larger sensor will only show its IQ benefits if you are prepared to give up some DOF. Then you can shoot at lower light or/and reduce noise.

I cannot shoot f/1.4 ff equivalent using my bridge camera. F/4? F/8? Still can't. Using a larger sensor allows me to bring more blur to my photos, aka thinner DOF, better subject-background separation, blurry background. And with that I am getting more total light to the sensor which is the good news for IQ.

Actually, it is quite possible for a larger sensor camera can produce an image with less noise, yet maintain the same depth of field and motion blur.

One simple example is to simply increase subject illumination, while maintaining aperture diameter and shutter speed. In a studio setting it may be easy to increase subject illumination.

Many find that images at base ISO from an APS-C sensor generally look to be noise free. One can make a reasonable case, that once noise is so low that it can't be seen, then any further reductions in noise are not significant.

 

[kolyy]

* Capture 100 photons - 10 will be noise (on average, it's random so will be scattered around that level). That's 10%.

I can't think of any utility for a model that segregates the quality of samples like that. Only distant outliers are worth treating as especially illegitimate samples. They would be natural with photon noise, and may be worth keeping for "totals", but with electronic readout noise, such samples are best ignored and re-interpolated from neighbor samples.

I thought photon shot noise was modelled as a Poisson distribution which implies that noise count is statistically equal to the square root of the total number of photons considered. Most forms of electron signal noise within a camera can be modelled in a similar way.

Let me do a bit of clarification - it's standard deviation, not "noise count". I think the point here is that all photons are signal, none of them can be set aside as "noise", as suggested by Jon555. Noise is a statistical phenomenon, usually defined as the standard deviation of the signal from the mean (square root of variance). In the case of the Poisson distribution, standard deviation happens to be the square root of the mean.

 

[chrisfisheye]

It is "equivalence". It says "size doesn't matter". If anything, it stopped me from buying a camera with a larger sensor. It told me that the only difference a larger format would give me was the access to more background blur.

Don't get your point with your last paragraph. Background blur is the only difference, really ?

What I meant to say, if you keep DOF fixed, there is no advantage for having a larger sensor. Having a larger sensor will only show its IQ benefits if you are prepared to give up some DOF. Then you can shoot at lower light or/and reduce noise.

You can keep DOF fixed and still use, in some cases, slower shutter speed.

Thinking about it. You are right. One can only get cleaner images by increasing total light. When the small sensor is already reached its maximum exposure and cannot take any more light (ETTR), the exposure on the larger sensor that produces the same total light will be still well below the saturation point. Therefore a bigger sensor can take more light and produce cleaner images than the small sensor under the ETTR conditions. Indeed, for certain subjects one can just put the camera on tripod and let the slower shutter speed do the job. ETTR the large sensor. Can't get the same total light on the small sensor.

N.B. We assume that both sensors share the same technology, e.g. their pixels "get saturated" at the same exposure, have the same quantum efficiency, etc.. If one of the sensors is made of wood, then equivalence might not work.

This means in some cases you can have a cleaner image, more dynamic range,..

Just want to understand your point. Maybe I missed something.

No, that was me trying to oversimplify things and forgetting that there was a corner of the shooting envelope in terms of total light that the smaller sensor simply cannot reach.

Thanks a lot for the clarification !

We agree,

 

[J A C S]

It is "equivalence". It says "size doesn't matter". If anything, it stopped me from buying a camera with a larger sensor. It told me that the only difference a larger format would give me was the access to more background blur.

Don't get your point with your last paragraph. Background blur is the only difference, really ?

What I meant to say, if you keep DOF fixed, there is no advantage for having a larger sensor. Having a larger sensor will only show its IQ benefits if you are prepared to give up some DOF. Then you can shoot at lower light or/and reduce noise.

Have you ever seen landscapes taken with a MF camera with, say, 100 mp? They can be stunning, compared to landscapes taken with a phone. Let’s keep some common sense here.

 

[John Sheehy]

No it doesn’t. I feel confident in saying less than 5 percent of the posts by the “equivalence” people mention any of the advantages of smaller sensors.
They’re not interested in helping photographers solve problems and work with the equipment they actually own. Their goals are to create dissatisfaction with current equipment and to dominate the discussion and relentlessly push their alternative facts about ISO, aperture, and exposure.

And equivalence isn’t “simply” a way of doing anything. It’s a cult with its own special language and beliefs.

You might find a trace of that in some individuals, but "equivalence" is nothing more than the true fact that the sensor size itself does not directly determine total light, DOF, and diffraction. What people use that truth for is not always truthful, but the core concept is correct, and is just another way of expressing the fact that those properties, regarding any photographic subject, are determined by the size of the entrance pupil and its distance from the subject, which is exactly what you have in "equivalence". We say "equivalence", only because the lingua franca wrongly talks about imaging parameters in terms of f-ratios, focal lengths, and ISOs, which are not visible imaging parameters.

IOW, you can't "see" "ISO 800" in an image, or "f/9", or "330mm". You see image noise or SNR, diffraction and DOF, and angle of view. Equivalence is just a way of translating these visible imaging parameters to different sensor sizes, using one sensor size as a frame of reference. It is not "just a belief", any more than the notion that a triangle with sides of 3, 4, and 5mm has the same angles as a triangle with sides of 6, 8, and 10mm.

I was baffled 10 years ago when I saw equivalence take hold on this site but now having watched conspiracy theories poison our political system during the Trump years and half of the US fall prey to vaccine misinformation during Covid I now understand how otherwise intelligent people can easily be flattered and frightened into believing nonsense.

It's a good thing no one is conspiring to grab wealth and power, isn't it? If I were conspiring, I would pat people like you on the back for perpetuating the caricature of the conspiracy theorist. What an inexpensive payroll! People get to reward themselves by feeling they are clever because they can point out conspiracy theorists! We don't have to think hard about anything anymore; if people labeled "conspiracy theorists" are saying something, then it can't possibly be true, can it? We don't even have to listen to what they claim; they are like "flat-earthers", because they are "anti-science". It's OK to censor them, because they can't possibly say anything that is true that isn't already broadcast on corporate news.

I'll tell you what is "anti-science": the belief that there is much settled science in the field of public health. Public health is one the most corporate-corrupted so-called sciences, and students of more solid sciences like chemistry or Newtonian-level physics that accept Public Health "Science" as something similar "because science, duhhh...", like Neil DeGrasse Tyson are making fools of themselves in these last few years, as they accept modeled, conjured abstractions like "efficacy" as if they were actual measurements, even when the claims contradict real-world measurable outcomes which aren't abstract, like mortality rates over time and in different places.

The people on "Team Science" are working hard these days to destroy science, because they are the New Church, where they are united against unbelievers in an "Unbeliever Derangement Syndrome" where every person who questions the status quo of even the softest and most corruptible "sciences" might as well believe that the earth is a pizza.

 

[Michael Fryd]

It is "equivalence". It says "size doesn't matter". If anything, it stopped me from buying a camera with a larger sensor. It told me that the only difference a larger format would give me was the access to more background blur.

Don't get your point with your last paragraph. Background blur is the only difference, really ?

What I meant to say, if you keep DOF fixed, there is no advantage for having a larger sensor. Having a larger sensor will only show its IQ benefits if you are prepared to give up some DOF. Then you can shoot at lower light or/and reduce noise.

Have you ever seen landscapes taken with a MF camera with, say, 100 mp? They can be stunning, compared to landscapes taken with a phone. Let’s keep some common sense here.

Are you talking about a visible difference in an 8”x10” print, a very large print, or zoomed in on a monitor?

You are correct that higher pixel counts are generally only available with larger sensors.

If you need 100 megapixels of resolution, then a smartphone may not be the best choice. On the other hand, if you are talking about displaying the image as an 8x10 print, or on a 1080p TV, then there may not be a visible difference between a smartphone capture and a 100 megapixel capture.

At some point, quality becomes more than good enough for the needs of the project. Once you get to that point, there may be little (or no) benefit to further quality improvements.

 

[J A C S]

It is "equivalence". It says "size doesn't matter". If anything, it stopped me from buying a camera with a larger sensor. It told me that the only difference a larger format would give me was the access to more background blur.

Don't get your point with your last paragraph. Background blur is the only difference, really ?

What I meant to say, if you keep DOF fixed, there is no advantage for having a larger sensor. Having a larger sensor will only show its IQ benefits if you are prepared to give up some DOF. Then you can shoot at lower light or/and reduce noise.

Have you ever seen landscapes taken with a MF camera with, say, 100 mp? They can be stunning, compared to landscapes taken with a phone. Let’s keep some common sense here.

Are you talking about a visible difference in an 8”x10” print, a very large print, or zoomed in on a monitor?

Why are you asking that? I responded to an absolute statement without qualifiers.

You are correct that higher pixel counts are generally only available with larger sensors.

I was not talking about higher pixel counts only. A 100mp phone image would still be junk next to 100mp MF.

If you need 100 megapixels of resolution, then a smartphone may not be the best choice. On the other hand, if you are talking about displaying the image as an 8x10 print, or on a 1080p TV, then there may not be a visible difference between a smartphone capture and a 100 megapixel capture.

I had a 1080p monitor in 2001. Those days are gone.

 

[Michael Fryd]

It is "equivalence". It says "size doesn't matter". If anything, it stopped me from buying a camera with a larger sensor. It told me that the only difference a larger format would give me was the access to more background blur.

Don't get your point with your last paragraph. Background blur is the only difference, really ?

What I meant to say, if you keep DOF fixed, there is no advantage for having a larger sensor. Having a larger sensor will only show its IQ benefits if you are prepared to give up some DOF. Then you can shoot at lower light or/and reduce noise.

Have you ever seen landscapes taken with a MF camera with, say, 100 mp? They can be stunning, compared to landscapes taken with a phone. Let’s keep some common sense here.

Are you talking about a visible difference in an 8”x10” print, a very large print, or zoomed in on a monitor?

Why are you asking that? I responded to an absolute statement without qualifiers.

I was looking for clarifications in how one should act based on your statement.

Some photographers are not interested in the abstract of what is theoretically possible, but are concerned with how particular gear will affect their results.

It is true that there are situations where a 100 megapixel medium format camera can produce better results than a 20 megapixel APS-C camera. However, for someone who makes their living doing 5x7 "instant" prints at parties, the increased quality won't affect the results.

You are correct that higher pixel counts are generally only available with larger sensors.

I was not talking about higher pixel counts only. A 100mp phone image would still be junk next to 100mp MF.

Again, it depends on the how you judge. If you are judging based on an 8x10 print, then they may look the same. Yes, there are circumstances where you can tell the difference, but that only matters for those who are in those circumstances.

If you need 100 megapixels of resolution, then a smartphone may not be the best choice. On the other hand, if you are talking about displaying the image as an 8x10 print, or on a 1080p TV, then there may not be a visible difference between a smartphone capture and a 100 megapixel capture.

I had a 1080p monitor in 2001. Those days are gone.

For many, it may not matter what you can see on your monitor, only on what the client will see in the final product.

Therefore it is important to understand the situations where 100 megapixels will make a noticeable difference over 20 megapixels. IN an 8x10 print, it likely won't make a difference. If you are doing a life size fine art reproduction of a large painting, then the higher resolution may be quite noticeable.

It's important to understand when higher quality is helpful, and when it doesn't make a difference.

 

[J A C S]

Why do you keep talking about mp?

 

[MrBrightSide]

Out of the tens of thousands of forum posts about the topic how many have said that when the limitations in output size are taken into account there is little to no difference in image quality between the output of m4/3, aps-c, and 24x36?

And how many have said that sensor size alone is predictive of nothing, that to evaluate anything photographically you need to take into account the available lenses, processing, in-camera settings, firmware updates, and camera-specific accessories. And what about specific cameras reaction to ambient temperature, heat noise is a real phenomenon. and some cameras handle it better than others.

The bottom line is that the equivalence people have chosen a very limited set of criteria that they have used for more than a decade to demonize smaller-sensors cameras and it breaks my heart that they’ve convinced so many to waste money on upgrading for no real-world gain.

No it doesn’t. I feel confident in saying less than 5 percent of the posts by the “equivalence” people mention any of the advantages of smaller sensors.
They’re not interested in helping photographers solve problems and work with the equipment they actually own. Their goals are to create dissatisfaction with current equipment and to dominate the discussion and relentlessly push their alternative facts about ISO, aperture, and exposure.

And equivalence isn’t “simply” a way of doing anything. It’s a cult with its own special language and beliefs.

I was baffled 10 years ago when I saw equivalence take hold on this site but now having watched conspiracy theories poison our political system during the Trump years and half of the US fall prey to vaccine misinformation during Covid I now understand how otherwise intelligent people can easily be flattered and frightened into believing nonsense.

“Equivalence” is an insidious marketing tactic that pushes the technically naive to obsess over cameras with ever-larger sensors and lenses with ever-wider f-stops.

Equivalence also teaches you to understand the virtues of a smaller sensor for serious shooting needs. Ask many sports, wildlife and bird photographers who ligitimately praise the extended reach of small sensor cameras. They also praise the smaller size and lower weight with high image quality for such contemporary equipment.

Obviously you choose to ignore and negate any thing that you don't understand nor like.

The reason it seems plausible to the uneducated is because the creators of this pseudoscience shrewdly limited their criteria so that it can be made to fit almost any set of facts.

In what way is it pseudoscience? Please explain

Equivalence is article of faith on this site not because it’s true but because it’s an idea that sells merch. It’s only use is to make people unhappy with their current camera so they will purchase new equipment they don’t need.

Is equivalence true or false ? There must be a reason.

Yet another example of why the people who push “equivalence” are destroying photography.

Sounds like you've developed your bogeyman vision of equivalence into a fully fledged conspiracy theory.

 

[Jon555]

* Capture 100 photons - 10 will be noise (on average, it's random so will be scattered around that level). That's 10%.

I can't think of any utility for a model that segregates the quality of samples like that. Only distant outliers are worth treating as especially illegitimate samples. They would be natural with photon noise, and may be worth keeping for "totals", but with electronic readout noise, such samples are best ignored and re-interpolated from neighbor samples.

I thought photon shot noise was modelled as a Poisson distribution which implies that noise count is statistically equal to the square root of the total number of photons considered. Most forms of electron signal noise within a camera can be modelled in a similar way.

Let me do a bit of clarification - it's standard deviation, not "noise count". I think the point here is that all photons are signal, none of them can be set aside as "noise", as suggested by Jon555. Noise is a statistical phenomenon, usually defined as the standard deviation of the signal from the mean (square root of variance). In the case of the Poisson distribution, standard deviation happens to be the square root of the mean.

If you want to redefine the term "shot noise" feel free to have a go... it's quite well supported tho...

 

[Dem Bell]

It is "equivalence". It says "size doesn't matter". If anything, it stopped me from buying a camera with a larger sensor. It told me that the only difference a larger format would give me was the access to more background blur.

Don't get your point with your last paragraph. Background blur is the only difference, really ?

What I meant to say, [EQUIVALENCE SAYS] if you keep DOF fixed, there is no advantage for having a larger sensor. Having a larger sensor will only show its IQ benefits if you are prepared to give up some DOF. Then you can shoot at lower light or/and reduce noise.

Have you ever seen landscapes taken with a MF camera with, say, 100 mp? They can be stunning, compared to landscapes taken with a phone. Let’s keep some common sense here.

Are you talking about a visible difference in an 8”x10” print, a very large print, or zoomed in on a monitor?

Why are you asking that? I responded to an absolute statement without qualifiers.

The statement was made in the context of equivalence. It wasn't quite right and was already corrected by two other people.

Yes, larger formats tend to have more megapixels than smaller formats.

 

[D Cox]

It is "equivalence". It says "size doesn't matter". If anything, it stopped me from buying a camera with a larger sensor. It told me that the only difference a larger format would give me was the access to more background blur.

Don't get your point with your last paragraph. Background blur is the only difference, really ?

What I meant to say, [EQUIVALENCE SAYS] if you keep DOF fixed, there is no advantage for having a larger sensor. Having a larger sensor will only show its IQ benefits if you are prepared to give up some DOF. Then you can shoot at lower light or/and reduce noise.

Have you ever seen landscapes taken with a MF camera with, say, 100 mp? They can be stunning, compared to landscapes taken with a phone. Let’s keep some common sense here.

Are you talking about a visible difference in an 8”x10” print, a very large print, or zoomed in on a monitor?

Why are you asking that? I responded to an absolute statement without qualifiers.

The statement was made in the context of equivalence. It wasn't quite right and was already corrected by two other people.

Yes, larger formats tend to have more megapixels than smaller formats.

I think Sony have 24 Mpx cameras both APS/C and FF.

Comparisons might be interesting.

Don

 

[tony field]

No it doesn’t. I feel confident in saying less than 5 percent of the posts by the “equivalence” people mention any of the advantages of smaller sensors.

What are the photographic advantages of smaller sensors?

It’s a cult with its own special language and beliefs.

Are you trying to become a new cult leader based on your special language and beliefs?

I was baffled 10 years ago when I saw equivalence take hold on this site but now having watched conspiracy theories poison our political system during the Trump years and half of the US fall prey to vaccine misinformation during Covid I now understand how otherwise intelligent people can easily be flattered and frightened into believing nonsense.

tony field, post: 67282059, member: 1663030"]

MrBrightSide, post: 67282059, member: 1663030"]
“Equivalence” is an insidious marketing tactic that pushes the technically naive to obsess over cameras with ever-larger sensors and lenses with ever-wider f-stops.

Equivalence also teaches you to understand the virtues of a smaller sensor for serious shooting needs. Ask many sports, wildlife and bird photographers who ligitimately praise the extended reach of small sensor cameras. They also praise the smaller size and lower weight with high image quality for such contemporary equipment.

Obviously you choose to ignore and negate any thing that you don't understand nor like.

The reason it seems plausible to the uneducated is because the creators of this pseudoscience shrewdly limited their criteria so that it can be made to fit almost any set of facts.

In what way is it pseudoscience? Please explain

Equivalence is article of faith on this site not because it’s true but because it’s an idea that sells merch. It’s only use is to make people unhappy with their current camera so they will purchase new equipment they don’t need.

Is equivalence true or false ? There must be a reason.

Yet another example of why the people who push “equivalence” are destroying photography.

“Equivalence” has been a part of photography for many, many decades.

"f/stops" are all about equivalence. A 100mm lens with a 25mm aperture diameter puts the same light intensity on the film as a 50mm lens with a 12.5mm aperture diameter. We call both of them "f/4" so that the photographer knows that the 25mm aperture on the longer lens is equivalent to the 12.5mm aperture on the shorter lens. In this case, the equivalence is in the context of exposure.

Digital Interchangeable Lens Cameras were originally marketed using equivalences. That's the whole concept of "crop factor". When we say that a body has a crop factor of 1.5X, we are giving the formula for finding the equivalent focal length in the context of angle of view. Thus a 100mm lens on a 1.5X crop body, has a 150mm equivalent focal length as it yields the same angle of view as a 150mm lens on a traditional 35mm film SLR.

Of course, back in the days where a wedding photographer might be shooting both 35mm and medium format, they had to understand enough about equivalence to be able to mix and match between the two formats.

Remember, "equivalence" is simply a way of being able to match depth of field, motion blur, angle of view, image noise, diffraction issues, etc., across different sensor sizes. Armed with that knowledge, a photographer can make an intelligent choice about which gear to use for a particular task.

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Charles Darwin: "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."
tony

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