Re: The main (theoretical) differences between APS-C and Full-Frame?
These equivalence arguments always get confusing because many different assumptions need to be made, and they're not always stated. So in this case, if I have a 24 megapixel full frame camera and a 24 megapixel APSC camera, then the pixels of the APSC camera will be smaller, so they will gather less light. If there is less light on a pixel its signal to noise ratio will be higher, which shows up as sensor noise.
But if you had a full frame camera whose pixels size was the same as an APSC, like the A7riv and v then the noise per pixel would be the same as the noise per pixel of the APSC camera. In that case, the argument is different. The full frame camera has many more pixels than the APSC. So to compare the full frame to the APSC fairly you would downsample the full frame from 60 to 24 megapixels. When you downsample you get to average some of the noise away. So the full frame image will still have less noise at the same output size. This is a factor that people who pixel peep the riv and rv sometimes forget.
But in the end, this is all theoretical. If a small APSC camera lets you carry it places where you wouldn't take the full frame, then who cares about a stop more noise. Or if you're shooting in good light, and are at ISO 100, will you see the added noise at all?
-Will
Jun 28, 2023 at 07:27 PM
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