Nowadays, however, the reliance on crop factor is simply a way to confuse consumers looking to buy their first DSLR. This was important in the early days of digital photography, when photographers switching from film needed a quick way to know what to expect when using their lenses on digital cameras. A lens with a focal length of 50mm mounted on an APS-C camera, for example, has a similar field of view to a 75mm lens on a full frame camera (50 x 1.5 = 75). The reason this number is used, instead of stating the difference in actual surface area, is that it allows you to easily compare how your lenses will look on a smaller sensor camera as opposed to on a full frame camera. A standard APS-C sensor (Fuji, Sony, Nikon DX) has a 1.5x crop factor, meaning if you divide the diagonal length of a full frame sensor by that of an APS-C sensor, you get about 1.5 (Micro Four Thirds has a 2x crop factor). A camera is assigned a crop factor based on the difference in diagonal size (not surface area) between its sensor and a full frame sensor. To make things more confusing, sensor sizes are often differentiated by a crop factor that uses full frame as a benchmark. I was told my 50mm lens isn't actually a 50mm lens on this camera. But since medium and large formats were not as popular as the much smaller 35mm format, 35mm digital is now referred to as "full frame." The more you know. It is not, however, the largest frame size: there are various medium format cameras that offer significantly larger sensors, despite "medium" making one think of something less than "full." Bigger still is large format, which has yet to truly transition to digital due to the ridiculously high cost of making a sensor that huge, although some digital solutions do exist. What's the deal with "full frame?"įull frame simply means the digital sensor offers the same surface area as a frame of 35mm film, and it has become somewhat synonymous with "professional" in photography jargon. (That "High Definition" has nothing to do with what high definition means today.) Nobody has yet made an APS-P sensor, which is a good thing. What you do with this knowledge is up to you. Until last year, Canon also made digital SLRs with APS-H sensors, presumably named after the larger "High Definition" APS frame size option, although Canon stuck to the standard 3:2 ratio. Anyway, the C in APS-C is for "Classic", and digital APS-C cameras offer roughly the same frame size as APS film shot in this mode. This system was fantastic, because it allowed your mom to accidentally shoot an entire role of film in Panoramic mode and not realize it until the 4x11" prints came back from the lab with everyone's heads cut off and seven inches of negative space surrounding them. Gesundheit! APS-C takes its name from the failed late-nineties film format called Advanced Photo System, which offered photographers three frame sizes in one: "High Definition," a 16:9 ratio "Panoramic," a roughly 3:1 ratio and "Classic," the standard 3:2 ratio. These numbers do not measure active imaging area, but are related to the size of the sensor (and, at least in the case of 4/3, are throwbacks to old video tube designs). Nikon uses the completely made-up designations of CX, DX, and FX, to refer to 1", APS-C, and full frame, while Canon generally sticks to the terms full frame and APS-C-even though their version of APS-C is slightly smaller than the standard APS-C size used by Nikon, Sony, and Fujifilm. Are you excited yet? Some state what looks like the actual measured size, such as 1/1.7", 2/3", or 1". Panasonic and Olympus' Micro Four Thirds cameras use the enigmatic and improper fraction 4/3. As smartphones continue to take over the entry-level photography market, more and more attention is being given to sensor size in how cameras are marketed today. There are a plethora of sensor sizes and no real standard for describing their size. Resolution-basically, the number of pixels-used to be the main defining metric of image sensors, but physical size is actually more important. The sensor is the most important part of your camera it's the thing that collects the light, the digital equivalent of film. Written by Daven Mathies What's a sensor?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |