Small Sensors Suck... Right? (Full Frame vs APS-C vs M43 vs 1in)

Came from apsc, then “upgraded” to full frame. After years of that I found myself in M43 and couldn’t be happier. Olympus has one of the best and sharpest lenses in the market today and in a small package.

Shot at a wedding recently using a full frame and a m4/3 camera. Anyone who saw the pictures never asked ‘What camera did you use?’ It’s about capturing emotions and telling a story.

little correction about the depth of field thing : crop factor doesn't really affect the depth of field. It has an indirect impact on it, but there is much important stuff to consider when trying to figure out where the depth of field even comes from. There is only really 2 factors for depth of field : focus distance and aperture diameter (note I didn't say aperture number). Nope, even the focal length has very little play in this. To keep it simple, the wider the aperture gets, the shallower the DoF gets. And the closest you focus your lens, the shallower your DoF gets as well. practical example : if you have a 50mm f/2 lens, that lens has an aperture of about 25mm. If you want a micro four thirds to match the exact framing and depth of field, you will need to match the angle of view, but you will also need to match the aperture diameter. So angle of view gets matched with a 2.0x crop factor : so 25mm lenses should do the trick. Now if you get a 25mm f/2 (to match the exposure) then you get a DoF that is about twice as deep as the one you had on your full frame camera with your 50mm lens, because now your aperture diameter is not 25mm, but 12.5mm. You need to match the aperture diameter to get the same DoF at the same focus distance, meaning you need a 25mm aperture diameter on your 25mm lens : you need a 25mm f/1.0 But as it stands, the depth of field always comes from the lens and the focusing distance, NEVER from the sensor itself. You can achieve the exact same DoF on a 1" camera as a FF camera using the exact same lens... you will just have to deal with the much tighter framing. Most of the time, you end up taking a step back, but then you're focusing further away, which increases the DoF. In short, you should really think about what lens you're using before even thinking about the sensor size. If you start with the sensor size, you will take the 18,5mm lens as a "50mm equivalent", while it fact it's still very much an 18mm rendering with the angle of view of a 50mmm, and you might end up being dissapointed. The only way the sensor impacts depth of field is because you will need wider lenses with smaller aperture diameters (again, not f numbers).

µ4/3's name is actually totally unrelated from the aspect ratio. µ4/3 takes it's name from the older 4/3 DSLR mount, just micro because of the shorter flange distance. That standard does not specify any aspect ratio only a diagonal size, so a 4/3 sensor can be 3:2 as long as it's around 22mm in diagonal. 4/3 stands for 4/3", but the sensor isn't 4/3", it's from an even older standard for video camera tubes where a sensor that size would need a 4/3" glass tube. TL;DR µ4/3 naming is cursed.

As you said, the most important decision factor is the type of photography you mainly do. For exanple bulk and weight is very important if you are a travel photographer.

I have been using M43 for about 15 years now. Today I bought my first full frame camera. The Sony a7c ii with the Tamron 28-75 f2.8 G2. I am very impressed by the image quality of this combo and how far it can be pushed in Lightroom. That being said, I will never sell my Lumix GX8. Still absolutely love this thing. I will keep using it for tele (full frame tele is just too large and expensive for me) and also just for fun. Btw, I guessed right without cheating.

I use micro four thirds and Sony full frame and most of the time I can't see much difference. Even in low light there's not much. Mainly because of how much I want in focus. Your comment about the lens is probably the most important. I use Olympus 25mm and the Sony 50mm and in many ways the Olympus lens is better and produces nicer images than the Sony (it's also more expensive).

Whenever I get GAS, I just add a lens to my m43 collection. So far the system hasn’t failed me, and allows me to capture moments I wouldn’t normally be able to (50fps full resolution raw with pre-capture, live GND, live ND, live composite etc).

The 25mm 1.7 lumix lens is famous for focus shifting. Try the Leica 25mm 1.4 (I or II version) if you can. It's very sharp, and focuses better.

I use an Em1 M3, XE 4, A7 iv and Leica Q3....all have their pros and cons, i print up to 60 cms and no issue at all, specially if you use pure raw 4

Micro four thirds all the way! Smaller, cheaper and 90% of what you get from full frame. The main sacrifice is the reduced bokeh, if that's something you care about for your use case. For me, I get plenty of soft backgrounds with the PanaLeica lenses for way less money than equivalent full-frame lenses. My GH5ii is a beast and makes an amazing travel/vlogging camera in combination with a DJI Mic 2. Of course, I'm jealous of the GH7's better autofocus, but I can't afford that thing yet :)

I love small sensor cameras. I love this extra depth of field and use it to my advantage all the time. I am so tired of writer’s writing off micro four thirds as being irrelevant or dead. So I really appreciate this. It’s the small sensor advantage. And just one of the many benefits. Thanks.

Can tell a lot of work went into this video. It was a really fun watch. I just finished up a trip to Hong Kong and there were many people carrying compact crop sensor cameras. Mostly Sony and Canon bodies with some Fuji. I think I saw more people carrying film cameras than I saw full frame bodies lol. Crop sensors are still so convenient for travel photography.

12:17 Because this 25mm was my most used lens for years on my GX85 I'm too familiar with this lol. It's not a very sharp lens, singlehandedly got me to switch to Full Frame thinking the sensor was the issue but clearly there are some sharp AF lenses around.

Very nice and informative comparison! Thanks for taking all the time to produce this. Your results prove that a normal viewing distances, megapixels really don't matter. I'm always amazed when I pull up old images shot on Nikon D1 on a 65" 4k tv. You'd never know they were a mere 2.7mp.

Excellent rundown across that minefield of parameters having to do with sensor size. After 50 years of doing photography, I settled on Micro 4/3, and I’m really enjoying it.

You got me. 🤪 I paused when looking at the 4 images and made my guesses. Then you put up the WRONG labels and I'm screaming at my screen saying "no f'n way!!" Then I went back and looked at the lenses you chose and was like, I think he screwed up. Clever, clever Tom 🤣

ISO also scales just like crop factor, you need to compare equivalents. To get the same light sensitivity it's 640 on full frame, is 280 on APS-C is 160 on MFT. 12,800 on full frame is 5,700 on APS-C is 3,200 on MFT - the formula is Multiply ISO by crop factor squared. Same goes for lens matching, etc. So actually if you get a 16mm f/1.4 lens on APS-C with ISO300 , you will get very similar results (similar noise too) as 24mm f/2.0 ISO640 on full frame. The advantage of full frame comes when you have those amazing f/1.4 primes, there are no f/0.7 primes for MFT to match it. This is why often professionals buy the lens before the camera :)

I love the extra depth of smaller sensors, the size of smaller cameras, the extra features they pack in, and basically everything about 1" cameras. The only thing really ever stopping me from just committing is the fear of gain ISO noise, low dynamic range, and digital sharpening over optical IQ. If I found something that hit the sweet spot on those, I'd be a 1" wonder for life

I went recently just from Nikon D3400 asp-c to Nikon Z5 full frame. Have to say I am a lot more happier with Z5 thanks to better low light performance and having image stabilization. Also I like to have the wider view of Full Frame on architecture and landscape photography. Photo that I took at 9 pm in dark hand held looks as good as photo taken in daylight with D3400