Do you ever hear about “full-frame”, “APS-C”, “Micro 4/3”, “1-inch”, “1/2.3 inch” when you are choosing the camera? Does the salesperson tell you, “This DSLR provides better image quality than the P&S because it has a larger image sensor”? Or “This camera has a crop factor of 2, so blah blah blah…”? What does the image sensor size mean?
Before we discuss the topic today, let’s have some idea about the different sizes of those image sensors.
The comparison chart is scaled with the actual size of an image sensor. It shows the name/size of each image sensor followed by the crop factor in the bracket. To give a clearer comparison chart, I omit some “not-so-standard” sensor sizes (e.g., Canon has a slightly different APS-C format with a crop factor of 1.6).
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