Resolution question

Hi All,

assuming lens parity could you in theory 1) better IQ at base from an APSC sized 16mp sensor than a m43 sized 16mp one?

and 2) would you be able to notice the difference?

thanks

D

A good big 'un should always beat a good little 'un but at "normal" magnifications and at moderate ISOs I bet you'd be hard put to see the difference.

Some of us are really quite pleased with the results from the12mp sensor in the MX-1 but make a big enlargement and the laws of physics become all too apparent.

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Best wishes,

Andrew

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When the resolutions are the same then it comes down to the effects of the more tightly packed pixels ... the same number occupying a lesser space .

I'm no expert on sensor technologies, but i'd point that aspect up as the key one to consider. So, sensor experts ... what is the effect of packing pixel sites more densely onto a smaller surface area?

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Biggest change I could see is a signal to noise ratio. Make bigger pixels and you've got more area to capture light, so you should have a stronger signal level up above the noise.

Best example of this would be a cellphone camera, potentially 8MP or so, vs a APS-C or FF camera of the same resolution.
Sony's A7s comes to mind, and that's an absolute low light monster, having a resolution of 12MP on a FF sensor.
By contrast my iPhone falls apart in low light.

So, on a bright sunny day, there is not a lot in it, but stray into less well lit regions, where you need to keep the shutter speed up to freeze motion, and you don't have or a flash is not applicable, and the differences should become far more obvious.

Only other aspect is the depth of field from the lens. The bigger you go sensor area wise, the narrower the depth of field of the lens.

yes, good points thanks Richard . So poorer low - light performance and it would be harder to get very low depths of field on the smaller sensor ?

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From my point of view, these are the only two practical points that I think matter.
It's not limited to m4/3s either, as the discussion is equally relevant across all sensor sizes for a given resolution.
(so APS-C vs FF, FF vs MF etc)

The only other aspect is the 'crop factor' or reach for a given lens,

Basically the light gathering ability (size of pixels) is about the only factor that is actually resolution based across sensor sizes that I can think of right now.

Resolution is basically how fine you're sampling the image. Like what grid are you overlaying onto the image to describe it? The finer the grid the more detail will be captured, but if you're downsampling to 2MP to display on a monitor, then you've got to be realistic about how much any of this matters
Hence my utter confusion at sacrificing the light gathering ability in favour of a higher resolution capture
Short of printing large or heavily cropping I know exactly which way I'd prefer to see things go...

Just shoot film

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Huh?

Unfortunately the chart doesn't show medium format, or where Kodak disc might fit in

Thanks all i came to basically the same conclusions and btw it is perfectly possible to get nice shallow DOF on m43 just have to know how to do it I have also printed m43 12mp picture from Ep-3 up to somewhere btw A3 and A2 and it retained v good detail and looked lovely on the canvas.

As for low light comments with the 16MP sensors in the OMD's and Ep-5 etc there is really not so much difference (v APS-C) anymore up to ISO 6400