Posts Tagged ‘full frame vs crop depth of field’

In recent years camera manufacturers seem to have greatly shifted their focus towards 'full frame' cameras. (A full frame camera is one where the image sensor is the same size as a piece of 35mm film, whereas a 'crop frame' camera has a smaller image sensor - typically 1.5 - 2x smaller.) The reason for this is not that full frame cameras are inherently better, but simply that they have a higher profit margin on the full frame models.

I've read a lot of comments from other photographers, and also a few articles that seem to treat full frame cameras as the holy grail of photography. But I think many people are being led astray by the full frame marketing brigade. Yes, a full frame camera is the best choice for some photographers. But for others a crop sensor camera may be a better choice.

So, in this article I want to redress the balance, and look at some reasons why a crop sensor camera can be a better choice than a full frame camera.

When photographing certain subjects or scenes, we want all of the image in focus. This is often the case in product photography and landscape photography. We want sharpness from front to back with no area of the product or landscape out of focus.

This can be tricky to achieve, but there are a number of techniques that can be used to achieve a very large depth of field (the amount of the image in focus).

Something that you might come across when reading camera / lens reviews, or discussions, is talk about equivalent focal length and equivalent aperture. For example, a 50mm f/1.4 lens for a micro four thirds camera might be described as being a 100mm f/2.8 equivalent lens.

But what does this really mean? I have already discussed equivalent focal length in the article Photography Basics – Focal length, though I will cover it again very briefly in this article. But mostly I want to look at the idea of equivalent aperture, and how this relates to depth of field and the amount of light gathered.