Making Sense of Digital Camera Sensor Sizes

I know it gets confusing, trying to make heads or tails of the countless sensor sizes now available in digital cameras. But in the above, I try to provide you with a little sense of scale. (Note, grab a slightly bigger version here and save it to your computer if you like.)

The overall dimension represents a 35mm sized sensor, in other words the size of a sensor in a full frame camera like the Nikon D3 and D700, Sony A900, and the Canon EOS 5D Mark II. Moving right to left here, the blue would be your typical 1.5x APS-C sensor, like those found in Nikon and Pentax cameras. The red is the 1.6x crop typical of the Canon DSLRs. That green incredibly is the sensor size in a Sigma DP1 and DP2,  purple is Olympus’ 4/3 , like the E-30, and yes even the Panasonic G1. Then there’s a big jump as we move into compact territory. Navy blue is roughly LX3 sized, light blue close to the G10, red is about the size of the Canon SX1 IS,  the black is the size of Sony HX1 sensor, and finally your typical point and shoot frequently checks in at 1/2.5 represented by the teal corner.

Bigger doesn’t mean absolutely better, but relative to how many megapixels are on any given sensor size, you can get a feel for what kind of image quality a particular camera might be capable of especially when it comes to ISO performance. But this isn’t written in stone, and the camera manufacturers keep getting better and better at making these sensors, while improving the image processing at the same time.

A couple of points:

• You can see why I’d be excited by Olympus’ concept micro 4/3 camera.
• The Sigma DP2’s IQ is easily explained
• Any improvement the LX3 has over the G10 in ISO performance likely comes from fewer megapixels on a slightly larger sensor.
• Finally, with just 12 megapixels, the D3 and D700 have very low noise and the reason is pretty obvious.

Hope this helps.

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1. 

   Bruce McL says:

   March 5, 2009 at 12:24 am

   This is the best diagram I have seen yet for explaining sensor sizes. Thank you!

   reply
2. 

   Patrick says:

   March 5, 2009 at 8:18 am

   you’re welcome.

   reply
3. 

   NR says:

   March 25, 2009 at 2:25 pm

   Well done graphic. Thanks. Does the physical size of the pixel lens limit the amount of possible pixels?

   reply