Camera College
Photographer and writer Marcus is a former editor of Digital Camera
What’s the big deal with going full-frame?
A bigger sensor gives you bigger images, right? Not necessarily – but there are more reasons why you might want to move to full-frame…
If you’re new to digital photography, you might well be wondering what all the fuss is about regarding the unveiling of full-frame mirrorless cameras from Canon and Nikon. (See In Focus, page 110, and our Nikon Z7 review on page 116.) What’s the big deal about having a large sensor in a smallish camera? And what exactly does ‘full-frame’ mean anyway?
Most SLRs and mirrorless cameras have an imaging sensor that’s the same size as a single frame of APS-C film – about 22 x 15mm. A full-frame camera, however, has a sensor with the same dimensions as a frame of 35mm film – 36 x 24mm. This means a full-frame sensor has more than 2.5 times the surface area of an APS-C sensor. Size matters when it comes to sensors. Larger sensors can accommodate more pixels for more detailed pictures. For instance, the Canon EOS 5DS’s full-frame sensor houses around 50.6 million effective pixels, and can produce images that measure 8,688 x 5,792 pixels. That works out as a high-resolution 74 x 49cm print! With
