Digital Camera Sensor Physical Size. How Critical Is It?

September 19, 2019

#334

Gentle reader,

It's been a while since I've written about cameras. If you are a longtime reader, THANK YOU! And thus, you know my history. But a writer must assume the reader knows nothing about their previous books. Or articles.

NOTE: If you are new to blogger.com, if you click on any image, it will open a second window OVER this one. The images will be larger and you can click through them or use your < and > keys to look through them all.

I think this is an official Fujifilm image. I searched, via Duck-Duck-Go, I prefer that site (and their start page, because they DO NOT TRACK you) for searches, and I put in "1.3 Megapixels". G__gle follows your every move on the Internet.

My fist digital camera was similar to the one above. I have not been able to put my hands on it, so I grabbed that image.

Anyway, as a kid in the 1960's I had a camera  a green plastic camera from Sears, made by Savoy, that used 120 roll film. This and the Savoy version were in my camera collection.

I shot black and white because color film was mostly for slides back then and we were poor, dad being a small-town-in-Kansas preacher at the time.

When I made the mistake, despite dire warnings from her parents that she was crazy, of marrying my first wife, we too were not well off as there was a recession and people were not taking their cars to the dealership for service. So, all we could afford was a 110 camera sold by JCPenney.  

Be patient, there is a reason to this madness. I will get to the point.

This chart was found via Pinterest and created by Negative Spaces, LLC. It shows film negative sizes compared to many digital sensor sizes. Thanks to Negative Spaces for creating this nice chart.

The green camera used 120 film which is 70mm in width, or top-to-bottom, actually. 35mm is 1/2 the size, top to bottom. 35mm film in cine or movies is used vertically not horizontally as in 35mm still cameras. So, top to bottom, what you see in a movie theater is half of 35mm in height. 
What are called "Half-frame" 35mm still cameras use the same size negative as movie cameras but almost all of them move the film horizontally, like regular cameras.

The ONE exception in 35mm half frame cameras is this Konica AA35 half frame camera. Film goes bottom to top. The rectangle with the lens in it is the exact size of a 35mm cinema film camera. Yet, projected it fills enormous movie theater screens!

So, although the green camera used HUGE 70mm film compared to the JCPenney 110 camera which uses 16mm film, the crappy single element lens in the Sears camera meant poor quality images. 

With good 110 film cameras, which I had MANY of in my 200+ film camera collection, one could make fine photos.

The finest 110 cameras made were: Minolta 110 ZOOM SLR Mark II:

And the Pentax 110 SLR which was the world's smallest Interchangeable lens SLR:

Here is a group shot showing the Pentax and Minolta near my Nikon N-90S film SLR for comparison's sake:

However, no matter how fine the 110 camera was, making ENLARGEMENTS from 110 film led to poor results. Unless one used very slow film, like ASA 64, with it's finer grain.

This is the largest camera in my collection. It shoots sheet film that is 4 inches by 5 inches. So, a 8 by 10 inch enlargement is only 2X the size of the negative.

This is an image made with that camera.

OK, now back to the subject at hand. Sensor's physical size and megapixel count.

As mentioned, my first digital camera and the second, was a Fujifilm, they were both bought for me by my wife. Who REALLY loves me. It was similar to the Fujifilm shown at the beginning of the article. She bought it for me because I had begun selling on eBay and needed one. She surprised me with it. It had a 1.3 megapixel sensor. The second one had a 6.3 megapixel sensor.

What it comes down to is this: With film or digital sensor, the bigger the better when it comes to image size. Thus being seen on my PC's 24" wide screen or a print. 

BUT, is it pixel count OR sensor size that is better?

To print a great looking 8" X 11 1/2" photo at home, all you need is 6 megapixels. That's it. It doesn't matter what size sensor, APS-C or tiny 1/2.5" / 5.76 x 4.29mm. As long as it is at least 6 megapixels, it will look fine.

However, printing larger than that requires MORE pixels. The difference in the physical size of the individual red, blue and green sensors is what is different in actual sensor size. As long as the number of them is the same, the images should look identical.

To repeat, as long as the pixel COUNT is the same, I believe, the resulting prints will look the same.

NOTE: This image will not be visible if you click on it. 

So, sensors any larger than that, 6 megapixels, are wasted, in most cases. For things I post on the Internet, here or eBay, I reduce the short side of the image to 1000 pixels. Most people view this on devices anyway, so why make them bigger? At that size, they do not fill half of my 24" screen. Would I print at that size? No.

I have had numerous digital cameras, the two from Fujifilm, the second had a superb lens which focused down to 1/2 and inch. A few Nikon DSLRs, with my current one being a D200. And a bunch of Panasonic Lumix cameras. These mostly come with Leica lenses which, of course, are world renowned for their sharpness and quality.

Here are some of the LUMIX cameras, this image was made with my Nikon. I tried Micro four thirds as you can see. However, Leica lenses for them are WAY outside of my fixed income, retirement pension. And my experiments with adapters and film lenses were varied. And usually disappointing.

I have sold all but my ZS15, LX5 and FZ200. The ZS15 is my always-carry-camera since it fits in a pocket so well. It is 12.1 megapixels and has a 16X optical zoom for a 35mm equivalent of 24-384mm and records full HD video. It is a variable aperture lens, which means, the farther one zooms, the smaller the aperture gets.

Shown above on the left, is my LX5 (next to my GX1) with it's superb Leica Vario-Summicron lens. I bought the optional Live View Finder for both, because shooting looking into a screen is difficult in full sun since many times all I can see is my face reflected on the screen. The LX5 is 10 megapixels and it's lens is 24-90mm, variable aperture: f2.0-3.3. Two f-stop loss at 90mm.

This is my, new-to-me: FZ200. It too is 12.1 megapixels and compared to the sensor size of M4/3 and especially APS-C and "full frame" which is the same as 35mm, it's sensor is TINY.

BUT, I prefer it to the M4/3 cameras because of a couple factors: That lens is FIXED aperture, which means whether at the wide 24mm (35mm equivalent) end it is f2.8 and all the way to 600mm, it is still f2.8. And the shutter lag is almost inexistent compared to the G1 and GX1.

I have the LUMIX 18mm auxiliary lens for the LX5 which also works on the FZ200. Above and below. I know, dusty.

Above zoomed out to 600mm.

And the LUMIX ONE METER, (it's silly saying 1000 milometers, that IS one meter) auxiliary lens and adapter tube. Actually, it's reach is a little bit more than one meter.

These auxiliary lenses being front mount (verses 1.4X or 2X teleconverter lenses that mount on a DSLR and then the lens mounts to them) there is NO light loss when using these.

A woman member on one of the Panasonic LUMIX Facebook groups I belong to, made her first post asking which long lens she should get for her M43 camera. She has $400 to spend. 

I suggested she should by a FZ200 or FZ300 and get a Leica lens with incredible reach instead.

Someone else pointed out the smaller sensor in the FZ series as being a handicap.

I disagree, as I have pointed out to you. 

To recap, I acknowledge that in a larger sensor, there are larger pixels. BUT, if the COUNT of said pixels is the same: 12.1 megapixels verses 12.1 megapixels, the resulting prints or 100% zoom on a large screen, should look the same.

I hope you have enjoyed my article and I suspect some Facebook friends who read this will argue my conclusion. I welcome your arguments. But it won't change my mind.

Scott
September 19, 2019
#334