Full frame vs Crop sensor in sunlight 22 April 2024

 

Albino wallabies are common on Bruny Island, Tasmania. Canon EOS R7, RF 100-500mm L 

Those who make, market and sell camera gear are very motivated to encourage us consumers to buy the latest and greatest full frame bodies and lenses.

The reason for this is clear enough. There is more profit per unit on high price gear than budget equipment.

The main selling point of high end full frame gear is that it promises to deliver better image quality than crop sensor bodies and lenses. 

I have both and find that for the most part that promise is fulfilled.

In some situations especially in low light and/or when we want to capture fast action my experience is that the full frame kit has a clear advantage.

But when we have a medium to high level of ambient brightness and the subject is not moving at high speed, there might not be much advantage to full frame at all.

If most of our usage cases are in this second category then crop sensor gear will do a fine job with full frame only marginally and arguably insignificantly better.

Here are two photos captured hand held within a minute or so of each other.

One was made with a Canon EOS R10 and RF-S 18-45mm f4.5-6.3 IS STM kit lens, new retail price in Australia $1399.

The other used a Canon EOS R5 with RF 24-105mm f4 L IS USM. When purchased together as a kit this costs AU$5988, which is over four times as much.

I chose a subject which has considerable fine detail (to test resolution) , backlit foliage (to test for color fringing) and overall high subject brightness (to test dynamic range).

When I bring both images to the same output size in Photoshop I can, by pixel peeping at 100% on screen, just detect that the full frame high end kit delivers slightly more acutance and sharpness in fine subject details towards the periphery of the frame.  Otherwise they look almost the same to me, with very closely matched colour, contrast, highlight  and shadow detail.  Any small differences could easily be corrected in Photoshop if desired.

I don’t know whether the differences will be visible in the images which appear on this blog.

The message ?

Current model APSC crop sensor cameras, even entry level ones, can in many conditions deliver results which are almost as good as those from those high end full frame equipment.  

And most viewers will not notice the difference.