Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan. Today on the Slanted Lens we’re going to take a look at different sensor sizes, everything from Micro 4/3rds to Medium Format. Each of these has an advantage. Each of these has a reason why people buy them. Let’s find out which one of these is best for you.
We’re going to start with Micro 4/3rds. This is the G9 II from Panasonic. It’s a beautiful camera. I’ve shot on this many times. It gives you a beautiful image. One of the advantages of Micro 4/3rds is that it is smaller and lighter weight, easy to carry with you when you go camping, when you’re going out doing mountaineering things, when you want to carry a camera that is lighter weight and the lenses are lighter weight as well. So it’s a lighter weight package. But with a Micro 4/3rds you’ve got to times the lens by two. That’s two times the lens, so a 400mm lens is going to be 800mm on this sensor size. That can be a great advantage. If you get a 400mm lens on this it’s an 800mm lens. We shot a lot of wildlife with this setup and it just was wonderful to get that kind of reach with an 800mm lens. So the times two can be an advantage and a disadvantage depending on how you’re using it.It’s great for wildlife and for sports because you get much tighter with that two times crop. Because it is a smaller sensor it means there’s not going to be as much detail. It’s a smaller sensor size which is not going to give you the same detail as a Full Frame or as a Medium Format. For Micro 4/3rds you need lenses with faster apertures. F/2.8 in a head and shoulder shot on this doesn’t give you that really nice out of focus background. You’ve got to get into f/1.2. You need something that’s going to give you a shallower depth of field. So really faster lenses with wide open apertures are going to be the key to making this a great format. What’s one of the reasons people choose the Micro 4/3rds? It’s much less expensive. Lenses are smaller and the cameras are less expensive. It really becomes a cost factor. You can get a very inexpensive lightweight camera you can carry with you. That Micro 4/3rds checks a lot of boxes when it comes to price and size.
Next is an APS-C sensor. This is the Canon R7. The APS-C sensor is a smaller sensor than your Full Frame but it means cameras are going to be lighter. Lighter lenses, a lot easier to carry with you and a great camera for amateurs into more professional work. It is a great sensor size. It does have a crop factor of 1.5 which means a 400mm lens is going to be 600mm. There’s an advantage to that but it does have that crop factor of 1.5. But the lenses are much smaller than what you get in one of these larger formats. They’re a smaller, more lightweight camera and less expensive than what you’re going to have in your Full Frame or your Medium Format. Again you have more depth of field than you do in a Full Frame or a Medium Format. But not as much as the Micro 4/3rds. So you’re going to need faster lenses that are going to help you give that really out of focus background that you want. Unless you’re using lenses that are made for APS-C, and there are a lot of them out there. Fuji especially has a lot of lenses, a great range of lenses in that APS-C sensor size. It gives you beautiful lenses to choose from with fast apertures. That helps make that a very successful format. I think the Fuji format it is really good. The Canon is getting there as well. Again, like the Micro 4/3rds it is great for wildlife and for sports because you have that crop factor. You can get in closer. But what it doesn’t have a lot of times, although it depends on the manufacturer, is frames per second that you get with some of the higher end cameras. So APS-C sensor is a great choice, great price, might be right for you.
Hi my name is Yasi. I’m a touring music photographer. And here is what’s in my SKB case. I’ve got two camera bodies. One is digital, the Canon 5D Mark IV. Over here I’ve got the Canon EOS III is my film body. And I keep my lenses all over here, the 70-200mm, the 35mm, the 85mm and the 16-35mm. I’ve got a whole stack of batteries over here. I’ve got my big flash, the 600. I’ve got a little back-up flash just in case. Very, very, very important are my fitted ear plugs. Also very important are my snacks. Don’t forget your charger and your cards. That’s literally it. So, yeah, that’s what’s in my SKB case!
So now let’s talk about Full Frame. This is an a7R V which is a large megapixel sensor. But there are sensors out there, 24 megapixel sensors like the S5II. There’s great cameras, a range of cameras in this kind of Full Frame sensor size. Cameras that are made for faster frame rates. Cameras that are made for larger megapixels like this one to get larger images. This is really a very, kind of heavy lifting, professional camera. It is more expensive. A lot more features in this camera. Faster frame rates. Depending on the camera the frame rates can, frame rates can be extremely fast. So it really gives you a great camera. The Sony a9 III gives you up to 120 frames per second with that global shutter. So you really are looking at Full Frame camera, professional camera, tons of features. It’s made for sports. It’s made for stopping action. Most wedding shooters I know will carry a couple of full-frame cameras. Sometimes I’ve seen them carry a Full Frame and a crop factor, an APS-C, just because they want those two different cameras as they’re shooting. But I think as a heavy lifting kind of professional camera most Full Frame, most people are going to turn into a Full Frame camera just because of all the features it has. Camera companies are making a ton of lenses. They start with this kind of Full Frame. Most companies, they fill up a good range of lenses for that Full Frame and that becomes their kind of, their workhorse and their champion. And then they move on to the other kinds, unless you’re a company that really focuses on a certain genre of camera. It has much better image quality. It’s got a larger sensor. So you’re going to get better image quality than both an APS-C sensor or Micro 4/3rds. Although some people will argue that, that they are very close when you look at them. You have to really be looking to see the difference. Certainly if you’re shooting and posting to social media you’re not going to see the difference. You’re not going to see the difference between a Full Frame and a Micro 4/3rds. There’s no way. But if you’re going for major printing, if you’re looking for gorgeous prints, you’re going to make large prints, then you’re going to want a larger megapixel Full Frame camera. Or maybe even a Medium Format. So on that Full Frame they are very expensive with very expensive lenses. But it does cater to a professional market. So those larger sensors, that Full Frame sensor gathers more light. There’s going to be less noise. It’s going to have a great dynamic range in comparison to some of the crop sensors. Full Frame cameras are larger and heavier for the most part. When you put a lot of the telephoto lenses on they’re extremely heavy. Some of these telephoto lenses, 150-500mm lens become very large and very heavy. Especially if you get a specialty lens for wildlife or for birds. Those can be $12,000 for a single lens. So it is a professional grade camera and camera system. And things are expensive. They’re made, they’re weather sealed. They’re made to be out in the elements. For the most part they’re cameras that are made to be out working and being able to hold up to the rigor of professional use.
Now we come to a Medium Format. This is the GFX 100 II. It’s a beautiful Medium Format. And one of the things that makes this camera so wonderful is that you get a very shallow depth of field. It’s the shallowest depth of field of all of these cameras. At f/2.8 you get a beautiful bokeh in the background. It’s one of the reasons I loved shooting on my Hasselblad 500 CM was because, in the film days, because it just gave you a everything falls so beautifully out of focus in the background. It’s a gorgeous, gorgeous camera. It has a larger sensor than a Full Frame camera. Which gives you more detail. So if you’re doing landscapes, if you’re doing studio work like for fashion and things that are going to be printed to make billboards, those kinds of things, it’s a camera that’s made for that large kind of reproduction. It is a professional camera. It is very expensive. We’re talking one of the cheapest is going to be $6,000 or $7,000 up to $10,000 plus. So they are expensive cameras. Hasselblad makes great cameras. Fujifilm makes great cameras in this range. They’re just excellent cameras out there. They are made to be studio type cameras. They don’t have fast frame rates. They are not really made for sports or for action of any kind. The lenses have a, not a plus crop factor, a minus crop factor. So a 50mm lens on this is going to be closer to like a 35mm. So it goes the opposite way, you’re subtracting. So these cameras struggle with getting out there far enough. A telephoto, it’s hard to get a telephoto on this. It’s not made for that kind of work. It really isn’t. There’s different companies that make different size sensors in this Medium Format range, so they aren’t all the exact same size. Like the Phase Series has much larger sensors. Hasselblads are pretty good size. The GFX100 series a little smaller but still Medium Format, large beautiful image capture. It’s made for people who want to do, who want to get a lot of detail and want to carry the weight. They’re very heavy. It’s a very deliberate kind of camera, something you’re going to want to put on a tripod a lot of the time. It’s not a run and gun kind of camera. It’s not a shoot from the hip kind of camera. It’s made to be more deliberate on a tripod getting beautiful images with great detail. So it really is best for landscape and for studio work. That’s where it excels. Here’s some different images we shot from another lesson where we talked about depth of field. Let’s look at some of those images and just see the difference in that depth of field.
Before you blow up the comments with, well that really isn’t cheaper or that’s more expensive or you didn’t say this or there’s that, I mean all these cameras have started to converge. It is really fascinating to me, the ISO capabilities of all of them is starting to look cleaner and cleaner in all the different formats. So it just makes this kind of comparison sometimes very difficult to sort through. I’m talking about generalizations of these different sensor sizes. I shoot on full frame all the time. It’s my favorite format. I love it. That’s what I shoot on. And when I shoot on the a7R V I’ve got such a large megapixel it’s pretty hard for that not to compete with a medium format. And it gives me so many other features. The video aspects of a medium format are not as wonderful as what you get in these other cameras. I mean, you get some really great video specs in these other cameras. So if someone asks me, “I really want a camera that’ll give me great video and great stills”, I’m going to probably direct them towards a full-frame camera. But if they say I want something that I can travel with and carry and I don’t want a lot of weight but I want to beautiful image that APS-C or the Micro 4/3rds are great choices. So check out these different cameras. Do a little research. You’ll find the one that is exactly right for you. So keep those cameras rollin’ and keep on clickin’!
