Think of these pixels as buckets, that’s a common analogy. What happens when you take the 24 million pixels on a full-frame sensor and cram them onto an APS-C sensor? You have to shrink the pixels to fit them in this smaller space. So we’ve established that full-frame sensors are physically larger than APS-C sensors. Wikimedia commons.Īdvantages of Full Frame vs APS-C Better light sensitivity & dynamic range They generally have more capability, but does that matter to what you do? I’ll answer the question now: No, full-frame sensors are not “better” than APS-C sensors. He was one of the first to field test the X-T2, a 24MP APS-C mirrorless camera, after regularly using the 16MP X-T1. He’s a Fujifilm X-Photographer, one of the elite brand ambassadors for Fujifilm. This dude has had a few National Geographic covers. I made these sales based on the image, not the sensor. I would print a 12″x18″ every now and then but I was mostly selling stock photos for magazines & digital publications.Ī number of these were made with the APS-C Sony a6000 & a6300 because I liked traveling with those smaller cameras. And I saw that my long-held beliefs about full-frame vs. In my “choosing a travel camera” article I touched a little bit on how my “needs versus wants” changed over the course of my career. I didn’t really know the differences between full-frame sensors and APS-C sensors, I just knew that pros used full frame and that’s all I cared about because that’s what I was told by people selling cameras. Therefore I only looked at cameras with full-frame sensors. Pros use full-frame sensors and nothing else. Ten years ago I would have scoffed at APS-C sensors. I earn a small commission of product sales to keep this website going. Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links.