The Mystery of depth of field and crop factor! | Palle Schultz
Why full frame and crop frame will never be the same thing?
There have been quite a few attempts to explain depth of field and its relation to sensor size. I will try to explain why shooting with different “crop factors” and how it relates to depth of field, framing and background compression, is a different experience on different sensor size cameras. Many have the belief that larger sensors also have a shallower depth of field. But that isn’t true. Actually the opposite is true. If you put a 50mm lens with an aperture of F/2 on a MFT, APSC, Full Frame and Medium Format camera, take a picture from the exact same distance. The D.O.F. (depth of field) will be almost exactly the same. But because of the smaller pixels on the small sensor, the circle of confusion will be smaller, and therefore the D.O.F. will be slightly narrower. But this is not what makes the big difference between shooting crop and full frame……
Source: palleschultz.dk
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This is a very interesting article! too bad we can’t comment on the guy’s page.
It’s the first article I’ve read that took the inverse square law into account when comparing Crop vs FF sensors. I haven’t thought of that before and it makes total sense.
I went it deeper on the inverse square law for light reflected on subject and it turns out this article doesn’t have it right.
This article explains it better:
http://www.scantips.com/lights/flashbasics1b.html
So a FF sensor doesn’t get more light than a Crop because it it closer to the subject.
thx for your link Jeff, it’s a good read :)
Thanks for the link to the article Jeff. It makes sense. It is just haze, atmosphere, heatwaves, dust and other atmospheric disturbances, that is diffracting the light rays, when we shoot from a distance.
I will go back to my article and correct it. :)