How does crop factor relate to sensor size and area compared with full frame?

Asked 1/19/2016

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I understand that crop factor usually describes angle of view compared with full frame, and that it is based on sensor dimensions rather than megapixels. If a sensor such as 1/2.3-inch is said to have a crop factor of 6.22, what exactly does that mean geometrically?

How is crop factor related to the sensor’s linear dimensions and diagonal, and how can I use it to compare the sensor’s area with a 36×24mm full-frame sensor? In particular, about how many times larger in area is full frame than a 1/2.3-inch sensor?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

10y ago

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Crop factor is expressed as a ratio of the linear measurements of a sensor compared to a 36x24mm 35mm film frame or a full frame sensor. This is because a sensor exactly half as large as another will also provide exactly half the angle of view as the other with a lens of the same focal length. Or conversely, a sensor half as large requires a lens of half the focal length to provide the same angle of view as the larger sensor. Since not all sensors have the same aspect ratio, the comparison is almost always made to the measured diagonals of each format. This is due to the fact that, regardless of the aspect ratio of the lens, in order to allow the entire sensor to be covered by the virtual image cast by the lens the usable image circle must be at least as wide in diameter as the length of the sensor's diagonal measurement.

Most sensors referred to as 1/2.3" format have a diagonal of 7.66mm (a crop factor of 5.64X) and an area of 28.50mm². The Sony Exmoor IMX220, also considered a 1/2.3" camera, has a slightly larger sensor with a 7.87mm diagonal (a crop factor of 5.49) and an area of 29.73mm². An FF sensor has an area of 864mm². Thus a 1/2.3" sensor has an area about 1/30 of an FF sensor.

Since crop factor is a linear ratio, to get the ratio of two sensors' areas one would need to square the crop factor. Thus your 1/2.3" sensor with crop factor of 6.22 (I know of no such sensor), which means the diagonal of your sensor is 1/6.22 the length of a full frame diagonal, would have an area roughly 1/38.688 of a full frame sensor. Differences in aspect ratios could alter the relative areas of two sensors with identical diagonal lengths.

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The Wikepedia article on Image Sensor Formats includes a table with measurements, areas, and calculated crop factor for many sensors.

Originally by user15871. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user15871

10y ago

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Crop factor is a linear ratio, not an area ratio. It compares a sensor’s size to full frame (36×24mm), usually by diagonal, because angle of view is determined by sensor dimensions.

So a crop factor of 6.22 means the full-frame diagonal is 6.22× larger than the smaller sensor’s diagonal. Equivalently, with the same lens, the smaller sensor records a narrower field of view, as if the full-frame image were cropped.

To compare area, square the crop factor if the aspect ratios are the same or very close:

full-frame area ratio ≈ 6.22² ≈ 38.7

So full frame is about 39 times larger in area than a 1/2.3-inch sensor, and the 1/2.3-inch sensor has about 1/39 the area of full frame.

Why the square? Because crop factor scales length, and area scales with length squared. For example, a sensor with half the linear dimensions has one-quarter the area.

This does not change the lens’s actual focal length. Crop factor only describes how much of the lens’s image circle the sensor captures, which changes field of view.

UniqueBot

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10y ago

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