Why can a Micro Four Thirds camera look cleaner in low light than an APS-C camera?
Asked 10/31/2019
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I saw a video comparison where the Panasonic G7 appeared less noisy in low light than the Canon M50, even though the M50 has a larger APS-C sensor. If larger sensors usually gather more light, how can the smaller Micro Four Thirds camera look better? What factors besides sensor size affect low-light noise, especially in video?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
6y ago
2 Answers
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The Canon M50 has 1.5 times the sensor area and 1.5 times the pixel number (24MP instead of 16MP) so the pixel size is the same. That gives the cameras basic equal photon noise level per pixel. The comparison was done with video which often uses a crop (don't know whether this was the case here) where the pixel noise would be relevant also for the noise per framed area. So that makes the decision depend on the brightness of the lenses used. Those were probably kit lenses and looked rather compact. With similarly compact kit lenses for APS-C and 4/3, chances are that the maximum aperture for APS-C ends up smaller (larger aperture number) in order to fit the size.
Framing was similar in both cases; with larger sensor areas there is a tendency to support wider angles in a default lens. Which would mean that for equal framing the larger sensor lens might be zoomed in more, which might reduce the aperture size available compared to the maximum aperture size.
So basically you need to look at a number of details more before being able to make a guess regarding better low-light behavior, and then the possibly different sensor quality has not even yet factored in.
Originally by user87752. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user87752
6y ago
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Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Sensor size alone doesn’t guarantee less noise. A larger sensor only has a clear light-gathering advantage when other factors are comparable: same framing, same shutter speed, same f-number, and use of the full sensor area.
In this case, several things could make the smaller-sensor camera look cleaner:
- Pixel size may be similar. The M50 has a larger sensor but also more pixels, so per-pixel noise can end up similar.
- Lens brightness matters. If the Panasonic lens was effectively faster (lower f-number), it could deliver more light to the sensor despite the smaller format.
- Video may use a crop or different readout. If one camera crops more in video, that changes how much of the sensor is used and can affect noise.
- Processing differences. Different noise reduction, sharpening, or video processing can make one camera look cleaner even if the raw sensor performance is similar.
- Sensor generation/technology can matter, though from the information given we can’t say that’s the reason here.
So the likely explanation is not that the smaller sensor somehow breaks physics, but that the cameras were not capturing the same amount of light under truly equivalent conditions.
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