Digital Camera Sensor Size Comparisons (as % of Full Frame by area)

The chart below is a basic comparison of common digital camera sensor sizes measured by area. It gives you and idea of how much light hits the sensor, before you factor in the technical things like lens quality, pixel size and type, pixel count etc. Its a thought exercise aimed at comparing the relative area proportions of various sensors and the amount of light they have to work with. I've chosen to express the comparisons as a percentage of full frame size. (%FF)

Since the defacto baseline for sensor size comparison seems to be the 35mm full frame sensor, I find it useful to compare sensor areas in terms of "Percentage of Full Frame" (PFF or %FF). This chart lists various sensor area sizes and compares them in proportion to a standard 35mm FF sensor, which I take as having an approximate physical area of 864 mm².

Picture of %FF Comparison Chart

As noted, physical size/area of a sensor is just one factor in determining image quality, camera cost, and other factors. I've deliberately ignored factors such as pixel count, size and pitch, types of sensor technology and computational tricks etc. This is just a single factor comparison. I'm sure all the big name camera manufacturers - Canon, Sony, Nikon, Panasonic, Leica, Hasselblad etc. have their own spin about the features and benefits of sensor sizes big and small.

I was just curious about the size of the sensor on my smartphone vs DSLR and decided to look it up and put it in a chart. I don't post much and can't quite figure if/how to embed a table into Blogger so I just exported to a photo (above) and also saved it as a PDF file you can download. As usual, no guarantees its completely accurate but might be a good approximation to start with.

If you found this on the interweb, I hope it helps.  (August 2021)

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