Does The Crop Factor Actually Affect Noise??

[@RedshiftDougal]

Commenting mainly to nudge the algorithm along. But also to say thank you for another excellent video. I'm only a few months into learning about photo/video in my spare time (coming from decades in audio), so there's a lot for me to unpack in this to really understand the content. Your presentational style and clearly very well thought out message make the learning easier. Keep up the great work, Harv.

[@HarvVideoAudioStuff]

Much appreciated!

[@extrashot]

Hi Harv, This is an interesting comparison, but I fear comparing FF to APS-C might be a much more complicated issue. You’re not comparing a full frame sensor with a crop sensor, you’re cropping the same sensor to magnify the existing noise. Which of course looks worse. When you compare a real full frame camera to an APS-C camera, with exactly the same shot (inc. angle of view, depth of focus, magnification etc), then you’ll need to also adjust the focal length of each lens as well as the aperture. As this changes the amount of light hitting each sized sensor, the ISO or gain required for each camera will be different. This drastically changes what you might expect from noise levels with a smaller sensor! Obviously, if you don’t apply the crop factor to the lens or aperture to produce identical shots, then you’re not comparing apples with apples. We need to get an FX3 and FX30 together for a collaborative test! Take care.

[@z352kdaf8324]

Using ZV-E1 in crop mode with say 11 or 15mm Sony lens, and then using dynamic active stabilization - it does start to look noisy, especially if you throw a little 1.2x zoom on to get rid of the last of the vignetting when moving.

[@fotosvond_]

Again one of those detailed in-depth topics 🙂👍 nice to see people deep-diving into such aspects and not only touching the surface

[@hbphotos]

I think your experience is entirely wrong; you are testing the same sensor in crop mode and fullframe mode. It is like you crop an image in post, it doesn't affect the noise. Noise comes from the size of pixels on the sensor. Let's say 30 MP full frame sensor vs 30 MP APSC sensor. Obviously the smaller sensor with the same amount of pixels, has smaller individual pixels there fore each pixel can gather less light hence higher noise

[@HarvVideoAudioStuff]

As I acknowledged explicitly in the video, did you miss this section? (5:19) Also cropping an image may not affect the noise level but does magnify the noise making it more visible

[@hbphotos]

@HarvVideoAudioStuff Yes I probably missed that part.

[@cutback443]

a7s3 has APSC mode

[@HarvVideoAudioStuff]

Not full quality 4K though, clear image zoom I don’t think would be a useful or fair comparison