Understanding Crop Factor in Digital Cameras

On this video tutorial photographer Tony Northrup takes a look at an important and basic topic for photographers – camera crop factor.

Now, the crop factor is simply a number which represents the size of your camera sensor compared to what was the most common “sensor” size in the film area – known today as full frame (36mm over 24mm). Any sensor which is smaller than a full frame sensor is essentially a “crop” version of the full frame (chance the name crop factor). The closer the crop is to the original full frame – the larger the sensor. So for example a sensor with a crop factor of 1.5 (known as APS-C size sensor – for Nikon, Canon’s has a slightly smaller size sensor with 1.6 crop factor) is larger than a sensor with a crop factor of 2 (known as a micro 4/3 size sensor).

On the market today you can find really tiny sensors like the ones on smartphones with a crop factor of over 7 (typically) and on the other spectrum, very large sensors with a crop factor 0f 0.64 – which are actually larger than a full frame sensor (used on professional medium format cameras).

The following is our sensor size table which also includes crop factor information for different sensor sizes – all sensor sizes images are to scale

Sensors size-01-01

You can find  many more helpful photography tips and techniques on our Photography tips section here on LensVid.

Iddo Genuth
Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.