Re:Fujifilm’s new X-H2 finally pushes its APS-C camera syste...
by radford-neal on Saturday September 10, 2022 @11:37AM
(#32791567)
In theory, the only benefit of FF over APS-C is when using very wide apertures.
For example, you might using a FF camera with a 52mm f/1.2 lens, in order to get the very shallow depth of field this gives and/or the very high light-gathering ability. A good 52mm f/1.2 lens is expensive, but quite feasible (they've existed for many decades).
To get the equivalent effect with an APS-C camera, you would need a 35mm f/0.8 lens. As far as I know, no such lens exists (though it's theoretically possible to construct a lens as wide as f/0.5).
In practice, FF may have other advantages, due to engineering considerations. For example (though I don't really know), it might be that electronic noise from the rest of the camera has more effect on noise during pixel readout when the pixels are smaller.
FF = full frame, refers to sensor size. They are about 1.5x - 1.6x[0] in surface area compared to APS-C sensors.
Sensor size has various benefits in how you frame your photos, and can have larger sensor pixels at the same resolution, which can result in less noisy photos.
One such explainer of the differences: https://expertphotography.com/full-frame-vs-aps-c/
[0] EDIT: See below, this was a mistake; this is the crop factor, not the difference in surface area. It's more like 2.5x (depending on the exact camera/sensor.)