My wife and I have been married for 15 years this year, and we are hoping to take a special vacation together this summer to celebrate. Vacations mean pictures, and when I think about pictures and travel my rampant sense of optimization gets the better of me. I started wondering which camera(s) we should take. Do we take the Sony A7II which sports a full-frame sensor or do I take my Panasonic Lumix FZ-200. Gear for the A7II will be bulky and heavy, however the FZ-200 is entirely self-contained. Both cameras take outstanding photos in bright sunlight, and the lens on the FZ-200 reaches to a 600mm equivalent. The comparable A7II lens (not including body or adapter) is about the size of an old school Thermos and costs $900. That's more than the entire FZ-200 camera costs.
So, how much of a difference does sensor size make? The sensor in the A7II is 31 times as large as the sensor on the FZ-200, but has twice as many pixels. Each pixel, then is roughly 15 times as large as the same pixel on the FZ-200, which means 15 times as much light enters the camera for each pixel. Does that make any practical difference, though?
The image below was shot on both cameras, using in-camera Jpeg compression. They are both using 1/125 shutter speed, 1/3.5 aperture, and ISO 2500 light amplification. From a distance, both halves of the picture look similar. Once you zoom in, though, you can see how much noise the smaller sensor introduces into the photo. Download the full photo at this link.
