
In digital imaging, the static manifests itself as noise. In other words, static rides piggyback on the good signal. This is tantamount to turning up the volume on a radio. If high amplification is applied, some unwanted static will be induced.
#Full frame camera meaning iso
This will be a function of the light level during the exposure and this will be intertwined with the ISO setting. Low charge levels require more amplification. The amount of amplification that is applied is a key factor. Next the voltage is converted to a digital signal. Because the voltages are weak they are amplified to a useful level. Here the charges are read and converted to a voltage. Software marches the charges, row by row transferring the charges into a transfer register. When the exposure is complete, the charge is moved into storage. The more photon hits, the greater the charge. The photosites contain a photodiode and a storage area to hold the charge as it accumulates during the exposure. The job of the photosite is to collect photon hits during the exposure. (Otherwise, we'd all be carrying around 8×10" large-format digital cameras.) However, in most practical cases, you can get to the point where smaller is good enough. Even with infinitely-good technology, you can't beat the physical reality of the above. See Do megapixels matter with modern sensor technology? for more. The issue with size of photosites is a different, technical one not actually related to sensor size and is largely obsolete with modern technology. ("One stop" is 2×, of course.) In a digital camera, ISO is amplification, and for a given print size from images at the same ISO, full-frame images are literally amplified only half as much. This is generally the reason that cameras with full-frame sensors are regarding as having about a one-stop advantage in ISO noise over APS-C. When there's plenty of signal - lots of light - this generally doesn't matter, but when it's dim and there's a lot of noise, it does. Stretching the same amount of light into a larger area inherently gives worse results. Instead, we effectively amplify the brightness as we enlarge. Of course, we don't print the smaller print much more darkly. A square mm from the smaller-sensor camera becomes 3.63cm²! That means that in your final print, the same amount of light is spread out over 2.25× the area. A square mm from the full-frame camera becomes 1.27×1.27 centimeters, or 1.61cm². If you want to print at, say, 12×18" (mixing imperial and metric), you need to enlarge 12.7× from the full-frame sensor - or 19.05× from the APS-C one. When you take a correctly-exposed image, each square mm on each sensor gets the same amount of brightness.
#Full frame camera meaning full
Here's a way to look at it: digital sensors are 36×24mm for full frame, or 24×16mm for APS-C. So, that's what matters for exposure settings.īut, full-frame sensors do have an inherent low-light advantage. That means that if you measure exposure for a given shutter-speed-and-aperture on one half of the frame, it'll be the same on the other. Exposure is per unit area - see Why does illuminance stay the same for a given f-stop even when focal length changes?.
