In Praise of Olympus' in Body IS

[Asmarlak]

Loupey, I'm surprised to hear that. Because there is a huge difference between the camera sensor's crop factor that applies before the picture is taken and doubling the image size after the picture is taken. The crop factor is equalizing the focal range of the lens to the 35mm in film format because digital camera sensors are smaller than film camera sensors. The camera sees the subject and translates it to the sensor at double the size and the picture is taken at the sensor's original resolution. When you double the image size after the picture is taken is like using the digital zoom mode in Point & Shoot cameras, which is not recommended.

[Loupey]

I'm not talking about doubling the size of the image. I'm talking about cropping an image taken on my APS-C sensor (which has a 1.6x crop factor compared to 35mm film) down to the smaller size of the Olympus sensor (which has a 2x crop factor compared to 35mm film).

In other words, the lens performance remains unchanged. What should be compared is the image quality within the small confines of the imaging sensor (22mm x 15mm on mine, 17mm x 13 on yours) - not the "equivalent" image compared to 36mm x 24mm.

So if you consider any print size (say, 20" x 24" for example) the smaller sensor image must be enlarged significantly more than the larger sensor image and the limits of the sensor become more pronounced. So my 800mm equivalent blown up to 20" x 24" is not going to be the quality of an 800mm shot on a full-frame and blown up to 20" x 24" if all other factors are kept constant.

My apologies for getting this discussion off-track.