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Why is Sensor Size Important: Part 2, Diffraction Limiting

Another thing that you must consider when looking at sensor size is something called “Diffraction Limiting”. For Standard Definition this is not as big a problem as it is for HD. With HD it is a big issue.

Basically the problem is that light doesn’t always travel in straight lines. When a beam of light passes over a sharp edge it gets bent, this is called diffraction. So when the light passes through the lens of a camera the light around the edge of the iris ring gets bent and this means that some of the light hitting the sensor is slightly de-focussed. The smaller you make the iris the greater the percentage of diffracted light with respect to non diffracted light. Eventually the amount of diffracted and thus de-focussed light will become large enough to start to soften the image.

With a very small sensor even a tiny amount of diffraction will bend the light enough to fall on the pixel adjacent to the one it’s supposed to be focussed on. With a bigger sensor and bigger pixels the amount of diffraction required to bend the light to the next pixel is greater. In addition the small lenses on cameras with small sensors means the iris will be smaller.

In practice, this means that an HD camera with 1/3? sensors will noticeably soften if it is more stopped down (closed) more than f5.6, 1/2? cameras more than f8 and 2/3? f11. This is one of the reasons why most pro level cameras have adjustable ND filters. The ND filter acts like a pair of sunglasses cutting down the amount of light entering the lens and as a result allowing you to use a wider iris setting. This softening happens with both HD and SD cameras, the difference is that with the low resolution of SD it was much less noticeable.

Tags: blur, diffraction, limiting, pictures, resolution, sensor, size, soft