The soul of a digital camera is its sensor—to determine image size, resolution, low light performance, depth of field, dynamic range, lenses, and even the camera's physical size, the sensor is key.
An image sensor is a solid state device, the part of the camera's hardware that captures light and converts what you see through a viewfinder or LCD monitor into an image. Think of the sensor as the electronic equivalent of film. With film cameras, you could choose from hundreds of film brands, each with it own unique and identifiable characteristics. With digital cameras, much of that technology is built into the hardware, and special film-like effects are applied later with software.
Your camera's sensor determines how good your images look and how large they can be scaled or printed. Image quality depends on not only the size of the sensor, but also how many millions of pixels (light sensitive photosites) fit on it, and the size of those pixels.
The sensor size also affects what you see through the viewfinder—the relationship between what you're shooting and what actually gets recorded in the frame and passed through to your memory card. Smaller sensors apply a crop factor to lenses, capturing less of the scene than full frame sensors. The full frame reference point is always traditional 35mm film.
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