Losing light

[slat]

If you have a full frame camera and use it in crop mode do you lose a stop of light like if you used a teleconverter?

 

[smoke665]

Since you're cropping off available pixels I would assume you would lose the advantage of the larger light sensitivity. This has been debated before, but I haven't found any advantage to crop mode in camera. Cropping post gives you the same aspect ratio without a loss of benefits with a full frame sensor.

 

[greybeard]

I have used this combination a lot and imho you loose 1 stop of low light capability when you switch to crop mode. Really no different then cropping in post. Only practical reason to use it is to save in disk space and processing time.

 

[RAZKY]

No, you do not have to compensate for light loss when switching from FX to DX mode.

 

[Ysarex]

If you have a full frame camera and use it in crop mode do you lose a stop of light like if you used a teleconverter?

Greybeard has it right. Switching to crop mode won't cause a change in exposure like a teleconverter. If your exposure for a scene in FX mode was 1/250, f/8 at ISO 200 then in DX mode it will be the same. What you lose is total light recorded. The smaller area of the DX sensor records less total light and that reduces SNR so you take a low light performance hit -- noisier photos.