Why is the sensor size small in D3100 as compared to D3000?

Question

I thought D3100 must be more advanced than D3000 (because of the numbers, and the price).

D3000's sensor size is: 23.6mm x 15.8mm and D3100's sensor size is: 23.1mm x 15.4mm

Well, D3100 has an extra feature of live view, fine, but can there be any special reason that they decided to reduce the sensor size in a more advanced camera?

Is there anything in D3100 which "makes up" for the reduced sensor size or am I simply missing some point?

Asked by Anisha Kaul

Answer

Just to put this into perspective, this is a 4.8% difference in sensor area. Or, linearly, it's 2.3% difference in crop factor.

This is not very much, and generally other measurement tolerances will be less precise. For example, if you measure the actual focal length of, say, a bunch of different models of 50mm lenses, they probably have a greater variation in field of view.

In general, newer sensor technology moves forward, and in this case there's no exception: the D3100's sensor is significantly better, particularly for controlling noise at high ISOs. From dpreview:

The D3100 offers little to complain about in terms of image quality, and its new 14Mp sensor delivers very good results. High ISO performance is substantially improved over the D3000 [...].

Basically, the small difference in sensor size is insignificant compared to the improvements in terms of image quality, and the small difference in framing is likewise a non-issue.

Answered by mattdm

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