Equivalent Settings Calculator
Enter your settings on one sensor format and get the fully equivalent settings on another — matching field of view, depth of field, and exposure all at once.
Equivalent settings on target sensor
Focal length
Aperture (DOF match)
ISO (exposure match)
Shutter speed
Unchanged
Summary
What equivalent settings means
Two cameras on different sensor formats produce equivalent images when the field of view, depth of field, and exposure are all matched. Matching just one or two of these is not true equivalence. This calculator converts all three at once.
The conversion factor between any two formats is the ratio of their crop factors. Micro Four Thirds has a 2x crop factor. APS-C (Sony, Nikon, Fujifilm) is 1.5x. Canon APS-C is 1.6x. Full frame is 1x.
Focal length
Crop factor directly scales the angle of view. A 25mm lens on M43 gives the same field of view as a 50mm lens on full frame, because 25 x 2 = 50. To find the equivalent focal length on another format, multiply your focal length by the target crop factor and divide by the source crop factor.
Aperture
Depth of field scales by the same ratio as focal length. An M43 lens at f/1.8 produces the same depth of field as a full-frame lens at f/3.6, because the crop factor ratio is 2x. To match depth of field, aperture is multiplied by the same ratio used for focal length.
The displayed aperture is rounded to the nearest standard f-stop for practical use. The ISO calculation uses the exact unrounded value to keep the exposure accurate.
ISO
Changing aperture changes how much light reaches the sensor. If you widen the aperture by one stop, you double the light and need to halve the ISO to maintain the same exposure. If you narrow the aperture, you need to raise ISO. The calculator scales ISO by the square of the aperture ratio, which is the correct relationship between f-number and light transmission.
This is why equivalent shots on full frame require higher ISO than on M43. The wider aperture used on M43 to match depth of field gathers more light, so ISO can be kept lower. The total light captured by the sensor ends up similar between formats when settings are fully equivalent.
Shutter speed
Shutter speed is not affected by sensor size and stays the same between formats. Motion blur and subject freezing depend only on the duration of the exposure, not the sensor dimensions.
One practical note: the equivalent focal length on a larger format is longer, which means camera shake is more visible at the same shutter speed. If you are shooting handheld, you may need a faster shutter speed on the larger format to compensate for the longer equivalent focal length.