Both Canon M6 and Nikon D3300 have 24.0 MP resolution sensors but Canon M6's sensor is APS-C (22.3 x 14.9 mm ) and Nikon D3300's sensor is APS-C (23.5 x 15.6 mm ).
Since Nikon D3300's has a larger sensor area with the same resolution, this means that it also has a larger pixel area hence better light collecting capacity for a given aperture compared to Canon M6.
One other difference between these two cameras that is worth mentioning is that Nikon D3300's sensor doesn't have an anti-alias (Low-Pass) filter. Removing anti-alias filter increases the sharpness and level of detail but at the same time, it increases the chance of moiré occurring in certain scenes.
Below you can see the M6 and D3300 sensor size comparison.
As seen above, Nikon D3300 has a 1.1x Larger sensor area than Canon M6. Larger sensors give photographer more control on the depth of field and blurry background compared to smaller sensor when shot in same focal length and aperture.
DxOMark Sensor Scores
DxOMark is a benchmark that scientifically assesses image quality of camera sensors. It scores camera sensors for color depth (DXO Portrait), dynamic range (DXO Landscape) and low-light sensitivity (DXO Sports), and also gives them an overall score. Canon M6 and Nikon D3300 sensors have been tested by DxO and the results show that D3300 has a better overall score of 82, 4 points higher compared to M6's score of 78.
Model |
Overall |
Color Depth |
Dynamic Range |
Low-light ISO |
Canon M6 |
78 |
23.4 bits |
12.6 Evs |
1317 ISO |
Nikon D3300 |
82 |
24.3 bits |
12.8 Evs |
1385 ISO |