Both Olympus E-PL1 and Canon 1100D have 12.0 MP resolution sensors but Olympus E-PL1's sensor is Four Thirds (17.3 x 13 mm ) and Canon 1100D's sensor is APS-C (22.2 x 14.8 mm ).
Since Canon 1100D'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 Olympus E-PL1.
Below you can see the E-PL1 and 1100D sensor size comparison.
As seen above, Canon 1100D has a 1.5x Larger sensor area than Olympus E-PL1. 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. Olympus E-PL1 and Canon 1100D sensors have been tested by DxO and the results show that 1100D has a better overall score of 62, 8 points higher compared to E-PL1's score of 54.
Model |
Overall |
Color Depth |
Dynamic Range |
Low-light ISO |
Olympus E-PL1 |
54 |
21.5 bits |
10.1 Evs |
487 ISO |
Canon 1100D |
62 |
21.9 bits |
11.0 Evs |
755 ISO |