Olympus PEN-F has a
20.0MP Four Thirds (17.3 x 13 mm ) sized CMOS sensor and features TruePic VII processor. On the other hand, Nikon D5500 has a
24.0MP APS-C (23.5 x 15.6 mm ) sized CMOS sensor and features Expeed 4 processor.
One other difference between these two cameras that is worth mentioning is that Nikon D5500'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 PEN-F and D5500 sensor size comparison.
As seen above, Nikon D5500 has a 1.6x Larger sensor area than Olympus PEN-F. 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 PEN-F and Nikon D5500 sensors have been tested by DxO and the results show that D5500 has a better overall score of 84, 10 points higher compared to PEN-F's score of 74.
Model |
Overall |
Color Depth |
Dynamic Range |
Low-light ISO |
Olympus PEN-F |
74 |
23.1 bits |
12.4 Evs |
894 ISO |
Nikon D5500 |
84 |
24.1 bits |
14.0 Evs |
1438 ISO |