Both Olympus 1 and Sony A700 have 12.0 MP resolution sensors but Olympus 1's sensor is 1/1.7-inch (7.44 x 5.58 mm ) and Sony A700's sensor is APS-C (23.5 x 15.6 mm ).
Since Sony A700'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 1.
Below you can see the 1 and A700 sensor size comparison.
As seen above, Sony A700 has a 8.8x Larger sensor area than Olympus 1. 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 1 and Sony A700 sensors have been tested by DxO and the results show that A700 has a better overall score of 66, 15 points higher compared to 1's score of 51.
Model |
Overall |
Color Depth |
Dynamic Range |
Low-light ISO |
Olympus 1 |
51 |
20.7 bits |
11.6 Evs |
179 ISO |
Sony A700 |
66 |
22.3 bits |
11.9 Evs |
581 ISO |