Both Canon 5D MII and Nikon D500 have 21.0 MP resolution sensors but Canon 5D MII's sensor is Full frame (36 x 24 mm ) and Nikon D500's sensor is APS-C (23.5 x 15.7 mm ).
Since Canon 5D MII'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 Nikon D500.
One other difference between these two cameras that is worth mentioning is that Nikon D500'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 5D MII and D500 sensor size comparison.
As seen above, Canon 5D MII has a 2.3x Larger sensor area than Nikon D500. 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 5D MII and Nikon D500 sensors have been tested by DxO and the results show that D500 has a better overall score of 84, 5 points higher compared to 5D MII's score of 79.
Model |
Overall |
Color Depth |
Dynamic Range |
Low-light ISO |
Canon 5D MII |
79 |
23.7 bits |
11.9 Evs |
1815 ISO |
Nikon D500 |
84 |
24.1 bits |
14.0 Evs |
1324 ISO |