Both Olympus E-450 and Nikon D80 have 10.0 MP resolution sensors but Olympus E-450's sensor is Four Thirds (17.3 x 13 mm ) and Nikon D80's sensor is APS-C (23.6 x 15.8 mm ).
Since Nikon D80'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-450.
Below you can see the E-450 and D80 sensor size comparison.
As seen above, Nikon D80 has a 1.7x Larger sensor area than Olympus E-450. 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-450 and Nikon D80 sensors have been tested by DxO and the results show that D80 has a better overall score of 61, 5 points higher compared to E-450's score of 56.
Model |
Overall |
Color Depth |
Dynamic Range |
Low-light ISO |
Olympus E-450 |
56 |
21.5 bits |
10.5 Evs |
512 ISO |
Nikon D80 |
61 |
22.1 bits |
11.2 Evs |
524 ISO |