Both Panasonic G85 and Nikon D5100 have 16.0 MP resolution sensors but Panasonic G85's sensor is Four Thirds (17.3 x 13 mm ) and Nikon D5100's sensor is APS-C (23.6 x 15.7 mm ).
Since Nikon D5100'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 Panasonic G85.
Another difference between these two cameras is that Panasonic G85's sensor lacks 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 G85 and D5100 sensor size comparison.
As seen above, Nikon D5100 has a 1.6x Larger sensor area than Panasonic G85. 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. Panasonic G85 and Nikon D5100 sensors have been tested by DxO and the results show that D5100 has a better overall score of 80, 9 points higher compared to G85's score of 71.
Model |
Overall |
Color Depth |
Dynamic Range |
Low-light ISO |
Panasonic G85 |
71 |
22.8 bits |
12.5 Evs |
656 ISO |
Nikon D5100 |
80 |
23.5 bits |
13.6 Evs |
1183 ISO |