Both Panasonic ZS100 and Samsung NX30 have 20.0 MP resolution sensors but Panasonic ZS100's sensor is 1″ (13.2 x 8.8 mm ) and Samsung NX30's sensor is APS-C (23.5 x 15.7 mm ).
Since Samsung NX30'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 ZS100.
Below you can see the ZS100 and NX30 sensor size comparison.
As seen above, Samsung NX30 has a 3.2x Larger sensor area than Panasonic ZS100. 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 ZS100 and Samsung NX30 sensors have been tested by DxO and the results show that NX30 has a better overall score of 77, 7 points higher compared to ZS100's score of 70.
Model |
Overall |
Color Depth |
Dynamic Range |
Low-light ISO |
Panasonic ZS100 |
70 |
22.8 bits |
12.5 Evs |
559 ISO |
Samsung NX30 |
77 |
23.5 bits |
12.4 Evs |
1014 ISO |