It's not worth arguing about but I have three APS-C sensor cameras and I would love to have a stop or two of performance. Being able to shoot on the evening streets at 1/60th vs 1/15th of a second? Yes please! I would say for most people, yeah it doesn't matter. But for more than a few that performance increase is very, very noticeable.
That's fine, nobody is saying there isn't a one or two stop difference.
I just said people spend an insane amount of time arguing who is a "real" photographer because of that difference. Like "you cannot possibly shoot wedding on APS-C!!!" until it became the most popular format for weddings, and now it is "you cannot possibly shoot wedding with m43!!!"
If you look at digital sensors in a historical perspective, an APS-C camera sold today is better than a full frame camera sold in 2009. Let that sink in. A m43 sensor sold today is better than APS-C sensors sold even in 2011 (by Canon).
So if people aren't "real" photographers today because they have a smaller sensor, then by logical extension everyone who shot digital in 2004-2010 isn't a real photographer either.
It's possible that the "you can't shoot weddings on an APS-C" argument may be a simplified version of "none of the APS-C cameras currently available have the features a wedding photographers need". An example of such a feature is redundant memory cards. Then as more professional APS-C cameras were introduced the argument became invalid.
And how do you define "better sensor"? I can always find a case where a "crap sensor" beats a "good sensor". As an example, if you're shooting a closeup of a helicopter in flight, the sensor in a $150 point-and-shoot will outperform a $5000+ Canon 1Dx, just because of the shutter design. And the shutter is an integral part of the sensor for CCD chips.
>> I just said people spend an insane amount of time arguing who is a "real" photographer because of that difference. Like "you cannot possibly shoot wedding on APS-C!!!" until it became the most popular format for weddings, and now it is "you cannot possibly shoot wedding with m43!!!"
The thing is that you can say this for just about anything where someone can take himself (or herself) a little too seriously, whether it be cameras. coffee, wine, vinyl records, operating systems or programming languages.
Myself, I buy cameras that suit my shooting use cases, and more often than not, a small sensor is perfectly fine. I went from using an APS-C sensor to using 1" and 2/3" sensors, and have been perfectly happy with my transition, although I'm sure some camera purists would scoff at my choices.
