Sony's Super 35mm Sensor

This graphic from Sony's website shows the size of the sensor used in the Sony PMW-F3 and NEX-FS100 vs35mm Motion Picture Film and the Micro Four Thirds sensor.

Even more important to some photographers is the pursuit of "bokeh," the defocused backgrounds made possible by shallow depth of field.

Of course, that's 35mm motion picture film in the chart. If you're comparing it to the sensor in the Canon 5D Mark II, then that looks like this:

What shouldn't be forgotten is that the size of the pixels in the sensor(s) are different too, but that's a topic for a different day:

That's why Sony developed a new image sensor for the PMW-F3 with pixels that are four times the size of typical DSLR sensor pixels

Sony: Full Super 35mm image size