I'm adding more just to get back to the original argument.


As I mentioned, the noise should be identical in the middle of the frame, at a pixel level. Therefore nothing to do with effective apertures, a seperate argument. The extra size gives you less noise in prints to due extra pixels, shrinking the noise, or letting you downsample it away. I'm not saying there is no advantage to FF, just that the noise advantage has nothing to do with effective apertures.


With these same two cameras, though, adjusting your distance, or your lens, to produce the same framing, will have different DOF. This is an effect which is visible at the pixel level. This effective aperture change affects the ENTIRE FRAME. This is a FF advantage due to effective apertures.


edit: slight rewording of noise summary.