CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

You're right, great photographers do.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

profbowman Loc: Harrisonburg, VA, USA

Thanks for all the info. When we used photodiodes in the electronics courses I taught physics majors in college, we generally thought of the current varying with the cumulative photon energy impinging on the photodiode. But one can use this varying current to power a resistor or transistor to read out varying voltage.

Here are two references of sensor physics.
https://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/cse567-11/ftp/imgsens/#sec14 [Figure 2 and surrounding verbiage is good]
https://ecstudiosystems.com/discover/textbooks/basic-electronics/sensors-and-actuators/photodiodes/ [among other things this talks about voltage mode and current mode for CMOS sensors]

Again, thanks for the info. --Richard

jlg1000 Loc: Uruguay / South America

... because he has already a dumbed down version in his camera, all with sliders to fiddle with.

C'mon, you have that perfect shot, masterfully composed and exposed... and when yo review it, you see that contrail in the sky which is higly distracting.

Does it make you a worse photographer if you use Photoshop to remove it ???

Does it make you a worse photographer if you use Photoshop if you enhance the colors of the dusk clouds ??

Whoy you all "purists" believe that postprocessing a photo makes a photographes... ahh, worse ?

Do you really believe that those perfect shots un National Geographic weren't postprocessed ?

profbowman Loc: Harrisonburg, VA, USA

I presume you are referring to my search for the characteristics of the photo sensors in our digital cameras. [Replying in "Quote" mode will display the message to which you are replying, which can be very useful in a discussion.]

Back to my defense of what I was trying to do, I wanted actually data to support or not support the origina assumption of the OP and early responders. That is is they asserted that they keep an old 10 or 12 MP camera around because they are better in low-light situations. However, I doubt if that is the case. The newer sensor chips are much better--more sensitive to fewer photons and much less noisy than the older sensors. All I wanted to do was to find data to show that my idea was correct (or not correct). <smile> --Richard

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

No, it was a comment in general, regarding many posts in many categories.
Otherwise I would have use quote reply if it was directed at an individual post.
Simply a comparison of levels of interest.
No "defense" required, that's just your level of interest.

Be careful on presuming, assuming, or surmising...
At least you asked!

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

jlg1000 Loc: Uruguay / South America

You can also review measurements made with actual cameras/sensors here: https://www.photonstophotos.net/

You are right in that modern sensors have lower noise and better DR than previous generations... we are now a long way from the dreaded CCD sensors.

But, have to point outh that we will probably face less improvement in the coming years, because the industry is hitting some teoretical limits.

For example, Quantum Efficiency of current BSI sensors is about 65%, while the teoretical limit is 95%, so - at most - expect no more sensitivity enhancements than 30% in the foreseable future.

Something similar happens to dark noise, which is dictated by temperature related quantum effects...

*AND Remember that current sensors are alredy (almost) counting individual photons (*), so no much more DR can be achieved. This is the reaason why the 16 bit sensors are a medium format exclusivity.

Note (*) A typical modern sensor with 5um pixel size has a well capacity of about 40.000 electrons and a quantun efficiency of 65%, so only 30.000 photons can be recorded. That sensor has also 14 bit readout, which means 16.384 luma levels.. so there is one level per each pair of photons !! And because of the random nature of light (at the quantum level) if the manufacturers were (somehow) to implement a 15 bit ADC, tha last bit would be completely random (because of the quantum nature of light)

Michael Sabetsky Loc: Rockledge, Florida

Thank for agreeing with me.

BebuLamar

So what the good photographer use for post processing? Canon DPP? Nikon NX Studio? GIMP?
Don't tell me the good photographer shoot JPEG and don't need any software in post.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Those who only subscribe to "SOOC" do!!!
Some would probably kill themselves trying to get it perfect in SOOC.

The funny part is, THEY are the only one who care.
A self-inflicted restriction.

I don't care if it's SOOC, someone spent 3 hours editing, or spent 3 minutes editing.
If I like the image, I like it.
If I don't, sorry about that.

profbowman Loc: Harrisonburg, VA, USA

Interesting, indeed. I have not stayed up on the technology advances, but understanding the basic physics helped me to guess where we were at. Thanks. -Richard

profbowman Loc: Harrisonburg, VA, USA

I hope those UHH who are keeping an older 10-12 MP camera around just for low light work have followed what I suggested and what Long provided the data to support.

That is, do not keep you older cameras around just for low-light wor. The current sensors are so much better in terms of sensitivity and dark noise currents.

Rather, I'd suggest that you take a picture in low-light with your best camera and then simply resize the picture to 10-12 MP if that is what you want. That output will be better than what we get from our older cameras. For my Sony A6000 24 MP camera with a 6000 x 4000-pixel size output, I can reduce each side by the square root of 2 and end up with a 12 MP picture. That is I would go to a 4243 x 2829 = 12.0 MP. --Richard