Photons to Photos

The good low light performance was amazing for its time (10 years ago), and it still holds up decently today. But let's not kid ourselves -- it has been clearly surpassed by modern backside illuminated CMOS sensors like the one on the Z9. EDIT: sorry, it seems I'm wrong. I just checked https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm and while the Z9 has the clear edge with 2 more stops of dynamic range at low ISO, the D5 actually pulls ahead at high ISO. Perhaps the technological improvements haven't been that much for the shot-noise dominated regime.

This is a great resource for finding out which ISO ranges various cameras are linear over: https://photonstophotos.net/Charts/RN_e.htm

Eyes have two kinds of "pixels" https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/photoreceptors-rods-and-con… I know my Sony camera has pixels that, collectively, can be attached or not attached to a capacitor that reduces the sensitivity https://www.photonstophotos.net/Aptina/DR-Pix_WhitePaper.pdf I wonder if you could have a matrix of high and low sensitivity pixels that would give a camera more headroom.

It might in some situations, but generally you will deal with banding anyway (8bit). Log needs higher ISO which means lower dynamic range [1]. Flat footage lacks depth so you'll need edit it, which create a new space for error. Yes, I do audiovisual production and postproduction for living. [1] https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm

Doesn't seem like it, though Bill Claff's tool, the lens database of which is used here, can: https://www.photonstophotos.net/GeneralTopics/Lenses/OpticalBench/Opti…

We have been using gapless microlenses on imaging sensors for quite a while now. Also, when the pixels shrink, tech advancements in reducing downstream read-noise also mean that very little ISO performance is sacrificed (if any). Certainly, there is a lot more nuance and tech to discuss, but those are the broad strokes. https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm#Canon%20EOS%20R5,Canon%… https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/RN_e.htm#Canon%20EOS%20R5_14,Ca…

Can you specify what you mean by high ISO performance? Do you mean read-noise or do you mean DR or something else? Canon is very competitive in read-noise and DR. Yes AFAIK they don't have dual-gain in their professional series, but the difference is not "magnitudes better" FWICT. Read Noise: http://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/RN_ADU.htm#Canon%20EOS%201D%20X%… DR: http://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm#Canon%20EOS%201D%20X%20M…

The newly released, top-of-their-line, Nikon Z9: > Well, IMATEST confirms the observation from the waveform plot above: there are about 12.7 stops max. dynamic range, but nothing more. Also, in the middle graph above the blue “12.7” line (indicating SNR = 1), there is nothing. > If we look at the measured gamma curve (first graph in the IMATEST result above) – which is the used N-Log profile – it becomes obvious what is happening. N-Log as it is designed for now cannot hold more than 13 stops. If you look at the distribution of stops on the shadow side (to the left), there is a more or less horizontal line – meaning, that there is no code value differentiation between shadow stops anymore. * https://www.cined.com/nikon-z-9-lab-test-rolling-shutter-dynamic-range… Sorting by Maximum PDR gives a top value of a hair over 13 with the Phase One IQ4 150MP (MSRP US$ 50K): * https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm

> Secondly, strange that you don't actually link anything I told you the name of the website where you should look. How explicit do I have to be for you? Here's a link if it helps. https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm Compare an iPhone XS Max to a an A7R4 or something. At ISO 100, The A7R4 has 11.6 bits of dynamic range and the iPhone has 6.4 bits. HUGE difference. > Without processing what comes out of the sensor is an ugly beast. RAWs from a large sensor without denoising look fine. On my camera I only have lens correction and color correction - zero denoising. I've done statistical analysis of dark frames using LibRaw to make sure this is actually the case, and indeed I exactly replicated the results from PhotonsToPhotos. > yet the iPhone 11 already has a sensor with more dynamic range than the significant majority of SLRs/mirrorless cameras Hahahaha, please, show me one even APS-C camera from Sony, Fuji, Nikon, Canon, or any other reputable manufacturer made in the last 4 years that has a worse PDR than the iPhone 11.

http://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm#Apple%20iPhone%20XS%20Ma… This site uses user-submitted raw files to calculate the dynamic range. I'm not sure whether this is only a single iPhone shot or not, and it's an Xs, not an 11. (Incidentally, that's data from my personal 1Ds3.) If you're looking at DxOmark reviews, I'm fairly certain that they do not review ILCs and smartphones on the same scale, and I take every number they give with a huge grain of salt. Re: computational techniques: You certaily could get infinite dynamic range, and perhaps the iPhone 11 does better than my Pixel (I hear it does multiple exposure durations instead of repeating one exposure duration), but at least with my Pixel there's tons of shot noise everywhere, even in the midtones and highlights, because the full well capacity on the dinky sensors is accordingly tiny. You just rarely scrutinize a cell phone photo alongside a large-sensor camera photo so you gloss over where the heavy sharpening plus noise reduction has smeared the fine detail to paste. The processing has a lot to overcome, after all: the small lens-sensor combinations are running at the limits of diffraction and thus are extremely soft if viewed at the raw data level. Sharpening it heavily just to level the playing field with a large sensor (which you can safely do because a lot of the blur is just diffraction) enhances the noise a ton, beyond what the dynamic range numbers derived from the…

ISO is not just software gain. On a lot of higher-end cameras (read: just about any ILC) there's a definite analog gain stage prior to ADC. Since there's a fixed level of sensor noise, when you increase the analog gain you decrease the level of noise in the shadows relative to the sensor noise, essentially increasing SNR. This isn't true for all cameras, however. This chart [http://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR_Shadow.htm#Canon%20EOS%206D,… ] demonstrates the difference between three cameras, one of which is known to be largely "ISO invariant" (the Nikon D750), one which is not (the Canon 6D), and one which looks like it has a 'native' ISO of 800 (the Sony A7R II) As you can see, the D750 doesn't gain much (heh) from increasing ISO -- the total image noise in the shadows isn't improved by increasing the ISO through the range. If you're shooting a 6D in a low-light situation, however, you see improvements in shadow quality up to about ISO 3200, after which it turns out that you will be fine if you just raise the shadows in post. If you're shooting an A7R II you might as well just leave the ISO dial on 800 all the time. That's not all, though, since it turns out when you increase ISO you basically lose 1EV of highlight off the top of your image, as you allude to, and you also lose around 1EV of DR. (Chart here: http://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm#Canon%20EOS%206D,Nikon%2… It is, like all things in life, a…