W Shumaker wrote:
>Improvements will be made but the noise tradeoff with pixel size is with us to
>stay I'm afraid. Bigger buckets simply carry more water, no matter how many
>holes you plug.
>
True enough. But the absolute level of noise matters a lot. At a certain
point, it drops below the threshold of noticeability and further
improvements are meaningless. Sure there is noise there, but nobody
cares. This is pretty much the case with current 5-6mp DSLRs at 100 iso.
There is so little noise at that sensitivity in some current
sensor/amplifier systems that it is a shock to realize how much one has
depended on film grain to provide some indefinable quality of images. I
think it is inevitable that the smaller pixel sizes needed for 8, 10 or
more mp 4/3 sensors will eventually reach that same threshold even for
much higher sensitivities. When is anybody's guess, but history suggests
that it will be sooner than most people think.
That's really what happened with film. As noise (grain) decreased and
sensitivity increased with improvements in film technology, smaller
formats became practical. Sure there were other technological
improvements, but that was a crucial one.
Moose
>
>
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