High res (Pixel Peeping)

The D750 has nice detail but a D850 is a quite a bit crisper at 100% on screen. If you have the budget you wouldn’t regret a D850 just bear in mind at least up to A3 print you really can’t tell the difference
 
snerkler said:
Likewise, however I wouldn't want to print too big with these files.
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You can get away with printing plenty big enough for a nice framed wall pic, maybe not for a gallery. That's all most of us are going to print really, of course if you do print huge now and then the higher res the better but even up to A2 a 16mp M43 sensor can satisfy to that size, un-cropped at least.
 
There's a touring exhibition of wildlife photography that I saw a couple of years ago. The prints are huge yet some of them were taken on bridge cameras with small sensor chips and others were taken on cameras like the 6MP Canon 10D. Other shots were taken on higher spec equipment yet not one shot in the exhibition looked anything except sharp...

Sony HX90 8GB 01 DSC01097.JPG
 
StewartR said:
But consider the situation where the EV is 15 stops lower. Instead of capturing 2^15 and 2^16 photons per pixel respectively, the two sensors now capture 1 and 2 photons per pixel respectively. To my mind that says that the small-pixel sensor has reached its limit - one photon is the minimum which cave counted and it cannot record faiinter scenes. However the large-pixel sensor can discriminate between 2 pixels and 1 pixel, and it can keep going down to one more stop of EV. In other words, it has a greater dynamic range.
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The error with this scenario is that when the larger pixel drops to 1 photon the two smaller pixels would not both drop to 0. One would drop to 0 and the other would record the 1 photon. The one photon is still recorded and minimum EV is still retained. Plus, it is more accurately placed w/in the scene. The main increases in DR have been from reducing system noise, which reduces the minimum signal required to be discriminated.

And again, the larger pixel is collecting 2^16/area and it is not a greater qtty/EV than 2x 2^15/area; they reach saturation and clipping at the same exposure/EV. In other words, the DR of concern is that of the scene which is recordable/reproducible, photons/area and not photons/pixel... the larger pixel can hold more because it is larger, it also gets more because it is larger, and because it is larger it is recording/reproducing a larger area of the scene.

Edit: If strictly comparing a single pixel to another smaller one, then it can hold more light. But a single pixel at sensor level has no real meaning... it has to be converted to full color (demosaiced) using the color/luminance values of surrounding pixels. And then it is output as a larger portion of the image (i.e. the additional light is spread out farther, reducing its' brightness/EV).
 
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Scirocco_09 said:
The D750 has nice detail but a D850 is a quite a bit crisper at 100% on screen. If you have the budget you wouldn’t regret a D850 just bear in mind at least up to A3 print you really can’t tell the difference
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Depending on the monitor, 100% view could be equivalent to looking at a 3m wide print from less than .5m away... not a lot of value in that.
 
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