Nagging questions

nospam wrote:
In article , Eric Miller
wrote:

Just some random, mostly resolution-related questions. I fully accept
that the questions themselves may be misguided, so feel free to interpret.

Chip size, noise and other stuff.

All other things being equal, will a larger sensor have more noise?

no. for a given sensor technology and pixel count, a larger sensor will
have larger pixels, and therefore have less noise.

http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedeta...formance.summa
ry/


Okay, but if the larger sensor has pixels of the same size, will it have
more noise?

Eric Miller
www.dyesscreek.com

In article , Eric Miller
wrote:

Okay, but if the larger sensor has pixels of the same size, will it have
more noise?

if the pixels are the same size, the larger sensor will have more of
them, which is also beneficial.

In article , Alfred
Molon wrote:

He is writing that with RAW usually you have one more stop of headroom.
The D3 achieves up to 12, but it is also a full-frame camera, pretty
much the best performing one at the moment. Most DSLRs use smaller
sensors and have therefore less dynamic range. You claimed that "most
dslr sensors are capable of over 12 stops" which is simply not true.

yes it is.

http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedeta...formance.summa
ry/

Alfred Molon wrote:

Most DSLRs use smaller
sensors and have therefore less dynamic range.

Bzzzt.
Sensor size *as such* has nothing to do with dynamic range.
Pixel size, however ...
Small sensors tend to have smaller pixels, that's all.

You claimed that "most
dslr sensors are capable of over 12 stops" which is simply not true.

http://clarkvision.com/articles/digi...ndex.html#data
indicates that the sensors are perfectly capable of 12+ stops,
based on their full well capacity and read noise, but excluding
A/D noise (which is not really tied to the sensor, anyway).
The rest of the page makes it clear that the camera performance
is limited by
a) 12 bit A/D converters,
b) noise in A/D converters,
c) *much* less improvement for A/D converters of 14 bit than would
be assumed by the additional bits. High megaherz speeds seem
to do that, at least for now.

-Wolfgang