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Ever climbing megapixel is awesome and all, but I want ever increasing ISO performance. Low light is where the real innovation is. Especially in my line of business with food photography.

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Yep. Pixels are great, but the big hole is in dynamic range. I'd love to get some high shutter speed shots of night time action in natural light, but I rarely have a use for creating prints the size of a drive-in movie screen.

I'm curious... what kind of action were you thinking of?

I'm not the OP, but nighttime street photography would be great, such as walking around NYC at night. Right now I am having to handhold at 1/10th second and 3200 ISO, which makes any moving subject a blur (in addition to the shake from my hands).

The smaller the pixels get, the closer to log response dynamic range per unit area you're going to get.

That's simple because of statistics of photons registering at random locations. Happens even if readout noise or whatnot increases.

For those who doubt: imagine a sensor with so high resolution that each pixel is only being hit by just one photon or none at all. Such a sensor would have the ultimate dynamic range. No burned highlights at all. (Of course you might want to downsample the result before use. :))

Although you seem to be after quantum efficiency and low noise. You certainly wouldn't be getting either of those with the ultimate dynamic range extreme pixel count sensor.

If you're doing still photos of food, surely you can just put more light on the subject or use a longer exposure.

With modern sensors, ISO is mainly limited by thermal noise. Astrophotographers often use cooled sensors to allow higher sensitivity, but it's tricky to cool it very much without moisture from the air condensing inside or on the lenses.

> If you're doing still photos of food, surely you can just put more light on the subject or use a longer exposure.

Longer exposure, yes, though that means having to set up a tripod for every shot which significantly increases the time it takes to get a shoot done.

Turning up the lighting is very difficult for food photography. Lights are hot and food doesn't last long under studio lights. (That's also why a lot of food photography has such shallow depth of field — a wider aperture lets in more light.)

Another option is to use a body that offers stabilization. Olympus has gotten their stabilization good enough that you can shoot handheld at pretty slow shutter speeds: https://blog.mingthein.com/2016/11/02/review-olympus-e-m1-ma...

I guess you haven't read this then :)

https://blog.mingthein.com/2016/08/19/stabilisation-is-good-...

He wrote that before he wrote the article I linked to. Also, this article mentions some deficiencies of stabilization in certain circumstances but nowhere does it claim that it's useless.

Oh, of course. I agree with you that it is not useless and I myself rely on it quite frequently. I guess I should have made my point clear. The relevant point of the blog post is that IS is not very effective at high resolution. I don't know if you've shot with a 5DSR or any other 50+ MP camera It is very tricky to get a super sharp image since the tiniest bit of movement gets picked up. I can only imagine it gets worse at 120MP..

Right, which is why I think Olympus has had success with it. They primarily (maybe only?) make micro 4/3 bodies, so the resolution is still relatively low (some of their bodies are at 16MP, others 20). I don't photograph food, but I'd think that a stabilized m4/3 body would be very useful for that purpose if one wants to avoid bringing a tripod.

>Turning up the lighting is very difficult for food photography. Lights are hot and food doesn't last long under studio lights. (That's also why a lot of food photography has such shallow depth of field — a wider aperture lets in more light.)

Sure, but that's only if you use non-LED continuous lighting. Alternatively, you could use flash and then not need a longer exposure. As long as you can balance the ambient with a low enough continuous light that it wont affect the food. Plenty of ways to skin the cat..

Flashes, and external lights are not really realistic in a busy restaurant environment. Majority of my shots are using natural light. I usually scope out places ahead of time, find the best seating by time of day, near windows.

I guess we all assumed still pictures of food in a studio instead of just asking you :)

Food photography is an art in its own right. Photographing real food is super hard, it wilts before your eyes. Many food pictures are of extremely expensive fakes! Hard to make the fake, but once you have it it is so much easier to work with than organic material in the studio.

Absolutely true about the fakes. A lot of times they use wax models of food.

I remember one example, most photographs of breakfast cereal (for advertisements or that appear on the box) use white school glue for the milk. Real milk is too thin and also ends up looking bluish in the photos.

Nice set of samples:

https://petapixel.com/2016/03/24/photos-show-secret-tricks-f...

Spot the non-food items :)

Astrophotographers also care about quantum efficiency and often shoot at higher ISOs. Astrophotographers use cooled sensors for a different reason. Long exposures build up heat, and heat causes noise, which is why you need to cool overclocked CPUs too.

Thermal noise is not relevant for food photography. Input referred read noise will dominate here 100% of the time, unless you're taking pictures of things lit so dark that you can't see them yourself.

Nikon, Sony, Canon, and Fuji have all been making large improvements in low light performance in the last 10 years with only modest improvements to increased resolution in comparison. Nikon for example released the D7500 with a 21mp sensor instead of 24mp and it has improved low light performance.

I still think this video from 2014 is pretty impressive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1W-bPyYR0k

I wonder how latest models (a7 III would be a good candidate maybe?) fare in comparison?

The A7S is a very different camera. A high MP camera is rarely meant for low light photography. Traditionally its meant for studio/portrait/product photography work where the editor can crop into tiny details if required, and also the light is very carefully controlled/modified.

Yes, I'd like a 4-8MP sensor with great dynamic range and low noise. Since resolutions have gone beyond the point where most users notice, why aren't camera companies trading it off for other benefits?

It might be possible to use pixel binning to get a 30mp image at high iso that looks great, using the luminance of 4 pixels to derive 1 pixel.

ISO performance has already increased amazingly over the past two decades. I wonder how much more possible headroom it has.

There is a lot of headroom. What shows up in consumer cameras is never state of the art. I'm hoping BSI sensors will drive the noise down even further.

Why would you need better low light performance for food photography?

Busy, dimly lit restaurants, where I haven't gone ahead and explicitly setup shoots with owners. I'm not just going to walk in with a tripod at a random lunch. I promote food and cocktails for the Western, NY region. Mainly Rochester / Fingerlakes. So I'm out and about trying new places, ultimately deciding if I'm going to promote them before I even meet owners. I don't want preferential treatment, which usually comes when they know who you are. My followers expect that I'm giving them only the best food in the area, and not what someone has given me for free or done up extra special.

This is like a blog or what?

Instagram. If you're not on there promoting your food, then your restaurant is losing a ton of exposure.

If you're curious.

https://instagram.com/rocfoodies

I see. I was just thinking traditional studio style food photography with a food stylist, fake ice cubes, etc.

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