Nikon D800 official release, 36MP..

[Daniel Browning]

Based off your other comment it sounds like most lenses will be able to.

As for the photographer, that's a whole different story. Focus, camera shake, etc.

[jrw]

It occured to me today that the 7D has a greater pixel density, and therefore more pixels on target for those doing more intense cropping. 18MP*1.6*1.6=46+MP if the same sized pixels were put onto a full frame sized sensor. If only current technology would allow eliminating more of the noise inherent in converting photons to electrical charge we could have a much better signal-to-noise ratio for even better high ISO performance.

So, looking at those Nikon photos again, I am starting to wonder if their RAW conversion favours sharpness over smoothness which could help to explain why some are questioning the noise levels of the D800 with its larger pixels when compared to 7D shots at similar gain (ISO) settings. Without having shots of the same subject with both cameras to compare detail sharpness and noise it is of course all conjecture and speculation, but winter nights are long, the temperature is dropping, and more snow is coming tonight.

[ChadS]

If only current technology would allow eliminating more of the noise inherent in converting photons to electrical charge we could have a much better signal-to-noise ratio for even better high ISO performance.

This is where physics vs. resolution matters. I can give you amazing ISO low-light performance OR I can give you lots of megapixels (and noise) for any technology level. It's engineering not art. There are tradeoffs and optimizations that cannot be short-circuited.

Assuming the same sensor size as the 1Dx (at twice the number of pixels) each pixel should be sqrt(2) smaller than the 1Dx. That's 4.8 microns pixels vs. 4.3 micron pixels on the 7D. So yes, the 7D is slightly more pixel-dense than the D800. Of course, pixel density is not all good. Any cell phone has smaller pixels than this - and noise to match.

Perhaps John can answer this - I cannot without investigating the amplifiers used per pixel. If you downsample an image from high resolution to low resolution is the result any worse than simply having a lower resolution sensor to begin with? I'm guessing the answer lies in the dark noise of the sensor - and I'm guessing that noise is the same for large or small pixels. So smaller pixels will have lower SNR to start with than larger. Averaging those together helps but you always end up with more noise averaging two subsamples than if it were one sample to begin with. So with that assumption, the 1Dx is going to have superior low-light performance than the D800 even after resampling (if their sensors were of equal performance to begin with). Thoughts John?