Should I get IS lenses? Crystal-ball gazers needed.

Yay! Physics! I can't compute your N right now, but I can give you something to compare it to.

The number of photons emitted from a 100W sodium vapor lamp is 3x10^20 photons per second, or 300,000,000,000,000,000,000 photons per second. If that light were spread onto your square meter grey card, you still have *edit* 69,000 photons hitting . . . each pixel . . . in 1/400 of a second, if I understand your math correctly. (not 690,000 like I put at first! :) )
 
OK, this is mighty close to 65536! I'm not sure how this compares with the sun, but 100W for 1square meter is not *that* bad. It means that we're already there (or close) with the sensitivity and it's not getting any better. Of course, this assume that both me and Boris got the math right. What are the chances? What that I am least sure about is the percentage of photons reflected from the 18% gray. I know that some are absorbed (more than 18%?), that's how things get hot in the sun.

M.
 
ok, on a quick glance (travelling with a laptop currently, not much time to count zeros ;) ) those numbers look right. I guess my post was still based on "high tech" of some years ago ;) ... forgot how small today's pixels are. Then however, we are really not that far from the small numbers and that could mean we might at some point not too far in the future run into fundamental problems.

But then again there might be very different approaches to improve the image quality which we could not imagine right now... also in camera post-processing might have by far superior algorithms then which compensate a lot. Let'S wait and see ;)
 

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