I’d like to make a point about sensor quality. While I’d like to see better with every new model, and dispute what some have said, I can see a good stop improvement in a new sensor, if Canon wants it, there is a myth about this. For almost 30 years, I was with a commercial photo lab in NYC, as one involved in running it for almost 20 of them.
We did a lot of publishing work in addition to still and film.
We see a lot of talk about differences in noise and density range. While on a good, properly calibrated graphics monitor, even small differences of 0.5 stop are easily apparent. But a strange thing happens when going to a high quality inkjet print. And, many inkjets today, if properly calibrated with good paper, can give a high quality print without being a pro level machine. That strange thing is that much of the differences in noise and density go away. The printer can’t deliver these extended ranges. Now, go to 4 color, and guess what? The differences disappear completely! Yes, I know how to do this.
But, paper and ink simply can’t handle the range. An interesting, simple, experiment that can be done, which I’m sure many people have, is to take the best print of a difficult subject, and hold it up to a light from the back of the print, and see all of the detail in the darker areas you can’t see otherwise.
No matter what you do, detail in darker areas, usually the bottom two stops, and even three with 4 color, is compressed to the point of visual impossibility. With 4 color, it’s worse, because the ink simply can’t hold those levels.
This is why Pros don’t worry about this as much as Pixel peepers using monitors do.