I'd like to discuss what it is about this world. A digital photo is essentially made up of noise, dynamic range, and sharpness, among other things! Not the kind of noise that you might be thinking of. What the noise?! Older sensors seem to show less noise at high ISO values, and ISO performance doesn't seem to be affected by pixel size. What really got me is the supposed fact that as pixels get larger on a camera sensor, the amount of detail in the resulting photo seems to be higher...but is this true? There is higher dynamic range (DR) in a larger sensor; but what about high ISO performance? It seems, from samples obtained from various cameras, that DR goes hand-in-hand with ISO performance; the better the ISO performance, the better the DR seems to be. But downsizing is what really got me; the supposed fact that downsizing a 12 megapixel image to 5 megapixels will look worse than downsizing a 20 megapixel photo down to 5 megapixels, at least from a sensor that's larger. What other interesting theories might we uncover about digital photography? I always thought before, that higher dynamic range meant that the camera would record more detail from the native RAW file, separately from a RAW converter! Sometimes when I read in depth, I truly feel naive! With this near constant race for more pixels, we tend to forget what most probably don't even think of: noise performance and DR. These topics have really gotten my head pretty much spinning! And we also tend to forget about the optical performance of modern lenses; because a lens that works well for a 12 mp camera might not work well for a 24 mp camera, because at 25 mp, the amount of detail that the camera is demanding is, well, demanding for the lens; therefore, the quality of the lens must be pretty high. Keep that in mind when thinking about a camera with 80 or so megapixels, but also keep in mind image vibration at such high resolution; with ever increasing pixel counts, we're going to need ever increasing vibration reduction, either optical and/or digital.