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This article examines the noise characteristics of a modern digital camera. The primary spec used to specify the noise performance of a camera is Dynamic range (DR). Most expositions on DR tend to get highly technical very quickly. OK, this article gets technical here too. However, I start with a heuristic approach to DR that doesn't require any technical definitions, and (I believe) illuminates what DR means in a practical photographic sense.

There are three primary noise sources in digital photography: photon noise, sensor nose, and analog-to-digital converter (ADC) distortion. I consider these in sequence, and at each step, we examine images of actual noise images. These are c...

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