Originally posted by Painter For instance I'm unlikely to scale images to match performance a camera either does the job or doesn't at it's given resolution.
By "at its given resolution" do you mean 100% pixel peeping? Or that a 24MP image could be printed larger than a 16MP image? That's true, but if both come from the same format-size sensor, i.e. APS-C, then the 24MP version, up close (i.e. equivalent to 100% pixel peeping), will look nosier. However one of the reasons you print things bigger is so they can be looked at from further away. If you compare the two printouts at the same viewing AOV, I contend that both should look similar in the amount of noise. This is another way of expressing the relationship between DxoMark's "Screen" vs "Print" tab in their graphs, or between small sensels vs big sensels. For a deeper explanation of this, see:
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/16-pentax-news-rumors/238970-pentax-k-3-h...ml#post2534630
It really comes down to how you define "does the job"?
If both cameras do the "same job" e.g. same-sized printouts and you look at them at the same distance, then the 24MP version will have similar noise, potentially greater sharpness (depending on the lens & aperture used).
If the job entails cropping the 24MP version to have the same number of pixels as the 16MP version, and both are printed out at the same size, the 24MP will be nosier, have potentially the same sharpness, but appear magnified.
Dan.