24Mp vs 16Mp high ISO noise on NEX - depends on your shooting style...

Many people have been lead to believe based on numerous posts that if one needs high ISO camera, it has to be the 16Mp 5N, N7 is way worse. Not true for all.

For JPEG shooters, like me, ISO performance is practically equal. I just looked closely at the DP review comparisons and surely N7 deploys more aggressive noise reduction but crops show equal level of detail. Here is the statement:

"The NEX-7's high pixel count inevitably means more noise at the pixel level, and Sony has countered this in its JPEG processing by applying fairly aggressive noise reduction, especially at higher ISOs. This can be seen in our graphs, which give almost the same pixel-level noise for the NEX-7 and NEX-5N. The numbers don't tell you anything about detail retention, though, but looking at the crops we can see that the overall image detail recorded at high ISOs is roughly the same too."

Now, if you are shooting RAW, there is a clear difference. Having said that though, RAW shooters will do post processing and with N7, they may have to apply noise reduction more often. I have no experience to say how close post processing can bring high ISO images from both sensors. Others may have insights with that.

I hope this clarification can make the choice between 16Mp and 24Mp sensor a bit easier, as people consider the format they shoot with.