"Less Megapixels = Better Color"...

57even wrote:

[...]

If you downsize the files to the same size (either in pixels or print size) the noise level will be more or less identical. It doesn't matter how big the pixels are, only how much light you collect over the whole sensor, or per sq m of the final image.

More small pixels collect the same amount of light as fewer large ones.

Bit-depth is only relevant to DR.

Just look at the SNR data on DXO.

Not beeing an expert, this makes sense to me, especially now that the circuitery between photosites doesn't eat as much sensor space as before, and now that there are microlenses to collect light all over the surface.

I can imagine that with a high density, more photosites will provide random values, but in that case, more accurate photosites will be in the closest neighborhood to provide an adequate value, provided the demosaicing/photosite-level-NR algorithm is not stupid and can more or less sort between random and accurate photosites.

As far as as understand, this raises the (open as far as I'm concerned) question : how do demosaicing, color patterns (bayer vs xtrans) and density interact ? I suspect that the answer is not trivial and would require more knowledge than I have at my disposal. My intuition would be that the xtrans pattern involving less dense red and blue colored photosites, with a lower photosite density, a fail might be catastrophic because interpolation would require a value far away. But that's only an uneducated guess so I could easlily get convinced of the opposite by well stated arguments. Any idea about that ?