Definitely, but I never intended to find the best sensor out there; I was more interested in understanding how the technology works. Looking at what top producers are doing can give you some interesting hints about that. And, on those lines, I was (am) wondering why they do what they do.

For example, while Nikon seems to have pulled out a higher resolution sensor than Canon that also performs slightly better when cropped down to the same res than Canon's, it seems to me there's also more than that in the whole story, which is interesting. In fact, Nikon sensor does not reach the ISO values that Canon sensor does. In light of what the ISO setting does physically, such extra feature is an interesting fact that seems to suggest that Nikon and Canon are going two different paths, to some extent.

So, I am just observing that