APOD: NGC 891 Edge On (2013 Oct 11)

[stephen63]

Or, if your eye could store thirty seconds worth of photons, then relay them to the optic nerve, we could begin to compete with a camera. Of course, viewing our surroundings in thirty second intervals wouldn't be all that pleasant!

[Chris Peterson]

Fine, the brain-eye complex is piss-poor at collecting photons. :)

Supposedly, then, if you could hack your brain, you could use your eyes as more sensitive instruments.

Yes. But another problem is that the eye has relatively low quantum efficiency. So while an individual receptor cell responds to a single photon, and while the brain responds to around ten photons, only a few percent of the photons entering the eye actually get captured. Most are absorbed (the eye is extremely badly "designed", with a large part of the retinal structure between the lens and the sensitive cells), or simply miss the receptors. This is rather like film, which can only record a few percent of the photons that strike it, and quite unlike modern electronic sensors, which at their worst capture about 30%, and at their best nearly 100%.