There is a purveying thought that larger resolution sensors, with therefore smaller pixels, are worse than lower resolution sensors, with therefore larger pixels, in low light. This is a myth.
By now, you're familiar with Apple's "Shot on iPhone" ads: giant billboards and posters showing off high quality photos taken with Apple's latest smartphone. But for their latest version of the campaign, Apple upped the ante, showing off the iPhone 7's low light chops with a series of nighttime images.
The low light performance in your future camera may be improved thanks to new research in "nano earthquakes." Researchers have found that sound waves can be used to improve the electronic properties of 2D materials, paving the way for things such as camera sensors that can capture better shots in dark environments.
It seems the Nikon engineers had some tricks up their sleeves when they put the D4 sensor inside the new Nikon Df, because while the sensor earned identical scores to the D4 in almost every category when DxOMark put it through its paces, the Df actually BEAT the D4 in the "low-light ISO" category.
But more than that, it beat EVERYBODY in that category, narrowly edging out the previous champion D3s to claim the number one low-light spot among DxOMark's rankings.