system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why can I see in low light so much better than even a high-quality camera?

Cameras seem to perform so much worse in low light than how I perceive a room in person, why is that?
gpt
Night vision in cameras and night vision in eyes aim for the same thing. In both cases, the goal is to widen the dynamic range available to view the environment. However, cameras and eyes work in very different ways. The he camera sets one exposure level for the entire scene, but each minute portion of the retina (the eye's "sensor") sets adaptation level independently. For example, suppose the scene has a small light at night. The camera will meter an entire photo (normally at a number of points) and the resulting average will probably be pretty dark. So the exposure or ISO are pumped up, which means any light in the picture will be over exposed, and noise is added.

On a quick aside, ISO is basically the "volume" of the light hitting the sensor; the circuit amplifies the light hitting it but as you amplify the digital signals interruption from radio waves, heat etc can make light be registered when it isn't even there. thus the random little dots.
 
 Meanwhile, the eye will measure 120million different points of the environment, sensing the amount of light available in each and exposing it accordingly. You can still over/underexpose, like when you look from a screen to a dark room quickly. So basically, your eye is more sensitive to light than a camera, is performing a HDR style photo (ie varying exposures across the environment), has a decent sized sensor (better than those camera phones), and because of this gets much better results. Current high end SLRs are getting pretty damn close though!