Also, I've done some more search and the 24 bit figure for the human eye is somewhat disputed. It looks like the actual figure is around 16 stops at a time, but

Also, I've done some more search and the 24 bit figure for the human eye is somewhat disputed. It looks like the actual figure is around 16 stops at a time, but our iris gives another 8 or so stops (but only after an adjustment period). Part of the answer for why dynamic range on modern cameras isn't better is that we're only starting to see consumer grade displays with more than 8 bits. Given that, most camera makers would rather put increased image quality resources towards upping the frame-rate or pixel density, which make it harder to get high dynamic range.