Very cheap small-sensor camera modules sometimes have as little as six bits of dynamic range, which will genuinely cause difficulties in photographing very dark

Very cheap small-sensor camera modules sometimes have as little as six bits of dynamic range, which will genuinely cause difficulties in photographing very dark-skinned people. A decent smartphone camera sensor will have at least ten bits of dynamic range and flagship mirrorless cameras are exceeding 14 bits, which approximately matches the dynamic range of the human eye. For a reasonably good, reasonably modern sensor, any problems are somewhere else in the imaging chain. An 8 bit JPEG actually has about 11 bits of dynamic range due to the gamma curve, but excessive compression loss or color space errors might cause clipping. Most displays and commodity printers will have less than 10 bits of dynamic range, so you're going to see some level of dynamic range compression. Any image processing algorithms could cause a detrimental loss of dynamic range if they're weighted towards preserving highlight detail. I have absolutely no doubt that someone from FNQ or the top end might experience real problems with cameras and I have no doubt that those experiences are hurtful and marginalising. Those problems are the result of either poor quality or poor design choices, not any inherent limitation of imaging technology.