I know this question is almost meaningless ... but perhaps not completely.

When it comes to "seeing" detail, what improvement can you get by
photography over the human eye? The human eye is presumably better at
optical separation, but CCDs for minimum magnitude.

For example, I have heard that you can start seeing the spiral structure of
galaxies at about a 8 - 10" telescope aperture; if you are doing
astrophotography can this be seen with a lower aperture scope?