Intensive efforts are being made to develop efficient and noiseless photon detectors for quantum optics experiments. Once available, these detectors might lead to new technologies, including ultra-secure quantum communication or random number generation with reliable randomness. Most efforts, however, are still carried out at the material level and the technology is becoming somewhat complex. We intend to study a radically different approach in which we use the quantum optics toolbox to upgrade low-resolution detectors up to the point where they can reveal the quantum nature of light beams.