I hestitate to attribute any decision made by Pentax to good planning :-) While it does allow for easy expansion to 14-bit or even 16-bit values, I suspect it comes as a side effect of using an extended TIFF file as the basis of their RAW file format. That means they end up using what TIFF provides for value storage, and TIFF is a byte-oriented format.
Graywolf mused: > > Could that be because they have plans for the future? > > graywolf > http://www.graywolfphoto.com > "Idiot Proof" <==> "Expert Proof" > ----------------------------------- > > > John Francis wrote: > > Godfrey DiGiorgi mused: > > > >>Yeah, who knows what Pentax does, but I'd say Pentax likely does very > >>little given that they didn't even do bit stripping in the D and do in > >>the DS... > > > > > > > > No they don't. They do use some rudimentary compression, but they > > are still using zero-padded sixteen-bit pixel values. > > > > > > > > > -- > No virus found in this outgoing message. > Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. > Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.7.2 - Release Date: 3/11/2005 >
