On Oct 19, 2007, at 3:09 PM, Toralf Lund wrote: >> Possibly with 14bit RAW's > > Do you think that would be possible? > > I know you (or was it someone else?) have been saying the light > collecting capability of sensors has been improved lately, but in > order > to achieve a higher bit count, a better electric charge storage > capacity > would probably be needed as well. Or at least, some papers I read on > this a year or so ago seemed to suggest that 14 bits won't be possible > with the current element sizes even with 0 noise.
My take on this: 12 bit vs 14 bit RAW files has more to do with quantization than with charge capacity, which translates to DR. They could quantize the data captured by the current sensor to an 8, 11, 12, or 14 bit representation. The question is whether or not it is useful to do so. 12 bits is 4096 discrete energy levels; 14 bits is 16,384. Is there adequate resolution of energy levels in the sensor to make expressing that energy in a larger quantization meaningful? The assumption is that, given the present sensor, 12 bits is an accurate representation and there is no added value in going to a larger representation. The implication is that a new sensor might have sufficient resolution of energy levels to make a 14 bit quantization an advantage. Improved accuracy is the result, exercising more of that 22bit A->D converter. Maybe increased DR as well, if the imager actually does have additional DR. Godfrey "I'm no electrical engineer, I play one on the PDML." -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
