If they come up with a BW only sensor it would have to be panchromatic characteristic or the whole thing is pointless.
----------------- J.C.O'Connell hifis...@gate.net ----------------- -----Original Message----- From: pdml-boun...@pdml.net [mailto:pdml-boun...@pdml.net] On Behalf Of P. J. Alling Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2012 12:42 PM To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List Subject: Re: Would a B&W ONLY digital camera appeal to you? There will have to be some kind of color filtering to get the the sensor to record different wavelengths in accordance with some semblance of human vision. I do not think that you will gain all that much sensitivity over a sensor with normal color filters in a color Bayer pattern or some other pattern not withstanding. At best will have something resembling orthochromatic output or maybe pre orthochromatic when film was so blue sensitive that it over powered /all/ other colors of the spectrum when recording B&W images. On 3/18/2012 11:28 AM, Toralf Lund wrote: > On 3/18/12 13:19, Steven Desjardins wrote: >> My question: where is the advantage? Is there any way Leica could >> develop a purely B&W sensor that had advantages that it wouldn't have >> if it did color as well? > The advantage would be collecting *all* the available light, where a > colour sensor has filters that essentially means some of it is thrown > away, thus increasing the effective sensitivity. Of course, if you end > up using a colour filter in front of the lens anyway, you also give > away something, but you can at least select what is removed (for all > pixels.) You cannot change your mind when you do the post-processing, > though (which is the prime objection.) > > Then there is the anti-aliasing filter - if you know you're not going > to do de-mosaicing, I believe you can get rid of that, too, thus > getting pictures that are sharper in one sense. You can install a > colour sensor without such a filter, too - in fact Leica has done that > already - but I'm not sure you can also get rid of the effects it's > supposed to counter-act (in software) without loosing some of the > sharpness. > > - T >> On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 12:18 PM, Mark Roberts >> <postmas...@robertstech.com> wrote: >>> It has occurred to me that one of the stupid things about making a >>> digital camera with a black-and-white-only sensor would be that it >>> would be like buying a film camera that would only work with one kind >>> of film. OK, you could have different sensitivity settings, but B&W >>> films had their own sensitivity curves and reacted differently to red, >>> green and blue light. You could change things with filters, of course, >>> but those are not nearly flexible/versatile to make one film emulate >>> the RGB sensitivity curves of another. >>> >>> In a digital camera you can emulate the looks of different B&W films >>> to some extent by working with the individual RGB curves during raw >>> processing, but the sensor has to capture individual RGB data in the >>> first place - a B&W-only sensor wouldn't permit this so you'd be >>> locked into one "look" forever. If Leica were to make a B&W-only >>> camera, one way around this would be to use a color sensor and >>> implement the B&W limitation in software. That seems a bit silly (not >>> that some people wouldn't buy it anyway). >>> >>> If the Leica rumor turns out to be real, perhaps they are implementing >>> the B&W-only limitation in software but using the kind of sensor Kodak >>> announced a few years ago with a non-Bayer pattern that sacrifices >>> some color sensitivity for greater luminance sensitivity . Here's the >>> DP Review article about it: >>> http://www.dpreview.com/news/2007/6/14/kodakhighsens >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Mark Roberts - Photography& Multimedia >>> www.robertstech.com >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> 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. >> >> > > -- Don't lose heart! They might want to cut it out, and they'll want to avoid a lengthily search. -- 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. -- 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.
