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You're not gaining much from a Bayer filter over three separate exposures, so you're probably right. Ordinary full-color pictures have to be demosaiced anyway,

You're not gaining much from a Bayer filter over three separate exposures, so you're probably right. Ordinary full-color pictures have to be demosaiced anyway, and it's more complex than laying three colored exposures on top of each other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter With three exposures you get to use the full resolution of the camera for each channel, so you end up a more detailed image and fewer artifacts... unless something moves, in which case you'll get strange colored ghosts. People hear that space images are composites, and therefore somehow conclude that they're "not real."- but all consumer digital color photography are digital composites thanks to Bayer (and Bayer-style) filters, white balance adjustment, sharpening and denoise that are all baked into your JPEGs before you see them.

sandworm101 11y ago
It's hard to say what "real" is when it comes to space. The differences in contrast and brightness are so dramatic that the composites aren't anywhere near what you'd see if you were standing there looking out a window. Take the recent images from Pluto. A "real" version taken with a standard GoPro would be too dark to be worth looking at. Likewise, any image of the sun and all it's dramatic weather aren't anything like the blinding light of the "real" sun. I'm waiting for someone to compare these composite images, with their possibly different colors, to the Apollo film images. How can they both be of the same place if the sand is a different color? Get ready for some new conspiracy theories.
- jrapdx3 11y ago
  The point you bring up is not confined to space imagery, the same considerations apply to earth-bound photography, for that matter, as true in the ancient days of film as today. Back then every photographer knew that various color films of the same type would render scenes differently. Every manufacturing process produces biases in results, the color-forming dyes at the core of color films responded in subtly distinguishable ways reflecting their explicitly unique chemical compositions. In the current digital era, vendors produce "image processing engines" that correspond to film chemistry and just as variable. Camera-makers advertise particular "color signatures" to help promote sales and brand loyalty. Relevantly, witness the endless discussion in photo "gear forums" over which rendition is the most "correct". Arguably we could say "all of the above", a case could be made one is as accurate as another since there is no single standard measurement of "accuracy". Bottom line is I wouldn't expect any given Hasselblad to produce two photos with the same color rendering when they're shot on different brands of film. Comparing the Apollo moon landscape with the Chinese digital images will inevitably show differences, but we couldn't really say which is closer to how it "really" looks.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    > we couldn't really say which is closer to how it "really" looks. We couldn’t, but we could just ask the Apollo Astronauts.

sandworm101 11y ago

It's hard to say what "real" is when it comes to space. The differences in contrast and brightness are so dramatic that the composites aren't anywhere near what you'd see if you were standing there looking out a window. Take the recent images from Pluto. A "real" version taken with a standard GoPro would be too dark to be worth looking at. Likewise, any image of the sun and all it's dramatic weather aren't anything like the blinding light of the "real" sun. I'm waiting for someone to compare these composite images, with their possibly different colors, to the Apollo film images. How can they both be of the same place if the sand is a different color? Get ready for some new conspiracy theories.

jrapdx3 11y ago
The point you bring up is not confined to space imagery, the same considerations apply to earth-bound photography, for that matter, as true in the ancient days of film as today. Back then every photographer knew that various color films of the same type would render scenes differently. Every manufacturing process produces biases in results, the color-forming dyes at the core of color films responded in subtly distinguishable ways reflecting their explicitly unique chemical compositions. In the current digital era, vendors produce "image processing engines" that correspond to film chemistry and just as variable. Camera-makers advertise particular "color signatures" to help promote sales and brand loyalty. Relevantly, witness the endless discussion in photo "gear forums" over which rendition is the most "correct". Arguably we could say "all of the above", a case could be made one is as accurate as another since there is no single standard measurement of "accuracy". Bottom line is I wouldn't expect any given Hasselblad to produce two photos with the same color rendering when they're shot on different brands of film. Comparing the Apollo moon landscape with the Chinese digital images will inevitably show differences, but we couldn't really say which is closer to how it "really" looks.
- kuschku 11y ago
  > we couldn't really say which is closer to how it "really" looks. We couldn’t, but we could just ask the Apollo Astronauts.