That's exactly what I wrote, though. > From what I know sensors do not have different readouts for the different color channels. You know wrong then. HST uses

That's exactly what I wrote, though. > From what I know sensors do not have different readouts for the different color channels. You know wrong then. HST uses three camera sensors precisely to have three different filters at the same time and at full resolution: https://www.stsci.edu/hst/instrumentation/legacy/wfpc2 https://www.stsci.edu/hst/instrumentation/legacy/wfpc2 So yes, the WF/PC2 does indeed have different readouts per channels because each channel has its own dedicated sensor. Maybe you simply misinterpreted what I wrote. The fact of the matter is that consumer level sensors return multi-channel images (the sub-pixel filtering is an irrelevant technical detail), while scientific instruments use dedicated sensors per channel. edit: just to clarify even further - there are no subpixel shenanigans with scientific instruments for both higher precision and to avoid cross-talk between frequency bands; hence separate sensors per frequency filter. if you want multiple channels at once (e.g. space telescopes), you therefore need multiple sensors as opposed subpixel filtering.