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Even if you knew you only wanted to produce black and white images, a product like this introduces non-obvious tradeoffs. A colour sensor captures more informat

by epgui 3y ago

Even if you knew you only wanted to produce black and white images, a product like this introduces non-obvious tradeoffs. A colour sensor captures more information, and you can use a near infinite number of different functions to map to greyscale. Typically you don’t want to merely pick the BW filter, you want to be able to do manipulations to different wavelengths independently.

Hooray_Darakian 3y ago
Not really. A color sensor has a filter in front of it (usually a bayer filter) which lets each pixel capture one of the R, G, or B colors. The final image is [demosaiced](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demosaicing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demosaicing) and has a drop in sharpness as a result. Pentax seems to be omitting the color filter on the sensor rather than just squashing the read out to greyscale so this sensor should be sharper than a similar color sensor.
- NegativeK 3y ago
  I don't think that's a disagreement with their point. Most people aren't limited by sharpness in sensor with a color filter, so the loss of the choice of mapping to greyscale is more limiting. That's the tradeoff GP comment is referencing.
  - Hooray_Darakian 3y ago
    > A colour sensor captures more information Was the part I was keying in on. A filter will reject more light and in a sense captures less information. I 100% agree that most people are not limited in sharpness, but I wanted to share why someone might care about a sensor like this
jeffbee 3y ago
You can also use a scheme like the Olympus super-resolution mode where the body drives the sensor using the stabilization voice coil. This totally eliminates chroma boundary artifacts caused by the Bayer filter, and reducing one of these 64MP raw files to B&W looks perfect. The technique is borrowed from Olympus' microscope business (the one that actually kept them in business all these years). I believe other bodies are offering this feature now. Of course there are tradeoffs. The technique is only good for still subjects and the camera must be mounted, because the stabilization does not operate in this mode.

by epgui 3y ago

Hooray_Darakian 3y ago

Not really. A color sensor has a filter in front of it (usually a bayer filter) which lets each pixel capture one of the R, G, or B colors. The final image is [demosaiced](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demosaicing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demosaicing) and has a drop in sharpness as a result. Pentax seems to be omitting the color filter on the sensor rather than just squashing the read out to greyscale so this sensor should be sharper than a similar color sensor.

NegativeK 3y ago
I don't think that's a disagreement with their point. Most people aren't limited by sharpness in sensor with a color filter, so the loss of the choice of mapping to greyscale is more limiting. That's the tradeoff GP comment is referencing.
- Hooray_Darakian 3y ago
  > A colour sensor captures more information Was the part I was keying in on. A filter will reject more light and in a sense captures less information. I 100% agree that most people are not limited in sharpness, but I wanted to share why someone might care about a sensor like this

jeffbee 3y ago

You can also use a scheme like the Olympus super-resolution mode where the body drives the sensor using the stabilization voice coil. This totally eliminates chroma boundary artifacts caused by the Bayer filter, and reducing one of these 64MP raw files to B&W looks perfect. The technique is borrowed from Olympus' microscope business (the one that actually kept them in business all these years). I believe other bodies are offering this feature now. Of course there are tradeoffs. The technique is only good for still subjects and the camera must be mounted, because the stabilization does not operate in this mode.