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View Full Version : Further increasing dynamic range, but for real.



J. Bernard Vallon
03-18-2007, 08:42 AM
Okay,
From what I know about how a bayer pattern works, a thought came to me:

If if have a RAW image, and i decide i'm going to reduce the resolution by 1/4, couldn't i have a program like redcine, or apple aperture do the following:

Combined the values on each group of local pixels, R, G G, and B respectively, with the R, G G, and B values from its three neighbors.

Here is a diagram:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/180/425317017_da546f851b.jpg?v=0

In this way, instead of a resulting pixel with RGB values of 0-4095, you'll have each pixel have a value of 0-16383, or a 14-bit image. It won't increase your maximum white value, as if each bayer pixel is overexposed the resulting transformed pixel will be as well. However, it would (i think) significantly increase your signal to noise ratio, because each pixel well is effectively 4 times as big, therefore gathers more light.

What this process would end up doing, is sacrificing resolution for increased dynamic range, which is an AWESOME option, seeing as how on a 4k chip most of us will end up with a 1080p image at most.

Is this even possible? Or am i misunderstanding something that is going on on the chip?

Anders Holck
03-18-2007, 08:49 AM
I believe the enhanced signal to noise would have the same benefit if you did an additive pixel binning in the RGB domain.
I believe Graeme already mentioned this posibility.

J. Bernard Vallon
03-18-2007, 01:13 PM
"additive pixel binning in RGB" sounds like a good description of what i'm talking about. Is it the same thing? ...and is it possible?

Anders Holck
03-18-2007, 01:24 PM
By RGB I mean after the demosaic of the Raw image. By "Binning" I mean combining the pixels.
Your idea seems to operate before the demosaic, I don't know if that would be feasible.
Maybe Graeme can chime if it's possible in practice...

Bruce Allen
03-18-2007, 01:29 PM
You are absolutely right. I do that all of the time when I shoot HD for SD. Because I'm creating one SD pixel from 4-5 HD pixels, I lower the noise floor. Because I lower the noise floor, I can afford to shoot darker without it all disappearing into muck. So my whites clip less.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com