B&W and red all over

[J. Bernard Vallon]

There is a conversation going on over at CML about 'true' resolution. Something occurred to me.

When I desaturate an image in a RAW processor, does it basically strip off the bayer mask and give me the 12-bit value of each pixel? OR does it first sample the surrounding pixels to get an RGB value, than combined them to get a single monochrome value?

Strikes me that the former is superior as far as sharpness is concerned, but the later should give smoother gradations. Am I correct in that comparison?

Plus, what would REDCINE do?

[Charles Angus]

Mind linking to the CML discussion? Sounds interesting...

Thanks.

[Adrian Correia]

Mind linking to the CML discussion? Sounds interesting...

Thanks.

yes please!

[Kevin Halverson]

Since a Bayer pattered detector has optical filters over each photo receptor site the image should be de-Bayered first then the luminance value extracted to obtain a "B/W" (monochromatic) image. If you simply take the actual value of each receptor the luminance accuracy would not be very representative of the image as it would be spectrally selective for each of the three receptor masks.

[Graeme Nattress]

If you just look at the sensor data as mono, it looks whacked as of the blue and red and green filters on the pixels. To get a real black and white you've got to demosaic and then desaturate.

Only way to get "better" than that is to go with a mono sensor. I've been cracking your joke about what's black and white and red all over for over a year now with regards to this....

Graeme

[J. Bernard Vallon]

unfortunately i can't seem to find the thread again. It was an off topic comment that got me thinking. I believe it was titled "JVC's 12k camera" (which it isnt, its a 3ccd camera, with the horizontal pixel count added up to 12k)

Do you think anyone would have their REDs modified to fill a specific niche market? Like a mysterium with no Bayer pattern filter for B&W shooting, or a red with no IR filter for infrared photography?

[Graeme Nattress]

Yup, it's not 12k. You stick a lens on and measure the resolution. It should have good ~ 4k resolution. Red has good ~ ~ 4k resolution via a different method.

Graeme