Guest guy_mancuso Posted September 17, 2007 Share #41 Posted September 17, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) Yes Pete did have the Kodak for awhile and he really liked the output from it, not sure if he still uses it today but the market was weak on a all digital B&W camera at the time. I would assume the same is true today. It would take a lot of sales to break even. Neat idea if leica did do it though but it would drain there resources i am sure. I am finding LR a interesting tool for B&W though , has a lot of options to really work images up to a desired look. Also Raw developer has some really nice tools also for B&W Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted September 17, 2007 Posted September 17, 2007 Hi Guest guy_mancuso, Take a look here B&W Digital M?. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
Jack_Flesher Posted September 17, 2007 Share #42 Posted September 17, 2007 Pete is currently pushing hard to get a B&W specific digital camera. He would love it to be a Leica M, but would settle for a Canon or Nikon as well. He considered the monochrome Phase back, but the size/cost is excessive. Bottom line is I think it's a good idea, but like was mentioned early on, the market is just too limited for a manufacturer to seriously consider. For the time being, I find one of the best traits of the M8 is with it's slight IR leak it actually generates excellent B&W conversions with a color-response curve very close to that of conventional emulsions. Just not as sharp as am all-monochrome sensor would be. Cheers, Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sdai Posted September 17, 2007 Share #43 Posted September 17, 2007 but Kodak didn't want to pursue the camera's development. Just in case anyone is interested in doing further background reading. Most folks probably don't know ... Mega Vision even has a B/W dedicated MF digital back using a Kodak black and white sensor ... turns out to be a flop ... commercially. The market is very, very small ... if not non-existent at all. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guy_mancuso Posted September 17, 2007 Share #44 Posted September 17, 2007 Simon i had a MegaVision 3 i believe when i worked at Honeywell but it was a tethered back to hassy V mount and noisy as hell but i wonder if it maybe fun to get my hands on it and try B&W with it the blue chanel was a mess with noise. This goes back many years maybe 15 years ago Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sdai Posted September 17, 2007 Share #45 Posted September 17, 2007 Simon i had a MegaVision 3 i believe when i worked at Honeywell but it was a tethered back to hassy V mount and noisy as hell but i wonder if it maybe fun to get my hands on it and try B&W with it the blue chanel was a mess with noise. This goes back many years maybe 15 years ago They were doing quite well with this one actually ... I had some samples from a friends quite a while ago but can't remember where I have dumped now ... anyways, if you're interested, this is what you want to see. The First Name In Digital Photography Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guy_mancuso Posted September 17, 2007 Share #46 Posted September 17, 2007 Mine was a S2 from 1997 it looks like . 10 years ago , man has things changed since then Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack_Flesher Posted September 17, 2007 Share #47 Posted September 17, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) I believe the popularity of the Hannibal Lector character has to do with his limiting of his 'meals' to the 'free-range rude' Now that is just a plain perfect metaphore! LOLOLOLOLOLOL! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dpattinson Posted September 17, 2007 Share #48 Posted September 17, 2007 I heard about this and asked a friend of mine who is a distributor. He said that as far as he knew, there was talk of producing a BW version, but that in fact the resolution only increased to around 14Mp due to some technical limitation - and the consensus was that it wasn't enough to balance out the loss of the option for shooting in colour. Ie - the perceived market for a 40% higher resolution monochrome sensor was not deemed economic. Personally, I don't think I'd buy one if it were 14Mp - especially at the premium they'd have to charge for the reduced production run. If it were 20+Mp with the same image quality - that would be an entirely different story. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest stnami Posted September 17, 2007 Share #49 Posted September 17, 2007 I thought photography was photography no matter what the medium....extreme post processing or photographing with the intent to use it as a simple scaffold and refuting its context could be and has been seen as a non photography result. Mind you the process would be harder with a bnw camera Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guy_mancuso Posted September 17, 2007 Share #50 Posted September 17, 2007 True but would you consider what you do with manipulation to fall in that category. Let's face it at some point in the extreme process we do have to wonder , not that you go to the extremes and whatever that true measurement maybe but it does throw up a question mark. i remember Polariods at one time being the hit with folks moving the emulsion around to get a desired effect, would we at that point though consider it mixed media. just as a example or would we still consider it a photograph. i know purist may say no but hell there are no real rules either. Am i reading you correctly Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest stnami Posted September 17, 2007 Share #51 Posted September 17, 2007 considering that the brush tool takes a hammering in photoshop with me, day into night, stuff out of context and some non photo applications, I'd say a lot would be "digital art/ mixed media". I use a camera as it is more convenient,(saves time) than painting. The reasons that I wouldn't use a bnw camera is that I would lose the use of the greyscale mix abilities in play station Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guy_mancuso Posted September 17, 2007 Share #52 Posted September 17, 2007 i would think also it would just be to restrictive in case you wanted to be in RGB and make RGB changes only too for effects. i honestly would not buy one Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack_Flesher Posted September 17, 2007 Share #53 Posted September 17, 2007 Yeah, tough to define when a photograph crosses the line, is no longer a photograph and becomes graphic art instead. I think for the most part it depends on what the viewer, or more accurately the purchaser, thinks As for a dedicated B&W camera, maybe it would work for me, but only if the quality was significantly greater than what I can get from an rgb conversion and price was reasonable... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
thrid Posted September 17, 2007 Share #54 Posted September 17, 2007 Personally, I don't think I'd buy one if it were 14Mp - especially at the premium they'd have to charge for the reduced production run. If it were 20+Mp with the same image quality - that would be an entirely different story. Yes, but it would be a true 14MP. About three times as much resolution as a Bayer pattern chip. Don't forget that with a Bayer pattern chip the total amount of receptors are divided up among red, green and blue, so the true resolution of a 14MP Bayer pattern chip is about a third or two thirds of what you think you are getting (the receptors are no evenly divided among R,G,. A monochrome 14MP camera would be exceedingly sharp. Not just because you would be using all receptors to capture full spectrum luminance, but you would also not have artifacts associated with the Bayer pattern interpolation. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack_Flesher Posted September 17, 2007 Share #55 Posted September 17, 2007 First off, Bayer kills about 1/3 of the native sensor resolution, not 2/3 --- remember that the demosaicing adds data back in via interpolation. But there is no doubt that a monochrome sensor is going to have higher net resolution for an equivalent number of raw pixels... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest stnami Posted September 17, 2007 Share #56 Posted September 17, 2007 exceedingly sharp to what avail, our vision doesn't operate in terms of sharpness, another consideration the sharper an object is the more static it becomes. This leads to loss of stmospherea nd fluidity in the image. If you intend creating billboard size bnw maybe it would be usefull.................but where are you going to put them. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
thrid Posted September 18, 2007 Share #57 Posted September 18, 2007 to what avail, our vision doesn't operate in terms of sharpness, another consideration the sharper an object is the more static it becomes. This leads to loss of stmospherea nd fluidity in the image. If you intend creating billboard size bnw maybe it would be usefull.................but where are you going to put them. hahaha....good one. Maybe that's why I'm still shooting Tri-X in 50 year old cameras. ;-) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
norm_snyder Posted September 18, 2007 Share #58 Posted September 18, 2007 I went away for about 24 hours and...lots of strong opinions expressed. I agree that the market for an M camera limited to black and white [my M6's "only" take B&W] would be quite small, but if the price [either for a new body or for conversion of an existing M8] were manageable, I would still be interested. On the other hand, while all these postings were appearing, I souped some pushed HP5, dried and scanned it, and now have some dandy, high resolution [if grainy] black and white. Why, I have to use the new DxO program to match the look of some M8 shots for a project! LOL! Norm Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tgray Posted September 18, 2007 Share #59 Posted September 18, 2007 I would imagine there would be no RAW conversion step needed either... Or am I wrong? As a young person who started out with a DSLR 4 years ago and slowly shifted to an M6 and a Canon 1V, I can personally say I'd be all over a dedicated B&W digital camera. I currently have 4 rolls of color film in my apartment and... 100? 150? rolls of B&W. My cameras are essentially dedicated B&W cameras right now. I would certainly continue to use film, but I would like to add a nice digital camera into the arsenal. A dedicated B&W M would certainly fit the bill. Resolution wouldn't have to be nuts for me to want it. I'd rather take sensitivity/low noise over increased resolution. I for one would love a crazy low noise sensor with 16bit A/D and great dynamic range/latitude. Make it IR sensitive too and I'd happily carry around IR cut filters for all my lenses. I think it'd be quite dandy to screw on either an IR cut or pass filter depending on what I wanted to shoot. Heck, I already use my lenses with UV filters, so who cares if it's an IR cut instead? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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