Should Leica produce a Monochrome Digital Camera?

[gennfiks]

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Sorry, of course I ment Foveon sensor and not filter. What I wanted to say, and I guess I was misunderstood, is that in principle when you sum-up signals from 3 sensors (RGB) which lie underneath 1 Foveon pixel one should get the grey-scale information of that pixel. That is why I said it was more "natural" as opposed to how color and grey-scale information is derived in Bayer filter based sensors.

 

Gennady

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[Riley]

yes you 'might' have something there. In resolution tests conducted with B&W res charts, foveon is said to suffer because it has no advantages when considered in B&W. Yet when you see a B&W photograph from foveon, there really seems to be something else going on, something less tangible, more difficult to describe.

[zapp]

If you look around the Kodak sensor product pages, you'll find monochrome versions of most of their sensors. Many sensors are made for industry, science and medical uses, so the technology is available. It may be more of a marketing limitation, where small limited markets are something to be avoided, especially if an alternative is already in place. It will take someone interested in the craft of photography, that can over-ride marketing, to take a chance and offer something like this.

Bob

 

A Kodak listing of a monochrome sensor is far away from a solution of putting such sensor inside a serious camera.

Who came up with the idea that it is easy to convert color RGB to monochrome - spank him, spank him, he doesn't know!!!

[haroldp]

Even if microlenses are used, the increase in sensitivity ( at least one EV ) through elimination of the Bayer filters, and the sharpness gained by elimination of the anti-aliasing filter would be a huge advantage for B & W photography.

 

Regards ... Harold

[brianv]

A Kodak listing of a monochrome sensor is far away from a solution of putting such sensor inside a serious camera.

Who came up with the idea that it is easy to convert color RGB to monochrome - spank him, spank him, he doesn't know!!!

 

Kodak used four versions of the KAF6300 (family) sensor in the same basic camera. They had color, monochrome, monochrome-Infrared, and Color-infrared cameras. This sensor was first used in the Kodak DCS460 series, and continued through the DCS760. These cameras shared common electronics and used different firmware. "Back in the day", Kodak made a custom run of 50 KAF-1600 CCD's for a limited production of Infrared DCS200s. The Digital Back was identical for the color, monochrome, and infrared-monochrome version of the camera. Only the firmware changed. This was a Digital Back for the Nikon N8008s, and was introduced in 1992. Mine still works. Kodak even sold a Color-Wheel for it, to make color photographs using three separate shots...

[sdommin]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't ALL digital cameras monochrome when you get right down to it? The individual photo sensors detect only the amount of light hitting them, not the color. The color filters on top of the sensors are what determines the final pixel color. So you would think it would be a simple matter (though it never is) to just eliminate the color filters and skip a manufacturing step. It's hard for me to believe that there's no market for a pure monochrome camera. After all, Canon put out a camera designed solely for astronomical photography. The market for a monochrome camera must be bigger than that!

[mjh]

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So you would think it would be a simple matter (though it never is) to just eliminate the color filters and skip a manufacturing step.

Sure it is. And the image processing is much simpler, too. Building a monochrome camera with all the advantages it offers (for b&w photography that is) is a trivial task; the only real issue is whether there’s a big enough market for such a camera.