Fwiw

The likelihood of the B&W M8/M9? was being discussed at the LHSA meeting I attended in Wetzlar last month. I wouldn't think Leica would officially acknowledge such a product until the current M8 situation gets sorted out (and they sell many M8s?)


jeff
 
Even if there is a b&w M8 at some point, I doubt very much that it would be 33mp.

That particular pipe dream seemed to stem from the "rumor mill" poster's fundamental misunderstanding of how a digital sensor works. He assumed that the M8 contains three 10mp sensors -- one each for R, G and B -- so if you eliminated the color filters, you'd somehow have a 30+mp camera.

In fact, the M8 contains a single 10mp sensor; individual pixels of that sensor are filtered for R, G or B. The G and B values for each R-filtered pixel are estimated based on the adjacent pixels with G and B filters; likewise for the other colors.

Even with the filters removed, you'd still be getting only 10 mp of luminance data, which is what you need for b&w.

An M8 with no color filter mosaic would have slightly higher light sensitivity, but that would be its only advantage. (Even a b&w version would need some filtration anyway, to give its sensor something approximating panchromatic sensitivity, so the advantage might not be as great as you'd think.)
 
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