Has anyone 'De-Bayered' the M mount?

[Puggie]

After a minor (possibly alcohol induced) ebay incident I have ended up with a pair of A12 M-mounts rather than just the one i intended buying. This got me thinking, the unit is very good but for B&W work would removing the bayer filter like this:

http://petapixel.com/2013/08/04/scr...ayer-off-a-dslr-sensor-for-sharper-bw-photos/

be beneficial, or does the lack of AA filter mean most of the improvement is already there and losing the microlenses may be a bigger step backwards than the removal of the bayer filter is a step forwards?

thoughts?

 

[truefriendship]

According to the article, the gains aren't very big. I'd be concerned about losing the sensor's film-like qualities and the way it doesn't mask the "character" of the lense.

~Rif

 

[Puggie]

I suspect removing the bayer filter would be one step forward, but the loss of the microlenses above it be 2 steps back so to speak. At best I would get a barely improved upon sensor if everything went to plan, and a pricey paper weight if anything didn't! I was just interested if anyone else had gone down this route at all (google didn't help, so I thought I'd ask).

 

[jschrader]

I don't understand why this would help much. The camera's image-processor would still "de-bayer", since you will probably not manage to reprogram it, would you?

So, the camera would still assume the Bayer filter in place and would do the same resolution-reducing calculation that assigns a red, green and blue value to each single pixel.

Once I found someone who offers modified Canon DSLR without Bayer; but I don't know where that was.

About the need of anti-aliasing; you just think if the resolution of your lenses is high enough to interfer with the pixel size.

 

[GaryLH]

The camera Bayer processing would only happen when the final output file is jpg. If the output result is raw, then that file has no interpretation associated w/. The problem is that this raw file cannot be developed using normal photo sw programs. U need a sw that knows to interpret the raw data as a monochrome dump.

Gary

 

[GaryLH]

Digiloyd did one of the better writeups about this w/ a Nikon d800 that had been converted to monochrom.

http://diglloyd.com/blog/2013/20131128_1-NikonD800-monochrome.html

He used a sw package call Accuraw monochrom.

Gary

 

[Puggie]

Software is not an issue, there are a few suitable packages out there.

I just wonder if it's worth the risk. I get the feeling that the short lens to sensor distance of the Leica setup will be a bigger issue than say that nikon if the micro-lenses are removed.

Any one know who makes the sensor?