Mono - not the illness

[Zack S]

I would love to have a Fujifilm X100Vm if they ever made one but I get pretty good results from my Fuji cameras just using the built in monochrome+r

[/url]Troy Michigan factory fire by Zack Schindler, on Flickr[/IMG]

 

[agentlossing]

I have no idea what this means.

Sensor's alone don't have character. The sensor assembly cover-glass IR filter, the light transmission properties of the color-filter array films, the micro-lens array optics and the demosaicking algorithm determine the information content of a flat raw file rendering. (1)

Of course a flat raw file can be rendered in countless different ways to produce a monochrome image. As the data SNR increases the so do the rendering possibilities.

Both CMOS and CCD photo-sites convert electromagnetic radiation into electrical charge for each sensor photosite. This is an example of energy transfer. Electrical charge does not have character. When the electrical charge becomes an analog DC voltage, the voltage does not acquire character. The array of raw file digital number estimates from the analog-to-digital converter do have character. They are just integers.

Where does the CCD/CMOS character difference come from?

None of the above invalidates a preference for images rendered form a camera with a CCD sensor. However the root cause for perceived differences has nothing to do with differences between CCD or CMOS technology.


1. Cameras with monochrome sensors do not depend on demosaicking to render an image. This eliminates any imperfections in how well the demosaicking algorithm models the redenered image.

That's what I meant: monochrome film has different characteristics depending on which you pick at the moment - a monochrome digital sensor has very little uniqueness about the image. I may be wrong, but I understand monochrome digital sensors to have an advantage mainly in sharpness per pixel, rather than anything particularly interesting about the way it looks.

A color digital file still has more resolution than film, while keeping color data that can be used to selectively edit color channels in RAW processing.

I personally still don't see a true advantage in monochrome only sensors, but then I'll also note that all of them that have come out have been outside my price range. Would I be tempted by a monochrome only, say, Ricoh GR? Probably. I recognize that the limitation is appealing to many. Simplicity is hard to find these days.