> > I think there should be a "TRUELY RAW" mode available. Provide the bits > > straight off the sensor. (documented format lossless compression is ok) > > > > The good news is that the Foveon sensor isn't as bad relative to Bayer > > as previously thought. Now we need truely raw images from each to compare.
> You should be able to select what processing is applied to the image in > the camera. True RAW would be what you'd get if you select lossless CFA > with no other processing. Actually, you might want a True RAW image to > have defective pixels fixed since the camera knows this. How do you "fix" a defective pixel? Set it to the average of the surrounding pixels? The extreme perfectionist would prefer that the data include a list of defective pixels, so that they can be dealt with as the photographer chooses in post-processing. > Noise reduction in the camera is not a good idea unless you have a > killer DSP chip in the camera and the time to do it. If you are shooting video rather than stills you have a hard time limit. For some professional "still" applications, photographers like the ability to shoot a rapid burst in hopes of getting one shot that is just right. > I can understand > why this is done to produce JPEG files, but I can not understand why it > is used for RAW on a professional camera. The camera manufacturer wants to provide the best looking images possible. Better than the competition. Look at the Bayer vs Foveon sensor comparison. Until the difference in in-camera noise reduction was revealed, we all thought that the Foveon sensor was noisier than the Bayer. Now we know that we don't know. (Maybe a few engineers at the camera companies with access to truely raw images know.) I don't like the idea of the camera mangling the data before I can get my hands on it, even if is an improvement 99.9% of the time. Apparently accuracy is not valued. > Note, if the camera is going to reduce noise, the best method for a > camera is to use a Peltier cooler for the chip. The colder you get a > semiconductor, the less noise. This is why astronomers use liquid > Nitrogen cooled CCDs. Yes, you would probably need a battery pack and > it would take a while for startup, but this should be no problem for a > professional camera -- you could use if for standard daylight shooting > without using the cooler. The noise processing calculations take power to run, which raise the temp of the camera. Another reason to not do noise processing in the camera. My video camera gets warm just converting data from firewire to s-video. When shooting, add running motors to advance the tape and to focus and stabilize the lens. I still worry about condensation. :-( _______________________________________________ Open-hardware mailing list Open-hardware@duskglow.com http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-hardware
