Hello Pieter, One thing you are not factoring in to this issue is the output side. When the output is digital, you have the same basic problem. Each "pixel" is only one color. What you are really referring to is a dithering pattern. All inkjet printers do this, monitors do this and I believe digital mini-labs do this. So in fact, the color doesn't have to be faked as much as it has to be patterned. The downside to this is that certain "patterns" (especially man-made) could come out looking wrong. The natural random nature of film grain tends to hide this rather than accentuate it. I don't think the Foveon crowd has quite as much advantage as you think. They still have to create a "dither pattern" from the sensor data as each pixel can only store 1 color.
Using film as a beginning but moving it to digital output is not much different than the Foveon, capturing all three colors at 1 pixel point but then creating a dither pattern out of it. Either the scanner or Foveon chip do this. I suspect that the layout pattern of the CCD/CMOS chip pretty much regulate this. In the end, it all comes out in the wash. The only real comparison would be between a purely analog film process vs a digital capture/output. My local labs no longer do analog. That means that my film is at a disadvantage. It is subject to their scanner/software limitations. The only alternative is to scan and manipulate the images myself. Food for thought. -- Best regards, Bruce Wednesday, December 17, 2003, 9:19:10 AM, you wrote: PN> On Tue, Dec 16, 2003 at 06:27:38PM -0600, William Robb wrote: >> From: "Pieter Nagel" >> > Oh, I wasn't hoping to get any more quality out of the tiny APS sensor >> > with 2/3 faked colour. >> >> I presume you have an ist D? >> If so, you know how wrong this statement is. PN> I did not mean that as a slur on the istD specifically, I was referring to PN> the difference between film & current CCD's in general. PN> Specifically, I was referring to the fact that each pixel of the CCD has a PN> red, green or blue filter and can detect only one of the three, the other PN> two need to be interpolated, ergo. "2/3 faked colour". PN> I do not ascribe mystical properties to digital imaging algorithms just PN> because "digital" is supposedly always "better" than "analog". Therefore, PN> even though I concede that the interpolation of the colours might in PN> practice work fine, I do not for any moment believe that the interpolation PN> algorithm can always end up with the colour value the pixel would have had PN> if it had been able to sense the other two colours. PN> Yes, I have an istD, and I am quite happy with the colour - although I PN> must add that I have only had it for a few days now. PN> But I can't help wondering (as a theoretical curiosity) how much better PN> the colour rendition would be if each pixel could sense red, green and PN> blue simultaneously. Users of a Foveon chip could comment.
