Cory Papenfuss wrote: >Given the eye's logarithmic sensitivity to intensity, it actually >make a lot of sense. At least as much as gamma-correct fixed-point. IIRC >some of the linux utilities used in the movie industry for CG stuff >(cinepaint, vips/nip) have support for some of these mini-floating-point >formats. I think the've got 16-bit floats, 24-bit floats, etc. > > I really doubt that the dynamic range is the problem of digital >encoding. It really seems to be sensor limitations, judging by the >"shadow noise" of highly-stretched images. You can encode all the way >down, but digitizing noise is still noise. > > Now... if the ANALOG SNR could be improved (by say, a >50ISO-designed APS-sized sensor), then there might be some benefit. As it >is, 12 linear bits seems to fit the effective dynamic range at ISO200 >pretty well (yielding approx 8-bits of gamma-corrected image).
Great summation of the situation. Thanks! In short, it means that if they're going to deliver more than the current 12-bit (per color) data, there must have been a significant advance in the design of the sensor - presumably made by Samsung. I still doubt this will appear in the K10D but I'd be happy to be wrong on this one! -- Mark Roberts Photography & Multimedia www.robertstech.com 412-687-2835 -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
