On Mon, Sep 25, 2006 at 06:01:15PM -0700, Shel Belinkoff wrote: > I'd go along with any of those things, really. I'm kind of ignorant of the > tech stuff that goes on behind the lens and in the soft/firm ware. > However, I always thought the sensor captured stuff in B&W and the > converted it to color.
No more than colour film does - in each case the sensor records the (aggregate) luminosity as seen through a particular spectral filter. And, in each case, three (or sometimes four) different values are recorded, each with a different filter. In colour film this is done in separate layers of the emulsion - in digital cameras (except for those using a Foveon sensor) the different colour sites are laid out in a rectangular grid pattern, with each location only receiving data for one of the sample colours. Digital conversion to B&W involves producing a single value from the different recorded Red/Green/Blue values. This can range from a simple weighted sum of the three components, through tone curves which weight each of the primaries differently depending on just how much of that primary colour was recorded, all the way up to methods which also take into account the value or values recorded at the other primary sites. This is far more flexibility than you get from selecting B&W film - trying to use a digital camera to mimic what you can get with film is like buying a sports car and then leaving it always in second gear. It will work, but you'll be missing out on all the really interesting possibilities. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
