Dr flash wrote:
> I would reword your sentence: "The camera just gives you whatever
> data the sensor happens to pick up during the exposure which is
> mainly color information". I would change "mainly" to "only"
> since the camera can't sense anything that is not a red, green or
> blue pixel.
A couple of thoughts here. First of all, the sensor is nothing more
than an analog to digital converter. X-amount of light equals
x-amount of voltage. That's all. Now, it would be a tremendous
mistake for us to think that this is THE voltage reading that gets
stored in the RAW file. There is a lot of "bit-bending" going on to
"calibrate" this information prior to the RAW file being written.
RAW is not RAW. Sensors that are able to achieve a closer to final
output conversion will theoretically produce a smoother tonal range
than one that has to have extensive curves or gamma correction
applied. This is why Kodak CCD sensors are still considered to be the
gold-standard of tonalities. The in-camera processing engine that
reads the sensor data is mapping the bits to a standardized color
rendition. That 12 or 14 bit sensor isn't giving you 12-14 bits of
linear data in the RAW file.
Secondly, in-camera BW is ok, as long as you are still shooting RAW.
My A1 produces outstanding B&W images in-camera and the Minolta
software (which uses the same processing core algorithm as the
camera) also gives incredible B&W images. However, this B&W
information is lost when converting with any other converter. Only
the Minolta software is reading the exif data correctly for
conversion. Oh, and one other thing--The Minolta A1 is apparently
adjusting the "colorspace" internally for better B&W curves. It's
even flatter than aRGB.
I can spot most digital camera B&W images a mile off. Why? Because
it is obvious that the photographer shot the scene in color, with the
eyes and mindset towards color and then later thought "hey, what if?"
Sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn't. When you are
shooting the scene with your camera, you will compose the scene
differently for B&W than you will for Color. So we end up with
monochrome color shots. This is an eye/mind thing.
AG
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