Hacker News Reader

Comment by JKCalhoun | Hacker News Reader

I've been pining for a greyscale digital camera. I think maybe Leica had one but it seemed overly pricey (to the surprise of no, I suppose). Price aside though, having only the one I am aware of is slim pickings.

With no Bayer filter I expect four times the pixel density with no gain in noise (and in fact a slight improvement in speed since the lossiness of the filter is removed from the light path).

I guess I want the sharp, medium format portraits we saw from the 1960's — but digital.

I've considered building my own by either:

1) using a telescope CCD and building my own camera, or 2) try to remove the Bayer filter from the CCD.

I dislike both those options....

View on HN

PhaseOne sell a 100MP IQ3 B&W digital back, which is basically exactly what you're after. The quality of this is brilliant - I've seen some really astonishing work out of it - but it might be out of price range a bit - you're looking at north of $50k for a working setup, so many people just rent them when needed.

There might be some B&W scanning backs that are a bit cheaper, but those don't really work too well if your subject is moving.

>I guess I want the sharp, medium format portraits we saw from the 1960's — but digital

The closest you're going to get to that now is the MF cameras from Fuji and Hasselblad. Of course, this will set you back a pretty bitcoin.

I have to say though, I just got a Nikon D850, and it's pretty nice--nearly the equal of my Hasselblad 503.

Phase One make a 100MP black and white digital back.

Slightly out of my price range.

https://www.phaseone.com/IQ3-100MP-Achromatic

Yeah, I can feed my Hasselblad a lot of Pan F for that kind of money.

Leica had the M8 Monochrom but yeah, Leicas are at least as much about the red logo on the camera as they are about actual good photography. Their lenses are quite good, but not unequaled.

Fuji has some cameras with a monochrome mode I think. And their sensor doesn't use a low-pass filter so it's sharper at the same MP count than some others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujifilm_X-Trans_sensor

Leica never made a monochrome camera based on the M8, but both on the M9 and the M(240). The latter is current. A monochrome version of the M10 is espected to eventually arrive. Leica cameras might be pricy, but they are excellent photography tools. You might get higher res cameras from the competition, but for example the M is special with its small size and excellent lenses.

Thanks for the correction -- for a short time I was captivated by the idea of owning a Leica Monochrom when I first heard about them but could never part with the cash.

Yes they make excellent cameras -- particularly the film ones. With care they will last indefinitely. The digital Leicas had some problems at least early on. Maybe they are sorted out by now.

But for the money, you have to just want to own a Leica. The actual camera and optics are no longer unequaled (and for a lot less money) if they ever were.

You can certainly get cameras at a better price/performance level. So on a pure financial scale, they are difficult to justificat. But a M is unequaled by definition - it is the only digital rangefinder in production. Not to rave too much about rangefinder photography by itself, that means a very compact full-frame camera (roughly A7 size), but where it stands out is the tiny lenses. Even µFT struggles to match the M lens sizes. And at minimum for my back, lens size matters a lot. A M camera with 3 lenses fits into an absolutely tiny bag.

You could shoot film.

"Lomography" is cool enough now that even where I live BW film developers are back in business. And if it dies down I might just start doing it myself.

B&W is easy to develop yourself, too. And good 35mm cameras are sitting in closets everywhere. They can be had for next to nothing.

In case anyone else is interested in Bayer filters...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter

Leica still makes a monochrome model of their M cameras, the current one features a 24 mp cmos sensor based on the M(240). It is expected that there will be a monochrome camera based on the current M10 in about a year. They are excellent cameras with a stunning resolution, if you are into B/W photography.

you could pay someone else to do it https://www.monochromeimaging.com/

The problem of RAW conversion remains because every converter will still de-Bayer files from such a camera and thus degrade the IQ.

You can get rawtherapee to not do it.

I don't know, seems like the conversion works well enough. You're always going to edit and change files in export anyways.

The site has a page explaining how to get around it.

What would be useful on their site would be a comparison showing the same image shot with an unmodified sensor and then again with their filter-less sensor. If no one can tell the difference, is it worth it?

You could try a Sigma. I love my DP3 Merrill (keeping in mind the inherent limitations).

Yep, Foveon is one of the most underrated camera technologies. It's basically a medium format camera in a compact digital package. I fervently wish Sigma would make some progress on camera usability!

One example review, for readers who don't know about Sigma's awesome camera tech: https://www.photigy.com/sigma-foveon-sensor-review-dp3-merri...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com