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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

Nice to see, when you delete the Bayer filter you not only get more resolution (factor of 2 in both directions) but you also get an extra stop of exposure.

It’s always been tricky to bring to market. Deleting the Bayer filter saves money, it doesn’t cost money but the person who wants this is going to care about quality and since it is a niche product that points to it being expensive.

Practically most of us will want to shoot color snaps and vendor lock-in is a thing. I have some lust for the top of the link Nikon bodies but I have an investment in Sony lenses so if I get a new mirrorless body it is very likely to be a Sony.

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As someone who takes a decent amount of monochrome photos, I don't think the extra resolution and brightness is worth it.

The advantage of taking color photos and converting them to black and white in post is that you have full control over the resulting brightness of different colors during the monochrome conversion.

For example, in the photo of the deer here, you could make the deer pop more by turning down greens and turning red up.

Starting from a color photo just gives you so much more control over the relative values of different parts of the image. And with monochrome, obviously, value is everything.

Prior to this Pentax announcement, the only monochrome camera I've seen aimed even slightly consumer-oriented was the Krontech Chronos high-speed camera, which is only consumer-oriented if you really squint a bit and assume your consumer has some very niche needs.

But one thing they do which I love, is they offer exactly the same camera with either a color or a monochrome sensor. I don't think it's quite user-swappable, but every other piece of the device is completely identical.

What's your definition of "consumer"? The Leica Q2 Mono is firmly aimed at consumers. It's not cheap and not a disposable consumer, but it's not aimed at anyone making a living from photography.

I would also classify M10 Monochrom as consumer even if its certainly a luxury product.

Oh thank you, I wasn't aware of those!

The resolution difference isn't a factor of 2 in both dimensions, comparisons of the M Monochrom and the corresponding color model rather hint to the factor of 2 in the total pixel count which is expected from the mechanics of the color interpolation process. But still it is a noticeable resolution gain. And indeed, you also get at least a stop of exposure.

> … when you delete the Bayer filter you not only get more resolution (factor of 2 in both directions) …

Does the larger resolution mean out to a larger dimensions of an image file, or is it the term resolution being used in the context of “resolving” detail in an image?

You can learn more about this by looking up "debayering" or "demosaicing", the process by which 4 pixels with color filters are combined into 1 pixel of color information. But it still has 4 pixels worth of spatial information. Sorta. If you're willing to make some assumptions.

It's a messy process

That's why shooting with raw files is so popular; these grab the data from the sensor before the debayering, since some post-processing operations work better if they're earlier in the processing pipeline.

The latter. Color pictures still have the pixel dimensions equal to those of the sensor, but each pixel has 2 of its channels interpolated from neighboring pixels. That's why "100% crops" of color digital photos always look kinda blurry.

Assuming both sensors have the same pixel count, the resulting images also have the same pixel count but the image taken with the monochrome sensor would resolve finer details which get lost when doing the color interpolation with the color sensor. This can be nicely seen with the Leicas, as they usually sell a Monochrom with the same pixel count as the color version.

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