[Leica] More management blabla

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

At 2:14 PM -0400 3/10/08, Don Dory wrote:
>Henning,With a higher bit depth you have more discrimination between tones
>and colors.  While you do not inherently get more dynamic range, the
>photographer can choose what part of the file to manipulate with less loss
>of data.  Also, we should be discussing sensor design whereby there is a non
>symmetrical curve vis a vis shadow and highlight data.  Fuji's sensors have
>a compromise design that does in fact add dynamic range but is pretty
>expensive to produce.  We live in interesting times.


At higher bit depth (not width) you have access to finer grained 
control, but once you get to 16bits an increase from there will not 
help you in practice at today's technical level. No printers are 
anywhere near 16bit capable on any kind of practical level, and 
taking a current full range 16bit file (if you can actually find one, 
which I doubt) and manipulating it to the extent that further 
processing will lead to posterization just means you've mixed up the 
order of your processing and you've thrown away substantial amounts 
of data early on in the game. Fortunately programs such as Lightroom 
make it much harder to do the really stupid things which were so easy 
in Photoshop. :-)

There is definitely a non-symmetrical relationship between shadow and 
highlight data density in sensors; unfortunately it doesn't work in 
our favour. Fuji's Super CCD design actually tries to make this more 
symmetrical at the cost of some complexity. Beyond that Fuji really 
doesn't know how to market cameras.

Fuji's design might gain 2 or 3 stops max; at present it seems to top 
out at about 2 stops. Nikons D3 chip does something else; maybe the 
two types of designs could be combined at some point to get a bit 
further. Of course chip design means very little without the control 
circuitry, A/D design and output algorithms, so all this stuff is 
hard to talk about in isolation; just as CMOS and CCD designs each 
have problems areas that have been overcome through ancillary 
circuitry and software so that it's hard to tell which has the 
advantage.



>On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 12:44 PM, Henning Wulff <henningw@archiphoto.com>
>wrote:
>
>>  At 10:48 AM -0400 3/10/08, Don Dory wrote:
>>  >Michiel,I bet they haven't actually built an R lens in over two years.
>>   When
>>  >LHSA was at the factory in 2006/10 they only had M lenses in production.
>>   It
>>  >makes no sense to have an oversize sensor when you can get over 22MP out
>>  of
>>  >24x36 and ISO's over 3200 that look very good by any standard.  What 
>> does
>>  >make sense is to increase bit depth as the new processors(see Brian's
>>  quad
>>  >processor MAC) can handle 64bit files.
>>
>>
>>
>>  There is a confusion here between bit depth and bit width, and
>>  neither has anything to with dynamic range per se. Sensor and capture
>>  file depth beyond 16 bits is a little pointless at this stage of
>>  digital photography, while 64 bit data path width is very definitely
>>  a useful processing parameter. Dynamic range depends largely on the
>>  (mostly analog) efficiency of the sensor bit buckets, and any
>>  increase there is hugely beneficial, but that benefit can already be
>>  seen and exploited in 8 bit jpegs processed on 16bit wide processors.
>>
>>  Since dynamic range, noise floor and low noise - high ISO performance
>>  are all intimately related, maybe Nikon's new sensor advances will
>>  also lead to significant benefits in dynamic range, should they make
>>  that their focus in their hi-res camera.
>>
>>
>>  That could increase dynamic range in
>>  >the file and improve color performance.  Last, finer pixel pitch works 
>> in
>>  >Leica's favor as it showcases the lenses.
>>  >
>>  >But, just a WAG, could Leica be talking to Canon as a sensor provider?
>>   With
>>  >Erwin doing puff pieces on Canon glass can an arrangement  be far 
>> behind.
>>  >  Panasonic can't seem to build enough of the desirable small cameras to
>>  meet
>>  >demand; that opens the door for possible new arrangements.
>>  >
>>
>>  --
>>     *            Henning J. Wulff
>>    /|\      Wulff Photography & Design
>>   /###\   mailto:henningw@archiphoto.com
>>   |[ ]|     http://www.archiphoto.com
>>
>>  _______________________________________________
>>  Leica Users Group.
>>  See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>>
>
>
>
>--
>Don
>don.dory@gmail.com
>
>_______________________________________________
>Leica Users Group.
>See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information

-- 
    *            Henning J. Wulff
   /|\      Wulff Photography & Design
  /###\   mailto:henningw@archiphoto.com
  |[ ]|     http://www.archiphoto.com