BnW sensor

[Heath Bennett]

I saw somewhere that someone wanted a BnW sensor camera.

This means, no aliasing, high ISO and/ or detail levels. Lots of fun I think.

Even better, imagine a bayer CCD that could switch each of the colours to an individual greyscale pixel.

For detail, imagine 12.2 D2x pixels turning into 4x the resolution. 48.8!

OR for ISO, 400-25,600...

Killer features that could change the way we see digital.

[pgatt]

I'd be in. Anyone want to buy a 20D? No, seriously though, love the 20D as I do, and the b/w mode in it is pretty sweet, something with that kind of resolution would be freaky cool!

[DaveB]

A 12 Mp camera would not become a 48 Mp camera, it would still be a 12 Mp camera, but each pixel would be derived from a single photosite and not reconstituted from the values of its surrounding photosites (which is how the colours in Bayer-pattern CFAs are calculated).

It's not that there are more pixels, but each pixel can be "better", with the camera having a higher resolution than a colour unit. This is akin to the resolution advantages of the Foveon sensor used in the Stigma DSLRs (but without the problems of layering the colour photosites on top of each other and ending up with noisy greens/etc...).

Kodak used to produce the 6 Mp DCS 760M (see this review from 2004). Unfortunately no-one currently makes such a camera, and while there are certainly a few of us out there who would be very interested in one, it remains to be seen whether any manufacturer decides it's worth their while making one...