[Leica] B&W Leica?

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

Me too, Lew. On the "I-don't-really-get-it mix" end.
But on the non theoretical end people are making monochrome images from
their raw files from standard digital cameras EVERY DAY.
Nobody told them about the evils of their Bayer layers in their cameras.
Its like dying and going to heaven the way we can WYSIWYG real time
filtering so that separation in the image can be maximized and made to look
exactly as the photographer wishes. As could not be done with a 1001 gels
and glass filters in the field.
There is no talk about the lack of quality of these images.
There is no talk about  about the need to make them sharper or better.
A black and white sensor camera is a fix for something which ain't broken
but is quite the opposite... Doing real well.
As far as black and white image making the digital age is a New Renaissance.
A new dream come true.

The black and white digital camera thing is a hold over from when black and
white film photographers were faced with the daunting task of understanding
and working with digital photography in the 1990s. And they were faced with
the unsavory idea of having a camera in hand which shot color. Kodak made a
black and white body and that was the obvious direction we thought we should
take. (I'm someone with then a black and white darkroom going way back)
Though I believe that and the other bodies of Kodaks were fairly disastrous
in a highly experimental climate of early digital photography.

If someday someone makes a monochrome 24x36mm digital sensor and makes a
large print with it from it which looks close to what you get from a medium
format digital sensor than people will sit up and take notice. A market for
the product will reveal itself instantly and the product then would have the
justification for being put into production.
Until that time its ghostware being theorized mainly by people who have a
big problem with digital photography and would rather shoot film with
results we'll not be likely to ever see.

In the end a horrible thing happened. Digital photography got me doing a
much higher percentage of color over black and white. And I didn't die and
go to hell.

-- 
Mark Rabiner
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/lugalrabs/springdays/


> From: Lew Schwartz <lew1716 at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:44:07 -0400
> To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Subject: Re: [Leica] B&W Leica?
> 
> I'll just throw this into the I-don't-really-get-it mix: If the
> sensors are deficient in registering any part of the spectrum, it
> seems to me that it'd be pretty easy to compensate in the firmware
> before or after writing it into storage.
> 
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