A GFX Monochrome?

Leave the feature out…and then call that a feature! 😂

I've often thought that as cameras get more technologically complex and commensurately more challenging for the user, suppliers could provide a setup module that allows you to disable or hide all the features you don't want.

I like the way that fuji allow you to customise what appears in the EVF using a checkbox system. Something similar but outside the camera, so you can customise away the features you don't care about as a one off exercise. What was the name of that car company that allowed you to design your own specification. Daewoo?

Hi,

My back of the envelope calculations come out such that a mono model would cost on the order of $750 more than for the companion color model at the $5k-ish price point.

What does a 3rd party stripping of the CFA cost?

And there's another point, that the mono sensor costs less to produce than the color one as the CFA step is omitted. But now there's all that part number and warehouse cost added to have then othe sensor. That'll go up with the production quantity needed to supply the initial run of cameras. Have to schedule a greater mono fab at the expense of the color one. It gets pretty involved rather quickly.

In the end, it might be cheaper for the end users to source a color camera and have it converted and deal with the Raw files yourself.

I know Jim has one also with the IR filter but I forget what that cost to have done.

I had a mono Kodak 6 MP APS-H sensor in a Nikon F5 which was companion to my color variant. The end result was noticably better to shoot mono with the sensor rather than convert a color shot to mono.

I can see having companion MF bodies.

Stan

Something around $700.

Do not see it happening but they are able to offer different sensors already in the gfx100. See the IR version: fujifilm-x.com/global/special/gfx-ir-camera/

Does Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw have a good workflow with modified cameras where the Bayer array has been removed? Given that there are already monochrome cameras in the market, they must have already implemented a solutuion so a checkbox to eliminate demosaicing would be straightforward?

Nope they don't.
Some people use monochrome2Dng:
www.fastrawviewer.com/Monochrome2DNG

I like photoninja way of handling the monochrome sensor. But free software RawTherapee or Art do a good job as well. Darktable might also have similar features, but I don't use it, so don't know.

Thanks - it’s disappointing that Adobe doesn’t make it easy.

darktable provides a number of different demosaic options of which one is called "passthrough (monochrome)".

The manual describes it thus:

Now to me that is slightly ambiguous as to whether it switches off the demosaic step 🙂

It cost me around £200 to have my X-T1 IR converted. Looking around the UK specialists, services for stripping the CFA are between £1200 and £2000.

Wouldn't that be a fabulous thing. Sigh. Just enough complication to ensure a well exposed raw file and leave all the jpg specific stuff completely off. And give us a true raw histogram, surely it can't be that hard.

If they are expecting an image from a camera with a removed mosaic filter, why would they do demosaicing?

In any event, you can always double check by looking for fine subtle color in the image. Demosaicing a monochrome sensor by mistake would cause hints of color (a 120/119/121 pixel, for example).

If my experience is any indication, you get a true raw histogram from monochromatic cameras. I think the designers would have to work at it to make it work any other way.

We are talking about two different things. A monochrome camera like the Pentax k3 iii or Leica monochrome will not have issues. The camera makers and the camera knows its a monochrome camera.

However, if you send your camera for monochrome conversion. It will still think its a color camera after the conversion and will try the demoisacing steps. So you need to process the raw files in specific special ways.
The camera will also adjust the colors for you and its quite magenta.

Hi,

My only experience with monochrome cameras is to shoot Raw and process later on a computer. In my case, two different Kodak units the 460m and the 660m. The 460 shots were processed with Photoshop 4 and a Kodak plug-in. The 660m used Kodaks own software, PhotoDesk.

So any new Mono camera I'd expect to have to do the same. And in the case of a converted color unit, something different than the current iteration of Photoshop. I don't think it has an option to not perform the demosaic step.

Stan

Lightroom and ACR do fine with the manufacturers’ implementations of monochrome cameras. Presumably they would do the same should Fuji make a monochrome GFX.

Hi,

That makes sense. The manufacturer would pass the info onto Adobe and then it all works.

Stan

People should realize as well that a monochrome raw is actually only different from an sRGB "monochrome" in a few very simple ways, so all they really have to do is watch out for the blackpoint and the tone curves. So, people could take the raw image themselves and make a final product out of it; none of the complexities of white balance, demosaicing, and raw->XYZ->display_colorspace are involved. Just like it was a lot easier to set up a film darkroom for B&W, as opposed to color, the same is true of the digital darkroom; you don't have to know a whole lot to work directly with the raw monochrome image.