[davidmanze]

Hi guys,

 

          JoJu first signaled that a photographer had been shooting with a new beta Nikon where the low light performance was several stops better than conventional sensors. 

 

  A little while later I came across an article stating that Nikon had been working with a new Sony sensor for their upcoming DSLR replacement that instead of using a conventional RGB sensor, they use a RGBW sensor where the W represented "white". An extra white pixel is added into the mix and just deals with the black/white component of the image and somehow enables noise levels to be reduced by up to 2 stops.

  

 

 

     and now here the angry photographer (TAP) claims that the announcement is to coincide with Nikon's 100 year anniversary celebrations and may be fairly soon.....

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL7Xh1S58vs&t=40s

 

 

 

 Watch with caution TAP is not everybody's cup of tea! 

 

 

 

 

 

    If it's true that the noise improvement could be up to 2 stops then that will put Nikon back in front in terms of IQ........

 

     .............. 2 stops is major!

[wim]

Stands to reason that it could indeed be at least one stop (1 R + 1 G + 1 B = 1 W), depending on the structure of the sensor. If it also is a BSI sensor, 2 stops certainly is a possibility (+ 4 * 25% on top).

 

Interesting would really be to see how it performs with B&W with an additional white pixel. Could be a winner indeed.

 

Kind regards, Wim

[Guest]

Such pattern was tried in mobile and quickly abandoned.


Nikon will probably solve processing in house so it should be great for JPEG shooters, but it will be a new X-Trans for anyone relying on RAW.

[davidmanze]

Such pattern was tried in mobile and quickly abandoned.


Nikon will probably solve processing in house so it should be great for JPEG shooters, but it will be a new X-Trans for anyone relying on RAW.

  Good point!  No doubt Adobe CC will have it up and running within a short time though, please subscribe!   

[Brightcolours]

It will be a somewhat small change to the "normal" bayer interpolation workflow, compared to Sigma's two styles of sensor and Fuji's alternative CFA pattern.

 

So my prediction is that DCRAW will quite quickly support such a RGBW scheme, and then many RAW converters will start to offer support?

[Guest]

It is totally new pattern, same as Fuji.


Basic support will be easy, but to make it really better than standard RGBG will be quite a task.

[Guest]

RGBG relies heavily on these GG for getting high luminance resolution,


Even slight uncompensated difference between G1 and G2 result moire patterns.


You can't just use W and G together, processing will be much more complex to archive same resolution as RGBG 

[Guest]

Then there are possible dynamic range issues,

If you want to preserve white channel from clipping you'll have to underexpose RB channels even more resulting more color noise.


Maybe white channel clipping will be considered ok and in these areas only RGB will be used with lower resulting resolution

RGBG is really clever and balanced approach that have outlived many competitors so far

[davidmanze]

I would imagine Nikon will supply a basic RAW converter as part of the package just to get you up and running until ACC get's going with a true converter!

[Guest]

Fuji XTrans once again

 

I would imagine Nikon will supply a basic RAW converter as part of the package just to get you up and running until ACC get's going with a true converter!