I have seen on Dpreview that fujifilm has been granted a patent for a new type of sensor with a strange non-Bayer pattern.
Thinking about it... Is there a camera using a simpler Bayer RGBW pattern? It would be interesting, because:
you certainly loose some color resolution, but
the photodiode under the clear filter will receive more light (up to three time for a gray target),
So you could have a kind of mix between a normal camera and a Leica MM one, with less luminance noise in exchange for less color resolution...
Did any firm explore this path in the past? Or I am missing some big shortcoming?
PS: RGBW displays do exist and have advantages versus normal ones, so for reciprocity sensors could have some advantage too, our not?