Tag Info

When discussing the number of colors perceptible to the human eye, I tend to refer to the 2.4 million colors of the CIE 1931 XYZ color space. It is a fairly solid, scientifically founded number, although I do admit it may be limited in context. I think it may be possible for the human eye to be sensitive to 10-100 million distinct "colors" when referring to ...

It makes some measurable difference but does not tell the whole story. DxOMark's portrait score is a technical assessment of the output of various cameras specifically in terms of color depth, which they carefully describe as having a "correlation" with color sensitivity, which is the actual nuance in color. If you look at the results of that metric, you ...

More bits usually doesn't mean more range, but more precision. That is to say, the ends of the scales, the blackest blacks and whitest whites, will stay where they are (at 0 and the max value) but the number of values between them will be greater with more bits. You quickly fall into diminishing returns here as there simply is no need for that much ...

Cambridge in Colour has a very good article on this. If the sensor has a linear A/D converter, the bit depth would cap dynamic range at at 14 EVs as a theoretical limit. However, if it is non-linear, then the bit depth doesn't necessarily correlate. From that, I think we can determine that the sensor in the K-5 doesn't have a linear A/D converter. I can ...

The photosites of a digital sensor are actually analog devices. They don't really have a bit depth at all. However, in order to form a digital image, an analog-to-digital converter (A/D converter) samples the analog signal at a given bit depth. This is normally advertised in the specs of a camera — for example, the Nikon D300 has a 14-bit A/D converter. But ...

Most sensor chips only record one color component per pixel, so one pixel can contain for example 14 bits of data for green intensity. The pixels are laid out in a grid where 50% of the pixels record green data, 25% red and 25% blue: RGRGRGRGRGRGRGR GBGBGBGBGBGBGBG RGRGRGRGRGRGRGR GBGBGBGBGBGBGBG RGRGRGRGRGRGRGR When this data is converted to RGB, two ...

For all intents and purposes, that would be 8-bits per channel or 24-bit per pixels because what you get out from the camera is a JPEG image and that is its limit. The sensor internally is highly likely to have a greater bit-depth, maybe 10 or 12 bits per channel. This is actually needed to produce an 8-bit-per-channel JPEG because sensor output is linear ...

You probably need to analyze things step-by-step as your question makes little sense. If you shoot RAW, then your card will contain RAW files. They should have an extension other than JPG. You should be able to confirm this simply by browsing to your card using the operating system file manager. If you see a RAW file (.CRW, .CR2, etc) than you have a RAW ...

Be careful not to confuse per-pixel bit-depth and per-component bit-depth. The output of digital sensors is almost always between 10 and 14-bit per-component on a linear scale. That would give between 30-bit color (1 billion) and 42-bit (4 trillions) per-pixel. The site DXOMark measures this using a normalized scale (explained in their white-paper) and ...

How can dynamic-range be larger than sensor bit-depth? Dynamic range is the logarithm of the ratio between the brightest and and the darkest intensities on the linear part of the sensibility curve. There may be other definitions, but in general it is derived from the ratio of two intensities, objective physical properties of the scene. It is a real ...

I've been working professionally with photos for ages. Can I tell the difference between working in 16-bit and 8-bit environment? Depending on the process, yes, I can. Can the client tell the difference? No, they cannot (unless if they are really photography-savvy. In other words, I wouldn't worry too much about it. There are several things (several ...

I think there is some confusion related to the differences between 12 and 14 bit RAW when it comes to its impact on the dynamic range. My understanding is that the 14-bit RAW does not expand the dynamic range. It expands neither the highlights nor the shadows. It gives you more gradual information between the darkest and brightest details the sensor can ...

"150: the number of hues that the eye can discriminate in the spectrum." "1,000,000: the number of colors (combinations of hue, saturation and brightness) that the eye can discriminate under optimal laboratory conditions." From visualexpert.com However, this seems to be a controversial subject.

The D4 is still a 14-bit RAW camera according to Nikon's own specifications page: NEF (RAW): 12 or 14 bit, lossless compressed, compressed or uncompressed So, it cannot capture 16-bit images off the sensor, at best they are still 14-bit. If I understand the page you linked, it sounds like they are saying the Expeed image processor chips are fully ...

It depends on both the image and how much editing you are planning to do. Let's say you're only going to adjust levels. Then 8-bit JPEG -> 16 bit PSD -> levels adjustment -> 8-bit JPEG Will give identical results to: 8-bit JPEG -> levels adjustment This is because an 8-bit image converted to 16-bit is identical to the 8 bit version (the ...

Firstly to be clear, dynamic range has an inverse relationship to noise - low noise (all else equal) leads to a greater dynamic range. Noise comes primarily from the sensor electronics (read noise, dark current noise), from the discrete nature of light (photon/shot noise) and from conversion from analogue to digital (quantisation noise). DXO mark dynamic ...

You're not looking at the "raw" values, you're looking at the "developed" values, given the current settings, in an 8-bit-per-channel colour space. And that's the case with most image software — when you're working in an RGB colour space, the values you use are 8-bit values, even if the image you are currently working with is in a 16-bit, 32-bit or ...

It is likely that the processing for JPEG and whatever digital processing is applied to the raw file is, is done in 16-bit to maintain quality then converted to 14-bit NEF (or 8-bit JPEG). In the end, it's unlikely to need 16 bits to store the raw data as a 14-bit number provides 14 stops of linear latitude (with exponential detail in each stop toward the ...