[Leica] B&W only version of M8 - anyone else hear this?

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

At 9:43 PM -0400 10/2/06, Tina Manley wrote:
>At 09:06 PM 10/2/2006, you wrote:
>
>>Anyway, if there's any added rumors I'm all ears and VERY interested.
>>
>>Thanks for sharing!
>>
>>Adam
>
>I don't understand why anybody would want a B&W version over a RAW 
>version.  RAW is the negative.  You can develop it any way you want. 
>Once it's been developed as B&W, you can't redevelop it for 
>highlights or shadows or anything else.  Why would you want that? 
>RAW has all of the information that the camera captures.  B&W only 
>would throw away most of this information. Are you going to depend 
>on the camera software to develop the negative for you? It doesn't 
>make sense to make a B&W only camera!
>
>Tina

Hi Tina,

If a B&W only M8 were made, it could still shoot in RAW, with all 
that implies. The only lack would be the filtration effects that 
Jeffrey speaks of. You would have to use colour filters again for 
those effects. However, since the present colour sensors have those 
filters in front of them, you lose a couple of stops, not just one, 
on _every_ shot. Also, since you don't have to do the thing with the 
four adjacent pixels to extract colour information, but each pixel 
only has to deal with luminance level, the result should be much 
sharper; even sharper than the present M8 (which is already sharper 
than the 5D due to the lack of anti-alias filter). You would have a 
camera that produces files that are sharper and greater dynamic 
range, and has higher ISO capability. In these areas the improvements 
would not be minor. What you would give up is the ability to 
manipulated filter effects in post production.

If the price wasn't too much different than the current M8, I would 
definitely go for a M8-BW.

-- 
    *            Henning J. Wulff
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