Digital BW, The Print

Paul D. DeRocco writes:

> Have you ever actually examined, at the pixel level, the results of
> the Bayer interpolation performed by a camera like a Canon 10D?

Yes.  The colors are smeared.

> You can talk all the theory you want, but they've developed some
> stunningly smart algorithms for edge detection, etc.

No amount of smartness in algorithms can abridge the laws of information
theory.

> There's nothing misleading about calling a 6 million site
> sensor with a Bayer pattern a 6 megapixel sensor.

That depends on what you mean by six megapixels.  Six megapixels from a
Bayer filter is very different from six megapixels from scanned film, or
six megapixels from a digicam that captures all colors at every pixel
(like the Foveon).

> The algorithms really do work, on real-life images.

They do not and cannot recover information that was missing from the raw
capture.

> It would be far more misleading for Foveon to say that their
> 3 megapixel sensor has three times the resolution as the number
> would suggest ...

I don't see how.