Digital BW, The Print

Hello,

I've been following this debate with interest and would like to point out 
the following:

Canon just came out with a 1D Mark III which is 14 bits thus provides 16384 
possible tones.

Specialized equipment such as Astronomy cameras already produce 16 bit 
output thus 65536 possible tones. Some models even provide special features 
to prevent filling up the wells in order to manage extreme dynamic range 
issues.

As typical photographers (amateur or pro) we may never need to go beyond 12, 
14 or 16 bits but keeping an eye on specialized equipment and potential 
directions is always interesting.

Most importantly coding application to ensure you can support new wider 
formats without having to recode everything is important regardless of how 
the implementation is done.

I earn a living as a programmer and I have been involved recently in project 
to access our ability to undergo a porting activity from 32 bit code to 64 
bits. Now compound this for operating systems across windows and unix who do 
not handle the bit depth in the same way.

A lot of the code was written based on the idea that we will never ever need 
more than 32 bits to express something in and as always a few years later we 
are stuck with the results of making assumptions that didn't hold up to the 
test of time.

Who know what's next but I am sure enjoying the ride and its possible future 
directions.

Cheers,
Pierre

>From: "dealy663" <dealy663@...>
>Reply-To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
>To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: [Digital BW] Re: 8bit to 16 bit
>Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 18:24:53 -0000
>
>I doubt there will ever be a need for a 32 bit camera. As things stand
>right now I don't believe that there is much in the way of an
>appreciable difference whether the final image is in 8 or 16 bit
>values. 4294967296 (2 to the 32nd power) independent tones in an image
>is complete overkill and would ridiculously bloat the size of the
>files even further. As things stand right now I believe that most high
>end digital cameras capture a 12 bit image 4096 independent tones.
>
>Paul, whether the redistribution of the pixels is done by curves, the
>contrast slider or other tool makes no difference. If your adjustment
>causes a change which exceeds the amount of headroom between each
>discrete tonal value then you are going to reduce the number of
>independent tones in your image. In an image that begins with 256
>tones in an 8-bit space then your headroom is 0, while in a 16-bit
>space your headroom is 255. An image that begins with 128 (evenly
>distributed) tones in an 8-bit space has 1 bit of headroom between
>values, while in 16-bit land it would have 512 bits of headroom.
>
>Please keep in mind that I've massively simplified how these things
>work in the real world. A contrast adjustment is not likely to be a
>simple subtraction/addition of a single value to all pixels in the
>image not equal to the midpoint.
>
>Maybe I should take the time to write a full fledged article on how
>this stuff works.

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