Re: [PLUG] which image transfer format?

[Jeff Abrahamson <jeff@purple.com>]

On Tue, Oct 15, 2002 at 03:41:18PM -0400, Jeff Weisberg wrote:
> [2] the real world is not 24 bit color

Actually, neither is your digital camera, unless maybe it's extremely
high end. Most digital cameras have eight bit CCD's with color masks
over them, so, essentially, one pixel is 8 bit red, the next 8 bit
green, the next 8 bit blue, repeat. (In practice, it may use a
different color space, and so forth.)

The act of saving to the card, which typically takes a second or two,
involves something like 100 operations per pixel, and is mostly about
interpolating colors. This is why digital photos of sunrises or
forests, where everything is essentially shades of the same color,
usually look splotchy. It turns out to be a very good approximation
for most things we take pictures of, though.

This is one of the advantages of technologies like X3
<http://www.foveon.com/>, which do capture 24 bit color and so get to
skip the time and (energy) expense of interpolation. In the case of
X3, they also do it in CMOS, which is lower power than CCD's.

-- 
 Jeff

 Jeff Abrahamson  <http://www.purple.com/jeff/>

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