# Monochrome converted 5DII



## o hey tyler (Jun 10, 2013)

http://item.mobileweb.ebay.com/viewitem?itemId=121123221127

Anyone interested?


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## tirediron (Jun 10, 2013)

Huh... I wasn't even aware that such a modification was possible.  Neat.


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## runnah (Jun 10, 2013)

Can I convert it to shoot only sepia?


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## o hey tyler (Jun 10, 2013)

runnah said:


> Can I convert it to shoot only sepia?



Only if you're lame enough.


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## ceejtank (Jun 10, 2013)

...why would someone modify a camera that can shoot in color, to ONLY shoot in B&W when you can do that through the settings / through post processing...?  What an idiot.


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## nycphotography (Jun 10, 2013)

ceejtank said:


> ...why would someone modify a camera that can shoot in color, to ONLY shoot in B&W when you can do that through the settings / through post processing...?  What an idiot.



did you actually read the description of the camera on ebay?


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## ceejtank (Jun 10, 2013)

nycphotography said:


> ceejtank said:
> 
> 
> > ...why would someone modify a camera that can shoot in color, to ONLY shoot in B&W when you can do that through the settings / through post processing...?  What an idiot.
> ...



Yeah I did. And I went to the "website" that looks like it's from netscape back in 1998.  I'm not sure if I believe this random website.  Graphs can be faked, he's showing pictures in photoshop, which we all know can be edited before uploading.  I'd like to see someone veritable test this.  I feel if this were the case, it might be more prevalent.


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## o hey tyler (Jun 10, 2013)

ceejtank said:


> ...why would someone modify a camera that can shoot in color, to ONLY shoot in B&W when you can do that through the settings / through post processing...?  What an idiot.



If you didn't understand what the point is, I think you should rethink the idiot remark. 

No Bayer/AA filters, higher degree of sharpness. Leica did the same thing with the M-Monochrom. This 5DII costs 1/3rd of the price though and offers auto focus, and I'm assuming video as well.


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## ceejtank (Jun 10, 2013)

No.  I still think he's an idiot.  I won't trust a site that looks like it was designed as a high school students website.  As I mentioned after, I'd need a review to be done by a legitimate source instead of this guy posting pictures from photoshop which can easily be edited or changed to prove his point.


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## o hey tyler (Jun 10, 2013)

ceejtank said:


> No.  I still think he's an idiot.  I won't trust a site that looks like it was designed as a high school students website.  As I mentioned after, I'd need a review to be done by a legitimate source instead of this guy posting pictures from photoshop which can easily be edited or changed to prove his point.



Kinda off topic but do you use reddit?


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## nycphotography (Jun 10, 2013)

While I agree that an amateurish website fails to impart confidence in a product aimed at imaging, and I agree that independent third party reviews are important, and the absence of such does not reinforce credibility... I disagree that they prove he's an idiot.

While he may well turn out to BE an idiot, I think the main difference comes down to whether one is of the type who "KNOWS things not in evidence" or whether one is of the type who "withholds judgment pending sufficient facts".

Sadly the world is far too full of the former, and severely lacking in the latter.


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## ceejtank (Jun 10, 2013)

I don't know.  His logic isn't correct about the # of pixels: "[FONT=Arial, Arial, Helvetica]Remember, for every four pixels on a color sensor, you get 2 green, 1 red and 1 blue.  So suppose the target as illuminated with a blue light?  You would only get 1/4 of the pixels possibly seeing the blue light.  Effectively, your 10 megapixel just turned into a 2.5 megapixel camera."[/FONT]  That's not how it works.  You still have 10 megapixels.  He's using false logic to try and prove a point.  If this WAS the case then if you were shooting a blue light - the red and blue would pick up 0 light and record nothing.  Which isn't the case.  

Hence why I say the guy is an idiot.


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## amolitor (Jun 10, 2013)

Bayer arrays actually cut your effective resolution to about 1/2, so you actually have about 5 effective megapixels in a 10 megapixel camera. That's in "typical usage", obviously if you're shooting a scene lit with narrowband red light, for instance, you're down to 2.5M. If you're shooting a monochromatic scene lit with pure white light, you can have all 10M, but you probably need to mess with the RAW converter to make it stop trying to recover color information.


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## amolitor (Jun 10, 2013)

Ctein and Mike on this very topic: The Online Photographer: Mike and Ctein Discuss B&W-Only Sensor Implementation (Digital B&W Part III)

Ctein is not omniscient, but on these sorts of topics he may be taken as completely knowledgable.


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## ceejtank (Jun 10, 2013)

amolitor said:


> Bayer arrays actually cut your effective resolution to about 1/2, so you actually have about 5 effective megapixels in a 10 megapixel camera. That's in "typical usage", obviously if you're shooting a scene lit with narrowband red light, for instance, you're down to 2.5M. If you're shooting a monochromatic scene lit with pure white light, you can have all 10M, but you probably need to mess with the RAW converter to make it stop trying to recover color information.





amolitor said:


> Ctein and Mike on this very topic: The Online Photographer: Mike and Ctein Discuss B&W-Only Sensor Implementation (Digital B&W Part III)
> 
> Ctein is not omniscient, but on these sorts of topics he may be taken as completely knowledgable.



I'll give the link a read through.  I'm assuming most people who would buy a specific camera for B&W would know about RAW and would shoot in it too, might be a bad assumption.


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## amolitor (Jun 10, 2013)

The point about the Bayer array is that you're literally trading resolution for chroma information. Using a sensor with no such array doesn't give you the chroma info, but you do get the resolution back. I don't have the math on hand for the bayer array situation, mainly because I haven't gone and looked for it, and I don't know or much care about the algorithms used.

I assume it is similar to the situation where you can trade resolution for bit depth. Audio systems routinely use 1-bit digital-to-analog converters, which are essentially an embodiment of this idea. They operate at insane frequencies, so you have enormous resolution (in audio terms - in electronics terms the frequencies involved are trivial) but almost no bit depth. By filtering the output, you lose resolution -- bringing the frequencies back into the range of audio -- and gain bit depth.

Anyways, you should be able to see the example with narrowband red light pretty easily, without doing any reading or even much thinking.


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## ceejtank (Jun 10, 2013)

Narrowband red yes, but a blue light like mentioned in his article is a different story.


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## amolitor (Jun 10, 2013)

Blue light works the same way, huh?

The point is that 3/4 of the pixels will read 0, and the other 1/4 will give some useful information. You still have 10 megapixels, but 7,500,000 of them are not doing anything useful in the way of telling you about what's in front of the lens.


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