carstenw wrote:
It is still a sensor which samples 12 million different locations in the plane, and interpolates to get the missing data, isn't it. I agree with you that this is essentially a 6MP camera, and would never recommend that anyone use it at the 12MP setting, but I don't think there is the basis for saying that 6 million sites don't count because they don't record much information any more than the Foveon guys can say that my D800 is a 12MP camera.
Nope. It's more technical and more subtle than that. Some quotes from Thom Hogan's review:
"That's not to say that it operates like a 6mp camera, though (this is where people get confused). First, one of the unique aspects of the SuperCCD designs Fujifilm uses compared to the Sony and Nikon sensors you find in the other Nikon mount bodies is that the Bayer pattern is angled at 45 degrees. While this doesn't sound like it should produce a difference, it does. Essentially, by angling the Bayer pattern the Fujifilm engineers get a "boost" in horizontal and vertical resolution at the expense of diagonal resolution. Traditional Bayer patterns (as used in all the Nikon DSLRs) get a "boost" in diagonal resolution at the expense of horizontal and vertical resolution. So what, you say? Consider gravity and its impact on how detail is organized in both the natural and man-made world: if you keep the camera perpendicular to the gravitational force (i.e. hold the camera level ;~) you get the maximum resolution ability of the Fujifilm bodies on the axis that has the most detail. This is not a trivial increase. Technically, it works out to as much as a 1.4x difference, so the 3000x2000 native pixels for the Fujifilm 6mp SuperCCD are acting more like a 4200x2800 sensor on the primary axis. The drawback is that diagonal lines are going to be more likely to show stair stepping than on a traditional Bayer sensor of the same number of pixels (which puts its highest resolution capability on the diagonal)."
"The second benefit that Fujifilm uses apparently has to do with the demosaic into 12mp. The default JPEG size for the 6mp S5 Pro is 12mp! In other words, the camera interpolates to a larger image size by default (you can turn this off). But as you'll learn, the 12mp image is slightly better at rendering detail than you'd expect from taking a 6mp image and using traditional interpolation routines. I conjecture that Fujifilm has a unique demosaic that takes into account something about the unique spatial relationship of the photo diodes."
"Just as with the S3 Pro, my conclusion is that the Fujifilm 6mp SuperCCDs really resolve most detail at about the level you'd expect an 8mp camera to."