Hi,
This shows that desinformation works.
Dynamic range is range between highest reproducible white and lowest reproducible dark. Darks are always limited by noise.
Light, on it's own, is noisy. It is coming in quanta. A pixel can capture so and so many photons (quanta of light) your sensor on the Hassy can hold around 60000 electron charges per pixel. Normally, an electron charge corresponds to a captured photon.
As I said, the light itself is noisy. If you would photograph a white piece of paper overexposing 3 EV for the white you would have around ETTR (Expose To The Right) exposure with the sensor fully utilised. In this the paper white would be represented by a bell curve, centered around 60000 with 65 of the pixels having between 59750 and 60250 electron charges.
Now, looking at the other end the Hasselblad sensor has a readout noise of around 10.5 e-, if I recall correctly. So the ratio between the Full Well and the readout noise would be 60000 / 10.5 -> 6190. If we will represent that range with a binary number it would need log(6190) / log (2) -> 12.5 bits. So that sensor is a barely 13 bit device.
To explain the difference between your Canon and Hasselblad you need to go somewhere else. One factor is that your Canon has fewer pixels and Canon has quite noisy readout, too. If you look at actual pixels you would see the noise at the pixel level. But at any other size the Hasselblad would use more pixels for each visible dot. That would reduce the noise.
But not because it has more bits of data but because it has more pixels.
The major factors for colour rendition are in all probability two. One is the Color Filter Array. The pixels don't have colour, they just count photons. Colour is added by using a Color Filter Array.
The Kodak CCDs used to have quiet extreme CFA designs, probably optimised for studio light. Canon's are often used in mixed light and under poor light conditions. Their CFA designs are more general purpose and probably more permissive.
The other factor is the colour profile. The signal coming out of the sensor is a voltage, that is amplified and converted to binary data by an ADC, which happens to be a commercial flash converter older cameras.
The binary data is converted to RGB data using a colour profile. Hasselblad is known for well made colour profiles.
Later generation CMOS sensors have moved the ADCs to the sensor. There is normally thousands of them, one for each column. This allows to use slow but precise converters. But it also means that the vendor of the sensor decides the number of bits and the Sony sensor used by Fuji and Hasselblad is a 14-bit device.
The enclosed screen dump of the RawDigger histogram of a raw file from the X1D-50c clearly indicates that each fourth channel contains data. That the gaps also contain data indicates that some image manipulation has been done on the raw data. That could be flat field correction of the raw data, or simply some dither noise added.
The second screen dump is coming from an Phase One IQ350 shot, courtesy of Digital Transitions. This shows no sign of postprocessing in raw. Phase One also claims 16 bit colour. The IQ 350 uses the same Sony sensor as the X1D-50c
The last attachments shows the white patch on IQ 350 shot. It shows what a great spread of signal a single patch can have. Some of that may come from the rough surface of the patch, but most is coming from variation of incident photons.
Best regards
Erik
Where does Hasselblad say this?
I read on the website:
Colour definition 16 bit; Dynamic range up to 14 stops
How does colour depth or bits per pixels relate to dynamic range anyway?
All I know is that my 2007 H3DII has 16 bits of this "marketing nonsense" and the colour is far better than my new 14 bit Canon.
Perhaps Fuji has 14 bits because it is a lesser camera, and there is nothing wrong with that for the market they choose.