Pixel Binning / Sensor plus... why don't all MF backs offer this?

[EricWHiss]

Just wondering about this ... and had been looking for pixel binning software.    Probably for a bunch of reasons it's not commonly done ... but lots of info on astronomical and microscopy sites make reference to pixel binning being easy with CCD sensors...     

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

My impression is that the binning is done in hardware and it is patented.

Because the pixels are in a bayer pattern you cannot just bin four pixels into one, becuase color information would be lost. So you need to bin red pixels with red pixels, green pixels with green pixels and blue pixels with blue pixels. Phase One has develop a smart method of doing it. It is explained on one of LLVJs videos.

It's possible to bin in software, this is what you essentially do when you downscale the image. Read noise is not affected by software binning, so it is not as good as hardware binning.

Best regards
Erik

Just wondering about this ... and had been looking for pixel binning software.    Probably for a bunch of reasons it's not commonly done ... but lots of info on astronomical and microscopy sites make reference to pixel binning being easy with CCD sensors...     

[A.Garcia]

Binning is a kind of quantum addition at photon level and can't be done in software. As Erik points, it's easy in monochrome sensors as you can bin contiguous pixels, but with bayer CCD's, additional work must be done in order to avoid artifacts and lost of resolution.

This video explains Phaseone's binning technology.

http://youtu.be/sG8wabwIEfg

For further information read here

[EricWHiss]

Garcia, thanks those were very useful links.

[EricWHiss]

btw - These were two the articles that I had read before posting....

http://learn.hamamatsu.com/articles/binning.html
http://www.ccd.com/ccd103.html

It looks like Phase has a new spin on the grouping of pixels but the ways described in the articles I linked still increase the SNR. 

And so if I bought the Leaf AFi 12 instead of the phase IQ 180, and didn't get their sensor plus features what can I do to get a smaller but cleaner file? 20mp is really enough for a lot of things.  Is there any software for this that does a better job than downsampling in PS5?   

[DavidP]

You know, I had an original Phase One P-25 non plus, It had pixel binning, just on 800. It was not very usable though, I guess it took some work to perfect it better.

[deejjjaaaa]

it's easy in monochrome sensors as you can bin contiguous pixels

or foveon sensors where binning was implemented for ages... http://www.foveon.com/article.php?a=71



PS: P1 jhas to correct the statement in their .PDF "...until now, success has been achieved only in black and white...".

[Ajoy Roy]

It looks like Phase has a new spin on the grouping of pixels but the ways described in the articles I linked still increase the SNR. 

And so if I bought the Leaf AFi 12 instead of the phase IQ 180, and didn't get their sensor plus features what can I do to get a smaller but cleaner file? 20mp is really enough for a lot of things.  Is there any software for this that does a better job than downsampling in PS5?   

Depends when you need 20MP resolution. If I needed 20MP I would go the 35mm way. You get faster shooting and wider ISO range. Of course you may not get the MF look from 35mm gear.