Monochrome sensor question

[PeterAit]

I finally bit the bullet and ordered a Leica Monochrom, and between UPS and the weather my overnight delivery has turned into 3 days (and counting). So to amuse my impatient self I am trying to educate myself about camera sensors and how they work.

I understand how the Bayer array works, with 4 individual sensels (2 green, 1 red, 1 blue) being combined in processing to provide one pixel in the final full-color image. This tells me that the sensor in a (say) 25 MP camera really has 100 million individual sensing elements, combined by fours to give 25 MP.

If this is true, then I wonder why Leica limited the Monochrom to 24 MP. Each sensel can be its own pixel, so it seems like it would be easy to create a monochrome camera with 100 MP or more. Maybe the lenses aren’t up to it? What say you?

[32BT]

I understand how the Bayer array works, with 4 individual sensels (2 green, 1 red, 1 blue) being combined in processing to provide one pixel in the final full-color image. This tells me that the sensor in a (say) 25 MP camera really has 100 million individual sensing elements, combined by fours to give 25 MP.

No, 4 individual sensels are turned into 4 full-color pixels. If it says: 25MP colorcamera, they mean 25MP bayer sensels, half of which are green, and 2 quarts being blue and red. 

[Telecaster]

When a four-pixel Bayer matrix is "demosaiced" each individual pixel is given R, G & B values. This is done via fancy math that makes a series of educated guesses based on some starting assumptions and also the RGB values of nearby already-demosaiced pixels…AKA "interpolation." There's an iterative aspect to the process too.

With the Monochrom there's still computation going on before RAW data is rendered, but of course there's no Bayer layer to peel off.

-Dave-