Beach Detris

This image begs to be printed. A friend blew it up to 11x14 on a Lightjet, and it looks fantastic! It completely captures the feeling of decay, rust, abondment. Unfortunately, it doesn't come across as well on a typical display.

I'm going to invoke editorial privilege here. I love my Canon digital SLR. It gives millions of pixels, at 12 bits per pixel. But I'm a black&white shooter at heart, and the color mask and anti-aliasing filters on the sensors are costing roughly 2 bits per pixel. That's 4x the dynamic range! A B&W-only camera may be a niche product (though I'd argue with that, since B&W film was always more than a niche), but it would be a profitable one. Hopefully somebody will fill that need.

Displays are another issue. JPEG is fine for many things, but at 8-bit color depth we lose a huge amount of color and luminance information everytime we convert from RAW. If HDR displays became prevalent, perhaps users could be nudged towards a better format. Or perhaps JPEG itself could be extended.

Ok, I'm off my soapbox. Thanks for listening. :)