Monochrome conversion

[David Whitehouse]

Is there anyone who has first hand experience with converting a digital camera to monochrome by removal of the Bayer filter. I am at a crossroads to determine if it is worth doing., I have an older nex-7 ( 2nd body) which I purchased cheap and in mint condition.. i love my BW photography of street images, architecture and graffiti and have always simply converted the colored RAW in lightroom to BW and made all my adjustments including HSL sliders which is a plus to get different shades. I realize that this feature will be lost on a BW raw file as the sensor is now simply going to capture the luminensence but theoretically better tonal value and sharpness.
Knowing that the photos are primarily going to be taken with wide angle lenses that often lose sharpness at edges and the fact that I really don't produce prints larger than 13x19 just wondering if the increased image and print quality is worth the 500.00 CDN funds to convert...
Thanks.









































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[ian_s]

If you don't go above 19" print size and considering the possible impact of the differing stack height post bayer filter removal I don't think you will see much improvement in printed images.

Many Sony users who use manual adaptors for Leica lenses see a wide angle edge issue and this is down to the sensor stack height difference, in essence I think you will loose any theoretical sharpness you may gain.

You will also need to under expose to guard against unrecoverable high light clipping losing some of the noise improvement and also add some colored filters (with their own light loss) to get the effects you might be used to with b&w film.

Hope this helps