Latest Fuji X-trans vs Bayer, has X-trans lost it already?

HatWearingFool wrote:

michaeladawson wrote:

The X-Trans design was applied to 16 MP sensors in Fujifilm's first generation mirrorless cameras (e.g. X-Pro, X-T1). At that time X-Trans cameras had two benefits; increased resolution due to removal of the AA filter and reduced color moire due to the different CFA pattern.

At 24+ MP on an APS-C camera most competitors have removed the AA filter from their Bayer equipped bodies. So as a practical matter there should be little difference in resolution between Bayer and X-Trans sensors with the same MP count.

There still seems to be a small advantage with color moire reduction at 24MP for X-Trans compared with a Bayer equipped sensor. The advantage should be further reduced if competitors start introducing 30+ MP cameras.

So the question that is often debated, with no definitive answer, is whether the X-Trans CFA is worth it due to the extra processing power needed and the different handling required for raw developer software.

The X-Trans CFA also makes it much more difficult for Fujifilm to implement things like pixel shifting. That doesn't matter to me but it does to some.

I agree that a shift to bayer would mean little one way or another to end results. But Fuji is using x-trans as a product differentiator in an attempt to add some cachet to their higher end models. It would be difficult for them to walk back the marketing talk now. But maybe if they come up with something else, or someway to sell a new implementation (processing) of bayer?

But this is the second time today I've seen people talking about the extra processing power required for x-trans raws? Has anyone actually experienced a difference in system requirements for processing equivalently sized bayer and Fuji raw files? I've never noticed any speed difference between processing 24mb Sony bayer raws and 24mb Fuji x-trans raws. I'm really curious if this is a real thing?

The X-Trans sensor pattern takes significantly more processing to handle well than the Bayer sensor pattern. In X-Transformer you can fairly easily run a side by side test comparing the RAW processing speed by disabling (setting to None) the sharpening, noise reduction and lens correction options. This basically isolates the processing to just the demosaic (or interpolation) of the sensor pattern, there is some file loading and saving time still that will be shared regardless of Bayer or X-Trans, but you should find that the X-Trans sensor takes about 2-3x longer to process than an identically sized Bayer file.

For example you could compare an X-H1 (24MP X-Trans) to X-A7 (24MP Bayer) and the Log window (Command/Ctrl-L) will show a time of conversion for each file.

The RAW processing is only one portion of the whole processing time and depending on computer performance the demosaic may not be a huge time cost overall, but its not an insignificant portion of the typical RAW processing time either. Some RAW processors obviously will be faster or slower than others with Bayer, same goes for X-Trans, but if reasonably similar quality is desired in my opinion X-Trans will always be notably slower. The X-Trans pattern just requires more complex interpolation and other processing to provide good/similar results to Bayer and there are no magic shortcuts to faster speed that don't sacrifice some quality/artifacts.

Brian Griffith (author of X-Transformer)

Iridient Digital