With New Pentax SLR, Ricoh Targets Market Previously Dominated by Leica

pcmag.com:

In the film era, photographers would need make a decision about what type of photos they'd make when loading a camera. Color and black-and-white film called for different approaches to composition and exposure. In the digital era, ready access to Raw processing has moved that decision-making process to the editing room, with exceptions. The Pentax K-3 Mark III Monochrome, announced today by Ricoh Imaging, is one of those exceptions.

The K-3 Mark III is the first SLR we've seen with a 5-axis stabilized monochrome sensor, but it's not an entirely new concept. Leica kicked off the black-and-white digital craze with its M Monochrom rangefinder way back in 2012, and sells the M10 Monochrom today, while medium format camera maker Phase One has a 150MP Achromatic back for its IQ4 system.

Leica and Phase are notoriously expensive brands, however, and while Pentax cameras aren't quite as budget-friendly as they were in the K10D era, they don't call for a second mortgage. The standard K-3 Mark III is positioned around $2,000 as a body only, and at $2,199.95 the Monochrome edition is priced to own.

We've not yet tried Pentax's version, but it follows the same concept as others. Digital image sensors start out as black-and-white, they don't get the ability to "see" color until a Bayer RGB filter is added. It's a design choice that cuts out some resolution—the RGB overlay means the camera can't see every color at every pixel site, so interpolation fills in some missing gaps. With a monochrome sensor, light is captured at every pixel site, for pictures with richer tones and texture.

Black-and-white sensors also gather about twice the light as color counterparts, and don't show any sort of chroma noise, for exceptional picture quality