Monochrome

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For this In Focus, my answer to a question we get a lot: which one is the Monochrome Pixii camera?

The direct answer: Pixii is a monochrome camera — and so is every other Pixii. Every camera we ship can record a real black-and-white negative, a true DNG. Yet there is no dedicated monochrome-only model; don't look for one in our store.

That is what makes Pixii singular — the only camera on the market that turns a color sensor into a true black-and-white camera. Not a look, nor a preset. Every Pixii lets the photographer choose, and switch to a genuine monochrome negative, when they see fit.

Monochrome on Pixii is a decision you make before you press the shutter. Switch it on and you stop seeing color — you start seeing light, shadow and form. It is, to me, the purest form of photography: painting with light.

Photographers tell us it changes the way they look at the world. That is the whole point.

"Why are you even doing that?" you may ask. Honestly? It all started during development, as an engineering tool — my own way of looking at the raw pixel values. I was building our image signal processor (ISP) from scratch, and being able to get rid of the Bayer checkerboard made all the difference.

I left it as an option in a menu. A friend found it and loved it. Then another one did — and soon it became a hit with the test photographers we showed the camera to — an accidental setting, now Pixii's most loved feature.

Building that ISP made it simply obvious: sensors are born monochrome. A pixel only counts light — color is not its concern. The Bayer filter is the only real difference between a color camera and a black-and-white one.

Once you have the exact spectral response of your filter, pixel by pixel, the math can run two ways. Forward, to reconstruct color — what every camera does. Or backward, to reconstruct the light itself. Our method for that second path is now patented: rebuilding the sensor's native response into a standard DNG. The formula for a true black-and-white negative.

This one really speaks to photographers — you'll know it from your own work. What Monochrome mode offers is an image you can truly develop. Not a JPEG whose tonal range is already fixed and limited, but a full-dynamic DNG — a real RAW file, up to 16 bits deep, in a standard, open format.

The whole editing process stays in your hands. Open it in Lightroom or Camera Raw and develop it to your taste — every tone, every highlight, every shadow, yours to work. Pixii adds a natural, film-like tone curve so it looks great straight away — yet the RAW stays untouched, free for you to develop your own way.

The best part? You have the choice.

Until now, photographers had to either give up color entirely, or buy a second, expensive body just for their black-and-white work.

With Pixii, there's no bank to break. The very same camera will shoot color for free.

A camera just for black and white: thousands.
A color one to set beside it: thousands more.
Doing both, with a single Pixii: priceless.

Thank you for reading. Until next time.

— David & the Pixii team