Passing of a legend

Dr. Bryce E. Bayer, the former Eastman Kodak scientist who invented the standard color filter pattern that bears his name, has died.

Aged 83, Bayer died on November 13 in Bath, Maine. According to a report in the New York Times, the cause of Bayer's death was a long illness related to dementia.

In Bayer-based color imagers, pixels on an image sensor are covered with a mosaic of red, green, and blue filters. In the Bayer pattern, 50% of the pixels are green, 25% are red, and 25% are blue. A technique called Bayer demosaicing is used to generate the red, green and blue values of each pixel to obtain a useful image from sensors that employ the Bayer filter.

The American scientist chose to use twice as many green pixels as red or blue to mimic the resolution and the sensitivity to green light of the human eye.

Today, there are other techniques that are used to produce color images. One such technique uses a prism to split light into three components that are then imaged by three separate sensors. Another uses a layered design where each point on the sensor array has photosensitive receptors for all three primary colors.

Despite these advances, the Bayer filter -- which was patented when he worked for Eastman Kodak in 1976 -- is the one that is most commonly found in most consumer cameras, camcorders, and scanners to create color images.

The staff of Vision Systems Design magazine would like to express our sincere condolences to Dr. Bayer's family.

He will be remembered as one of the greatest pioneers of digital imaging technology.

You press the button, we do the rest

This week, Eastman Kodak announced that it was to phase out its digital camera, pocket video camera, and digital picture frame businesses in the first half of this year.

Founded by George Eastman in 1889, the company made its name selling inexpensive film cameras and making large margins from the film, chemicals, and paper that were required to capture and develop the images that they took.

Now, by getting out of the digital camera business that replaced its old film cameras, the company expects to achieve operating savings of more than $100 million a year.

It's a sad state of affairs but hardly unexpected. The move comes hot on the heels of last month's announcement that the company had filed for filed voluntary petitions for Chapter 11 business reorganization in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

But perhaps it doesn't quite mean the end of the Kodak brand, because the company is seeking to expand its current brand licensing program by looking for interested parties to license the products instead.

It's better news, thank goodness, at the company's former Image Sensor Solutions (ISS) division business. Now called Truesense Imaging -- after being acquired from Eastman Kodak by Platinum Equity through a transaction with Kodak that closed on Nov. 7, 2011 -- it would appear that the only thing to have changed at the company is its name.

Truesense Imaging, still with its headquarters in Rochester, NY, has kept Kodak's research and development, marketing, and business operations intact, including its highly specialized image-sensor manufacturing operation.

The name change, which was also only announced this week, is so recent that when our European correspondent met up with Truesense Imaging's Michael DeLuca at the AIA Business Conference just a few weeks ago in Orlando, Florida, he was still carrying a Kodak business card, which was -- naturally enough -- printed on Kodak paper.

Perhaps he should hang onto it. It might be worth some money as an antique in the future.