What is in a raw file? It sure isn't a picture

This below are a few lines at 476111 in a raw file that is 47781 lines long (and that is a small D70 raw file)


‹åë€AŸ›Ÿ 1’=[è$ùuóÿÌÈÏÑ%›–êl¢XZ®ÓClose‹“Èív|\ÇŽBó¸AÙæµ´.Šã>ã€ÂmªîÿC¹“æ*G¶
‚A§ñs9J'Èjf:VO ç‹H{‹|ƒkÛŒÙY%24º–ÞAéÒn²‘%î_5N0NÕë,ô5#ŏgxì>PߢܙLƒÙî›öî,°ÃҍÛ1Xw‘Î^Üt‹Žæ_ üÁ¡:eŸ_ýë/‰"‘-Ýü'&É1x$yÍïéÙ¯ÌyxóÛ'qJoÚ<€ŠtƒÁã¹Î‘;½S,Íò_yýxgs–†¡ˆäñ(Ñíx~qÂ_#3¼ŽPxØÌê&ùŠA€€Áådžà ´â#⵩!"”‰@Ç~šûa™üµŒGd:”Åé¼’fÚd ‚gj÷9¬çSqЬÑ5]j{™æò¿ë=GÏ7JÛÆò¼M©Lûé¹:ƒˆG ŒÈ勶ãØÈøB ¾‰‚áb¶]ã@“²…,šR}l‡]Ф¡qè µ’‰zˆ|v¦¦Òµ*^ÞGðÿÏßAí.Âò“únz‰‡¦D™óÍgŸ7‘Kf„n˜ý0|ïAÙþ„˜Ö
ñÖ&ØII>…]‘Àc:Ðò)A¾
Yikes! I suppose someone would have to be REALLY bored then.

My friend did a project on this that explores the data created by a camera and how it corresponds to a photo. He made this print of an image and on the back he printed the entire binary code of the image. He also had a recording of himself reading 1 of the 42 pages of code aloud.
Photo Binary — Kei Ito Photography

Technically Kei Ito is not printing binary code but hexadecimal. Maybe you could inform him of this.

Zoom in on his image here .

He is clearly using characters other than 1 and 0. To the best of my vision it looks like letters and numbers so unless he's taken a rather unconventional encoding it's hexadecimal.
 
I was thinking that i remember seeing that in person when I posted this... Ill give him a call soon and ask.
 
Oh I just remembered something... I think another friend asked him and he said he took the Binary code and tried using it but it was too long to visibly fit all the zeros and ones, so he converted it to hexadecimal. The name just stuck or something I guess.
 
You can see a raw file as an image. If you look at the Bayer raster without demosaicing it the image will be visible through the filter array. Those red, green, and blue filters will have different brightness values and your photo will look very dark and very green but you will be able to recognize the image.

And you could in fact process the image out of the CFA without demosaicing it -- albeit only in monochrome. This is a raw photo that was not demosaiced. I converted it to monochrome and made some effort to hide the CFA including adding some fake grain. Then I adjusted the tone response.

trophy_room.jpg


Here's the file full-res: Trophy Room -- if you zoom in 100% you'll be able to see the Bayer raster in the sky and especially in the stop sign.

Joe
 

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