Noticed something odd yesterday about my camera. It's a fuji finepix s5600 and is 5.1megapixel and the jpegs it produces are 5.1 etc and I always assumed the raw files would be too. I've had it since september but only just noticed that they are reported as 10.2mp in windows and fujis raw developer develops them as 10.2 also. I never paid much attention to this before since I use acr to develop them and always have it set as 5.1mp because that is what the sensor is but the tooltip resolution caught my eye yesterday (I have finepix raw update in which gives jpeg preview of .raf files and tooltip on hover that shows resolution, exp, f stop, iso, etc).

Looking into it today apparently the arrangement of the detectors in the fuji ccd is diagonal so with processing to translate into usual horizontal/vertical grid it gives a res of 10mp. I guess it takes too much power or too complex an algorithm to make jpeg from captured data in camera hence only works when saving this raw data to later process in comp. This feature isn't advertised nor is it anywhere in the manual but it seems it isn't mistake as fujis own inhouse software does this. This seems odd to me as I didn't think a 5.1 sensor would produce images twice the size without interpolation, does anyone know anything about this, particularly about fuji's ccd technology? I don't know anything about their super ccd specs and I assumed was standard ccd, it's not their other double detector sensor by the way (ie. the one with 2 sensors per photo site, one for regular data and one for highlights). I doubt it is simply by interpolation or the option would exist for jpeg processing too I presume but surely it doesn't give equal res to standard 10mp ccd sensor or they would advertise the fact (since the "bigger number = better" game is often played as part of their marketing pitch).

I will still use acr since it is much better especially sharpening wise since fuji software is either muddy and much much too soft or produces horrendous halos. If this is genuine 10mp can acr process it the same way fuji software does because I like acr although as I think I've mentioned in past acr out the box settings for my camera (even with camera profiles in) is way out (blue is super over saturated and gamma too high but easy to fix).