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I was reading up on Panasonic black and white yesterday and found a few interesting bits.
>Panasonic camera department has ~200 employees, they do collaborate with the cine cam and television departments but otherwise they are a pretty small group
>The upside of being small is being more reactive to feedback
>The biggest camera market for Panasonic is Europe, especially France and Germany
>German feedback is usually more technical, while French feedback is more about the photographic process and art qualities
>One request that came frequently from European and especially French focus groups was how iconic Kodak Tri-X 400 was
>One engineer at Panasonic worked alone for three months on digitally copying the rendering of 400TX, shooting it on a Pentax with 50mm f/1.8 as reference
>Series of prints were shown to focus groups, including 400TX, Fujifilm Acros film sim, Panasonic L Monochrome etc. until naive viewers would consistently pair 400TX and the new jpeg engine (L Monochrome D) as closest to each other, though you can still tell the difference especially with how dynamic range works on digital vs. film
>The engine has to be reworked a little for each new sensor/SoC release so noise rendering remains consistent
>Grain settings low / medium / high were matched against 400TX, 800 iso film, and 400TX pushed to 1600.
