Originally posted by Fauxton
No the rendition has nothing to do with the sensor technology. I'm afraid that is a urban myth. What it may encompass is the selection of the bayer array colors and perhaps in the JPEG engine, the tuning and noise parameters. If you are shooting raw and post processing it has a lot to do with the camera profile used by the raw processor.
Yet there does seem to be a consistent look delivered by the classic 6mp CCD used in the *ist DS and other cameras, no matter which of the many different raw processors available is used. And if you look through the K10D Club here on Pentax Forums, you'll also see a consistent rendering style from the 10mp CCD that remains no matter which raw processor is used.
I use my own custom profiles created with a Macbeth card and the Adobe DNG Profile Editor, but even the so results I get from the 10mp CCD sensor have a very different rendering style than those from the 20mp CMOS. So there must be something more going on than just the influence of the camera profile and raw processor.