Almost every camera employs anti-aliasing; that'd seem to =>approximately<= result in DNGs with one-quarter the effective pixel count, and color artifacts possibly(!) eliminated or greatly reduced—since that is of course the REASON for AA.
Gaussian blur should give a weak approximation of AA. For example, light falling on the top-left (Red) pixel wouldn't be shared with its upper and leftwards neighbors under AA; it'd all go to green & blue pixels that're right and down (in the common arrangement) from the Red.
But Gaussian blur would send a fraction of its light to all 8 Green + Blue neighbors, while reducing the light attributed to the original Red pixel. In that sense, there could be excessive fuzzing of the artificial image versus what a perfect lens + AA filter would produce.
Almost every camera employs anti-aliasing; that'd seem to =>approximately<= result in DNGs with one-quarter the effective pixel count, and color artifacts possibly(!) eliminated or greatly reduced—since that is of course the REASON for AA.
Gaussian blur should give a weak approximation of AA. For example, light falling on the top-left (Red) pixel wouldn't be shared with its upper and leftwards neighbors under AA; it'd all go to green & blue pixels that're right and down (in the common arrangement) from the Red.
But Gaussian blur would send a fraction of its light to all 8 Green + Blue neighbors, while reducing the light attributed to the original Red pixel. In that sense, there could be excessive fuzzing of the artificial image versus what a perfect lens + AA filter would produce.
(Happy to be corrected on this, btw)