Any thoughts /news on Foveon sensors?

In article , Gormless
wrote:

I think Peter A S must be a Sigma adherent.
If someone believes something hard enough if it becomes true for them.

He's a hardcore Sigma owner. I've tried to show him the truth, but
these Sigma people adhere to the company's PR and refuse to see the
limitations of the severely flawed hardware.

"Gormless" wrote in message
...

"Randall Ainsworth" wrote in message
...
In article , Gormless
wrote:

I don't understand how that is a technical possibility.
Helen

It's not. The Sigma is a 3.42MP camera.

I think Peter A S must be a Sigma adherent.
If someone believes something hard enough if it becomes true for them.

I'm a Sigma user and if you were then you would see it's true, you don't
have to "try" to believe anything you only have to see for yourself. Read
the reviews of the camera on www.dpreview.com and other sites, they'll all
tell you that the Foveon resolves as well or better than a 6MP Bayer. Look
at the photos, you can't argue with the physical evidence. The Foveon can
resolve detail that a Bayer sensor cannot.

"Gormless" wrote in message
...

"Edmund" wrote in message
...

As far as I understand things, this foveon sensor
looks the best technology to me.
Why is it hardly anybody uses it?

It's not traditional digital technology. There is a small and rapidly
becoming disillusioned group of fanatic diehard adherents of Sigma's two
Foveon cameras, but the absence of any new models for far too long has
left
them stuck at a very last-century, mediocre, noisy and rather yellowish
(though that last is down to Sigma, not Foveon) 3.4 Mp. Though its
adherents will swear differently, I've never once seen or heard of a
Foveon/Sigma in professional use. The only other camera which now uses
Foveon is a cheap Polaroid digital, which seems to have had limited
success.
While strictly in theory it IS good technology, Foveon's failure to
deliver
and Sigma's failure to make best use of it has rather left it floundering
and out of its depth in the modern digital climate.

Apart from a lot of speculation, there is no indication that Foveon are
working on anything new, and I suspect that our Sigma-loving friends, if
and
when they ever get a new model, might find it doesn't contain a Foveon
sensor.

Helen

If you perused the Sigma forum on dpreview you'd "meet" a few pros who use a
Sigma DSLR, a couple of whom earn big bucks from poster-sized prints.

"Randall Ainsworth" wrote in message
...
In article , Gormless
wrote:

I think Peter A S must be a Sigma adherent.
If someone believes something hard enough if it becomes true for them.

He's a hardcore Sigma owner. I've tried to show him the truth, but
these Sigma people adhere to the company's PR and refuse to see the
limitations of the severely flawed hardware.

LOL! You are too funny. I'm hardly hardcore, if I was then I wouldn't have
added a Nikon to my camera bag.

Peter A. Stavrakoglou wrote:
"Gormless" wrote in message
...

"Edmund" wrote in message
...

As far as I understand things, this foveon sensor
looks the best technology to me.
Why is it hardly anybody uses it?

It's not traditional digital technology. There is a small and
rapidly becoming disillusioned group of fanatic diehard adherents of
Sigma's two Foveon cameras, but the absence of any new models for
far too long has left
them stuck at a very last-century, mediocre, noisy and rather
yellowish (though that last is down to Sigma, not Foveon) 3.4 Mp. Though
its adherents will swear differently, I've never once seen or
heard of a Foveon/Sigma in professional use. The only other camera
which now uses Foveon is a cheap Polaroid digital, which seems to
have had limited success.
While strictly in theory it IS good technology, Foveon's failure to
deliver
and Sigma's failure to make best use of it has rather left it
floundering and out of its depth in the modern digital climate.

Apart from a lot of speculation, there is no indication that Foveon
are working on anything new, and I suspect that our Sigma-loving
friends, if and
when they ever get a new model, might find it doesn't contain a
Foveon sensor.

Helen

If you perused the Sigma forum on dpreview you'd "meet" a few pros
who use a Sigma DSLR, a couple of whom earn big bucks from
poster-sized prints.

Highlight on the word "few."

Peter A. Stavrakoglou wrote:
"Randall Ainsworth" wrote in message
...
In article , Gormless
wrote:

I think Peter A S must be a Sigma adherent.
If someone believes something hard enough if it becomes true for
them.

He's a hardcore Sigma owner. I've tried to show him the truth, but
these Sigma people adhere to the company's PR and refuse to see the
limitations of the severely flawed hardware.

LOL! You are too funny. I'm hardly hardcore, if I was then I
wouldn't have added a Nikon to my camera bag.

Why did you feel the need to add a Nikon?

"Mark²" mjmorgan(lowest even number wrote in message
news:8Bdyf.10726$V.6208@fed1read04...
Peter A. Stavrakoglou wrote:
"Darrell Larose" wrote in message
. ..

"Edmund" wrote in message
...

As far as I understand things, this foveon sensor
looks the best technology to me.
Why is it hardly anybody uses it?
Are there made to big investments in other systems
and are "they" therefore choosing a lesser system?

The lack of use, and the lack of any updates indicates that Foveon
is a dead end. There has been no new developments for several years.
Foveon is stuck at 3.4 megapixels.

Not true. Although the choice for a reseller using WWL for the
Polariod camera using a Foveon was not a good one, that alone shows
that there has been development in the last two years. That camera
could produce some good images. The Sigma SD10 is a little over two
years old and it's 3.4 MP sensor resolves as well as any 6MP Bayer,
sometimes even better.

Do you have images posted anywhere?
You seem to indicate better results than I typically saw from
Sigma;--particularly skin tones and textures.
If you've got the goods, I'm open to reinterpretation of my
opinion...though I have yet to see skin renditions that consistently un-do
my perception of this.

You are more than welcome to peruse through my images, but I'll warn you
that I don't even rank as an amateur but I nonetheless enjpy taking
pictures. I'll be the first to say that the SD9 and SD10 can produce yellow
skintones, it's a problem but it's easily corrected. It doesn't happen all
the time but it happens a lot.

Here's a few links:

Not the sharpest photo but when you only have a cheap zoom...
http://ntotrr.smugmug.com/photos/12645878-M.jpg

Here's my niece:
http://ntotrr.smugmug.com/photos/13539136-M.jpg

And her brother:
http://ntotrr.smugmug.com/photos/27233203-M.jpg

The skintones are quite accurate, the first one took no adjustment at all,
the other two took a minor tweak.

Here's one that shows the detail this 3.4 MP camera can captu
http://ntotrr.smugmug.com/photos/31953396-M.jpg

"Skip M" wrote in message
news:X1byf.11492$sA3.9427@fed1read02...
"Peter A. Stavrakoglou" wrote in message
...
"Edmund" wrote in message
...

As far as I understand things, this foveon sensor
looks the best technology to me.
Why is it hardly anybody uses it?
Are there made to big investments in other systems
and are "they" therefore choosing a lesser system?

At this time, only Sigma and one Polaroid P&S (if you can find one) are
using these sensors in a consumer camera. There will be a new Sigma SLR
soon, patience will pay off in waiting for it.

Compared to Bayer technology, the Foveon is still in its infancy and yet
it produces very sharp photos with good color rendition in a Sigma DSLR.
As development continues, it can only improve like Bayer technology has.
Despite their being many more years of development down the road, the
current Foveon sensor can hold its own. There needs to be improvement in
noise handling and perhaps in-camera jpeg in the Sigma DSLRs.

It only holds its own with the bottom of the line cameras like the Nikon
D50 and Minolta 5D. It has been left behind by such cameras as the Oly
E-500

Don't leave out the D70 and 7D

and Canon RebelXT/350D, and seriously dusted off by cameras like the Nikon
D200 (at the price point the Sigma SD-10 was introduced) and the
admittedly much more expensive Canon 5D.

C'mon Skip, comparing current DSLR prices with one that is over two years
old. The SD10 is much less than a D200, half the price or less, if you can
find one. It's been discontinued since there's a new one on the way.

"Mark²" mjmorgan(lowest even number wrote in message
news:Rxdyf.10725$V.9071@fed1read04...
Peter A. Stavrakoglou wrote:
"Mark²" mjmorgan(lowest even number wrote in message
news:526yf.10707$V.7118@fed1read04...
Edmund wrote:
As far as I understand things, this foveon sensor
looks the best technology to me.
Why is it hardly anybody uses it?

Because its only incarnation came in the for of the extremely poor
Sigma body.
-Don't know if its the fault of Sigma or Foveon...but the skin
renditions were absolutely horrid, and many other texture renditions
were just plain awful. The lack of a filter over the sensor often
leads to problematic fine line renditions... The list goes on.

Saying that skin renditions are horrid is an overstatement. Depending on
the exposure, skintones tend to be yellow but horrid
they are not. Easily correctable but some take issue with havng to
do that.

Disagree.
It often went beyong mere color.
Texture was often the culprit in addition to color, which is pretty
impossible to recreate in PS.

Perhaps you've grown accustomed to the textures smoothed out by AA filters.
I find the skin textures from the Foveon to be quite accurate, too accurate
for those who want a smoother look.
The Sigma camera themselves are not "extremely poor", that
is only your opinion.

Right. My opinion.

It's a well-built body with vey good
ergonomics and in the right hands produces outstanding images. Search
pbase and you'll see. Those of us who use them know how good
it really is, t seems that statements like yours come from people who
never used the camera but I am not making a judgment on your
situation. Perhaps you've used one, I don't know, but I have for two
years and in my totally amateurish hands it has taken some great
photos. The level of sharpness is surprising at times.

"Scott W" wrote in message
oups.com...

Edmund wrote:
As far as I understand things, this foveon sensor
looks the best technology to me.
Why is it hardly anybody uses it?
Are there made to big investments in other systems
and are "they" therefore choosing a lesser system?
Given the noise limitation of the foveon sensor it really needed to
bring something to the table that was not otherwise available. With
its 3.4 MP it came very close to matching a 6 MP camera, but it did not
even manage to do this. If they could come out with a 8 MP version and
control the noise better they might get somewhere.

In truth the loss from the Bayer pattern is fairly small, say between
25 to 30% of the pixel count. This assumes you are shooting raw not
just using the in camera jpeg photos.

Scott

The noise issue is the biggest one for them. That's why I bought a D50, for
low-light situations. Not that I needed a second body - I really need to
sharpen my skills and no camera can improve on them - but as long as someone
was willing to get me one I couldn't refuse.