Polaroid x530 w/Foveon sensor will ship - finally.

In article .com, The
PhAnToM wrote:

Randall Ainsworth wrote:
In article , ittsy
wrote:

Randall Ainsworth wrote:

Just what the photographic world needs...more junky hardware.

It will still be interesting to read the technical reviews.

If it has the Polaroid name attached and uses Foveon
technology...really...who cares at this point?

Can someone again summarize why the lingering hatred of Foveon? Thanks.

Because it's crappy technology?

In article , Peter A. Stavrakoglou
wrote:

"The PhAnToM" wrote in message
oups.com...

Randall Ainsworth wrote:
In article , ittsy
wrote:

Randall Ainsworth wrote:

Just what the photographic world needs...more junky hardware.

It will still be interesting to read the technical reviews.

If it has the Polaroid name attached and uses Foveon
technology...really...who cares at this point?

Can someone again summarize why the lingering hatred of Foveon? Thanks.

Those of us who use Foveon sensor cameras quite like them. There's honest
criticism of the sensor and then there's dishonest crtiticism from the likes
of Randall and Steven Scharf who never used the camera. Sort of like
telling someone how a steak tastes without ever tasting one for themselves.
It's best to discount what they say and stick to the posts from those who
are more objective even if they don't like the Foveon sensor.

I don't have to step in a pile of dog crap to know it's something I
don't want to do. I guess the Foveon is OK if you like 3.42MP cameras
with Homer Simpson skin tones.

"The PhAnToM" wrote:
Randall Ainsworth wrote:

If it has the Polaroid name attached and uses Foveon
technology...really...who cares at this point?

Can someone again summarize why the lingering hatred of Foveon? Thanks.

Foveon has a couple of problems.

One is that the mathematics of discrete sampling tells us that to correctly
sample a signal, that signal must be bandlimited. But Foveon tells us the
Foveon sensor doesn't need an antialiasing filter. This is simply wrong.
It's a lie.

The reason Foveon needs it's customers to believe this lie is that with an
antialiasing filter, the Foveon's resolution would be no better than a Bayer
camera of the same pixel count. So they leave out the AA filter and hope no
one's bothered by the aliasing.

Another problem Foveon has is that Bayer is so good. Bayer gives you full
color at almost no cost in luminance resolution, and chrominance resolution
just as good as the human eye (in relative terms relative to the luminance
resolution provided). So there really isn't very much to be gained by moving
to a technology that samples all three colors at every point. (Bayer is not
perfect: Bayer loses resolution or gets noise in badly unbalanced lighting
or if you take a landscape in B&W with a red filter.)

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

"David J. Littleboy" wrote in message
...

One is that the mathematics of discrete sampling tells us that to
correctly
sample a signal, that signal must be bandlimited. But Foveon tells us the
Foveon sensor doesn't need an antialiasing filter. This is simply wrong.
It's a lie.

The reason Foveon needs it's customers to believe this lie is that with an
antialiasing filter, the Foveon's resolution would be no better than a
Bayer
camera of the same pixel count. So they leave out the AA filter and hope
no
one's bothered by the aliasing.

What's amazing is that there actually customers that not only believe this
lie, but that help spread it. It's not like they don't know it's a lie
either, as it's been pointed out for at least two years, by most
reviewers.An incorrect image, with artificial "sharpness" in order to make
the sensor appear to be higher resolution than it really is. I just don't
get people that believe things that are demonstrably untrue. Then again, I
think that something like 1/3 of Americans still believe that Iraq was
linked to 9/11.

Another problem Foveon has is that Bayer is so good.

I don't think that anyone expected Bayer to advance so rapidly in terms of
pixel density and noise. Canon has really done amazing things with their
CMOS sensors. Everyone remembers when CMOS sensors were looked down on as
inferior to CCDs.

wrote:
"The PhAnToM" wrote in message
oups.com...

Can someone again summarize why the lingering hatred of Foveon?
Thanks.

There is no hatred.

There was a lot of disappointment when the Sigma D-SLRs, produced
relatively mediocre results compared to all other digital SLRs (and
compared to many compact digital cameras for that matter). This has
translated into healthy skepticism that the 1.5 megapixel sensor in
the
Polaroid x530 will produce good results (this camera is nearly a year
late, with no explanation ever provided for the delay, making many
people very nervous about it, but who knows, it could be a sleeper).

snip

Thanks, Steve. That is a reasonable answer. When I first came across
the technology, it seemed like the next big thing. I did not, however,
follow it from the consumer side, other than to see a whole lot of
Foveon bashing here in the past. It got to be too much for me to filter
out the noise to come up with a reasonable conclusion. So here we go
again... maybe.

In article ,
David J. Littleboy wrote:

The reason Foveon needs it's customers to believe this lie is that with an
antialiasing filter, the Foveon's resolution would be no better than a Bayer
camera of the same pixel count. So they leave out the AA filter and hope no
one's bothered by the aliasing.

That, and they sharpen it 'till it screams in RAW conversion. They even had
the "0" setting for sharpness in their raw convertor correspond to a level
of sharpening that, if applied to an imported raw file in CS, would be
considered moderately heavy.

And it has pretty poor colour response as well - the channels have a lot of
redundnacy in them, in that the green channel, for example, isn't actually
that fussy about not capturing red and blue as well, so you end up having to
subtract out weighted versions of each channel from the others. This has
unpleasant results for the signal/noise ratio (noise stays the same, signal
gets smaller).

In article ,
says...
And it has pretty poor colour response as well - the channels have a lot of
redundnacy in them, in that the green channel, for example, isn't actually
that fussy about not capturing red and blue as well, so you end up having to
subtract out weighted versions of each channel from the others. This has
unpleasant results for the signal/noise ratio (noise stays the same, signal
gets smaller).




The display page for the new polaroid has a group of photos on it. Look at
the skin color of the child (with the balloons). Ask yourself if thats the
way you want people to look in your photos. He looks like he is suffering
from "terminal Jaundice".

Probably thats why most of those pictures are OBJECTS instead of PEOPLE.

That poor rendering of flesh tones is what puts a lot of people "Off" for the
Foveon, and the denial about it by Foveon proponents is one of the things
that get people upset at the mention of Foveon.

Looking at pictures from Foveon sensors is like rubbernecking at a train
wreck, I keep expecting someone to say "move along, there is nothing here to
see".


--
Larry Lynch
Mystic, Ct.

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

"The PhAnToM" wrote in message
oups.com...

Randall Ainsworth wrote:
In article , ittsy
wrote:

Randall Ainsworth wrote:

Just what the photographic world needs...more junky hardware.

It will still be interesting to read the technical reviews.

If it has the Polaroid name attached and uses Foveon
technology...really...who cares at this point?

Can someone again summarize why the lingering hatred of Foveon? Thanks.

Those of us who use Foveon sensor cameras quite like them. There's
honest
criticism of the sensor and then there's dishonest crtiticism from the
likes
of Randall and Steven Scharf who never used the camera. Sort of like
telling someone how a steak tastes without ever tasting one for
themselves.
It's best to discount what they say and stick to the posts from those who
are more objective even if they don't like the Foveon sensor.

I don't have to step in a pile of dog crap to know it's something I
don't want to do. I guess the Foveon is OK if you like 3.42MP cameras
with Homer Simpson skin tones.

Careful about stepping in that pile of crap since your foot always winds up
in your mouth.

"Larry" wrote in message
T...
In article .com,
says...

Randall Ainsworth wrote:
In article , ittsy
wrote:

Randall Ainsworth wrote:

Just what the photographic world needs...more junky hardware.

It will still be interesting to read the technical reviews.

If it has the Polaroid name attached and uses Foveon
technology...really...who cares at this point?

Can someone again summarize why the lingering hatred of Foveon? Thanks.



I wouldn't call it hatred, just a lack of repect for a good idea that
didn't
work, but still gets promoted and sold as if it did work.

The photos from that sensor are pretty bad.


--
Larry Lynch
Mystic, Ct.

You've obviously never used a Foveon sensor camera or have seen the photos.

In message ,
"Peter A. Stavrakoglou" wrote:

You've obviously never used a Foveon sensor camera or have seen the photos.

Every image I've seen from a Sigma DSLR that I've liked has been due to
the composition, not the technology.

The green/blue discrimination is poor and hue-noisy , and there is too
much aliasing when sharp optics are used.
--


John P Sheehy