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my take on Kodak downfall
In article , PeterN
wrote: bayer is the best solution that exists today and will be for the foreseeable future. foveon's layered approach has been a disaster. facts? oh, where to start. with a market share of under 1% and shrinking, sigma's cameras have been a complete disaster. not only do they not sell particularly well, but they are a money loser for the company. foveon originally was backed by two venture capital firms, who soon realized they'd been had and what a ****up it was, so they bailed. that left foveon, whose only customer was sigma, without any money and about to file for bankruptcy. had that happened, sigma would have been completely screwed, so sigma bought foveon at firesale prices and has been sinking money into it ever since. the cameras are utter crap (and yes, i've used them). they're anything but consistent. two photos in a row might look totally different, despite the settings being identical. the sd14 was pig slow (around 6 seconds write time) and you actually had to wait until it finished, or the camera could lock up and you'd lose photos. the sd14 was *really* buggy and sometimes locked up even if you weren't taking photos one after another the sd14 originally was $2000 msrp ($1600 street), which quickly dropped due to slow sales, and around a year later, it was being sold off for $300-400, new, and even at that price, people still weren't buying all that many. the sd1 originally was pitched at a ridiculous $9700 msrp (~$6000 street) which was complete insanity for a 15 megapixel camera. even the fanbois were stunned. not surprisingly, sigma did not sell very many cameras at that price. as best as i can tell, they sold about 10, total, based on posts in the sigma forum and serial number analysis (which is encoded in every photo, btw, so it's easy to track). after tens of thousands of unsold cameras sat in warehouses, sigma slashed the price by roughly $4000 in one day, and the price has dropped even *further* since then. the dp1/2/3 series have been riddled with lens motor failures, where the lens just gets stuck extending out or back in, along with all the usual problems with the sensor. sigma tries to claim more accurate colour, but the delta-e is much higher than bayer, which means *less* accurate colour. sigma claims 'no guessing' of colour data, yet there's more 'guessing' than bayer because they don't actually capture rgb at every location (another lie of theirs). the spectra of the layers overlap by quite a bit and there's a ****load of very complex math to extract rgb from it, which is one reason why the software is slow and the results are noisy and with weird colour casts. the first foveon camera, the 3.4 megapixel sd9, did not sell well, so they decided to lie about the number of pixels in the sd10 because 'bigger numbers are better', despite the camera having the same sensor. normally that's called fraud, but somehow, they managed to get away with it. sigma's software is slow and buggy and there aren't any viable options from third parties. even adobe has given up supporting it. part of the 'sigma look' is heavy sharpening. if you set the sigma software to 0 sharpening, you're actually getting a wallop of sharpening. you have to set it to -1 to -2 to get 'none', depending on version. foveon sensors are theoretically interesting, but they are riddled with problems and actually don't offer anything the eye can see anyway. it's a solution in search of a problem. foveon sensors have substantially higher noise, lower colour accuracy, lower resolution, worse high iso performance and higher manufacturing cost. that's a huge price to pay for 'full colour', something humans can't even see anyway. three layer sensors sound like a good idea on paper, and one day they might be feasible without significant tradeoffs, but they sure as hell are not now. if that day comes, the technology won't need lies to market it. it will sell itself because it's actually better. on the other hand, bayer is a very clever design based on how the human eye works. it's cost-effective to manufacture and works exceptionally well for creating photos that humans look at. |
#2
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my take on Kodak downfall
On 2/13/2014 5:38 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , PeterN wrote: bayer is the best solution that exists today and will be for the foreseeable future. foveon's layered approach has been a disaster. facts? oh, where to start. with a market share of under 1% and shrinking, sigma's cameras have been a complete disaster. not only do they not sell particularly well, but they are a money loser for the company. foveon originally was backed by two venture capital firms, who soon realized they'd been had and what a ****up it was, so they bailed. that left foveon, whose only customer was sigma, without any money and about to file for bankruptcy. had that happened, sigma would have been completely screwed, so sigma bought foveon at firesale prices and has been sinking money into it ever since. the cameras are utter crap (and yes, i've used them). they're anything but consistent. two photos in a row might look totally different, despite the settings being identical. the sd14 was pig slow (around 6 seconds write time) and you actually had to wait until it finished, or the camera could lock up and you'd lose photos. the sd14 was *really* buggy and sometimes locked up even if you weren't taking photos one after another If you are saying Sigma markets crap, I agree. If you are saying that Foveon is not ready for prime time, you are probably right. What I am saying is that Foveon has potential worth exploring, if only for scientific purposes. the sd14 originally was $2000 msrp ($1600 street), which quickly dropped due to slow sales, and around a year later, it was being sold off for $300-400, new, and even at that price, people still weren't buying all that many. the sd1 originally was pitched at a ridiculous $9700 msrp (~$6000 street) which was complete insanity for a 15 megapixel camera. even the fanbois were stunned. not surprisingly, sigma did not sell very many cameras at that price. as best as i can tell, they sold about 10, total, based on posts in the sigma forum and serial number analysis (which is encoded in every photo, btw, so it's easy to track). after tens of thousands of unsold cameras sat in warehouses, sigma slashed the price by roughly $4000 in one day, and the price has dropped even *further* since then. the dp1/2/3 series have been riddled with lens motor failures, where the lens just gets stuck extending out or back in, along with all the usual problems with the sensor. sigma tries to claim more accurate colour, but the delta-e is much higher than bayer, which means *less* accurate colour. sigma claims 'no guessing' of colour data, yet there's more 'guessing' than bayer because they don't actually capture rgb at every location (another lie of theirs). the spectra of the layers overlap by quite a bit and there's a ****load of very complex math to extract rgb from it, which is one reason why the software is slow and the results are noisy and with weird colour casts. the first foveon camera, the 3.4 megapixel sd9, did not sell well, so they decided to lie about the number of pixels in the sd10 because 'bigger numbers are better', despite the camera having the same sensor. normally that's called fraud, but somehow, they managed to get away with it. sigma's software is slow and buggy and there aren't any viable options from third parties. even adobe has given up supporting it. part of the 'sigma look' is heavy sharpening. if you set the sigma software to 0 sharpening, you're actually getting a wallop of sharpening. you have to set it to -1 to -2 to get 'none', depending on version. foveon sensors are theoretically interesting, but they are riddled with problems and actually don't offer anything the eye can see anyway. it's a solution in search of a problem. foveon sensors have substantially higher noise, lower colour accuracy, lower resolution, worse high iso performance and higher manufacturing cost. that's a huge price to pay for 'full colour', something humans can't even see anyway. three layer sensors sound like a good idea on paper, and one day they might be feasible without significant tradeoffs, but they sure as hell are not now. if that day comes, the technology won't need lies to market it. it will sell itself because it's actually better. Not true. think VCR & Betamax. think WordPerfect & Word Both are examples of the triumph of marketing over quality. -- PeterN |
#3
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my take on Kodak downfall
In article , PeterN
wrote: If you are saying Sigma markets crap, I agree. ok If you are saying that Foveon is not ready for prime time, you are probably right. not only am i right, but foveon is never going to be ready for prime time because it's not physically possible. not even sigma can break the laws of physics. What I am saying is that Foveon has potential worth exploring, if only for scientific purposes. exploring the technology is one thing. there's nothing wrong with that. many companies are looking into multilayer sensors, including nikon, canon and fuji and i think sony too. the difference is that those companies are working on perfecting the technology so that it actually *is* better than what exists now and *then* turning it into a product. what sigma is doing is taking half-baked technology that is clearly worse than what exists now, lying about what it can and cannot do, faking some of it in software and claiming it does stuff that is not physically possible. |
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