What happened to Foveon?

It seems to have dropped out of view since its announcement 3 years ago.
Foveon was supposed to take over the industry. What happened?

Thanks,

Norm Strong

Try Google searching on the magic words "Sigma SD9", "Sigma SD10" (or
"George Preddy").

Executive summary?

Nice idea. Ahead of it's time. But seems to have too many practical
issues to work as well as it could.. in theory. Sensor is noisy at
high ISOs, has some color issues, is expensive to produce, and has been
pretty much left in the dust by development of the Bayer type of
sensor. And.. maybe it might have got further if some *other* company
had picked it up...


(heheh)

On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 22:25:35 -0800, wrote:

It seems to have dropped out of view since its announcement 3 years ago.
Foveon was supposed to take over the industry. What happened?

The Prediot killed what little credibility it might have had.

In article ,
wrote:

It seems to have dropped out of view since its announcement 3 years ago.
Foveon was supposed to take over the industry. What happened?

The technology ended up sucking.

wrote:
It seems to have dropped out of view since its announcement 3 years ago.
Foveon was supposed to take over the industry. What happened?

Hi Norm -

It was overcome by events - namely, Canon! It was a great 3mp camera,
but a somewhat clumsy body and only able to shoot in RAW. The actual
results from some Bayer cameras quickly outdistanced the Foveon, because
of brute force megapixels and terrific noise processing and great camera
bodies. And those Canon (and Nikon) lenses.

Gary Eickmeier

"DJ" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 22:25:35 -0800, wrote:

The Prediot killed what little credibility it might have had.

.... and guess what? Doing a clear out I came across a 3 year old news
article saying that Microsoft had given it their blessing or some such.

--
M Stewart
Milton Keynes, UK
http://www.megalith.freeserve.co.uk/oddimage.htm

"It seems to have dropped out of view since its announcement 3 years
ago.
Foveon was supposed to take over the industry. What happened?"

Interesting sensor technology, not quite ready for prime time*,
embedded
in a camera that does not do enough things well to overcome the
onslaught
of Canon and Nikon cameras that seeming do pretty much everything well.
[*] the spectral discrimination of the verticle RGB wells is not
sensitive enough
to render colors accurately in anything other than perfectly well
exposed images.

Foveon was supposed to take over the industry. What happened?

1) Not enough megapixels to compete with Canon and Nikon 6 Mpixel
models.

2) They needed a partner with more credibility than Sigma.

3) Misleading advertising put off a lot of folks.

In article ,
Jim Townsend wrote:

He reported that Foveon technology would not only do away with traditional
bayer sensors, but it would replace film as well because per square inch,
a foveon sensor had double the resolution of 35mm film :-)

Shame that the only one to make it into an SLR had less than half the area
of 35mm film then, isn't it? ;-)

Chris Brown wrote:
In article ,
Jim Townsend wrote:

He reported that Foveon technology would not only do away with traditional
bayer sensors, but it would replace film as well because per square inch,
a foveon sensor had double the resolution of 35mm film :-)


Shame that the only one to make it into an SLR had less than half the area
of 35mm film then, isn't it? ;-)


Half the area of 35 mm would be generous.
The APS-C sensor (10D, 20D) covers only 40% of that area.
The Sigma SD-10 sensor (13.8 x 20.7 mm) covers 33% of that area.


rafe b.
http://www.terrapinphoto.com