ArticlesShow ReportsReport: Sigma at PPE 2011

Report: Sigma at PPE 2011

By Barney Britton | Published Oct 29, 2011 | Show Reports

Tagged with: foveon lens lenses sigma sigma-sd1

Report: Sigma at PPE 2011

Sigma is at PPE, showing off its huge range of lenses and (smaller) range of cameras, including the innovative SD1 DSLR. We got our hands on some of the latest products and met up with Rudy Guttosch of Foveon, the company that creates the innovative X3 sensor in Sigma's SD-series cameras.


Sigma is showing off its wide range of lenses and its SD range of compact and DSLR cameras at this year's PPE show.	Sigma makes lenses in all different shapes and sizes, for many different lens mounts.

This is the flagship SD camera, the 14.7MP SD1, which uses a unique Foveon sensor.

The new 120-300mm f/2.8 zoom is a monster, but optical stabilization makes it potentially very useful for sports and wildlife shooters.

Whereas the 85mm f/1.4 prime is ideal for portraiture and low light work.

This is the updated 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 superzoom, and ideal 'carry everywhere' lens for APS-C DSLR photographers

And this is Rudy Guttosch of Foveon - the Sigma-owned company that created the sensor inside the SD1. We spoke to Rudy, and other Foveon executives in 2010 about the SD1.	And here's that sensor. An APS-C format, X3 sensor with an output resolution of 14.7 million pixels, although thanks to its innovative design, Sigma claims that actual resolution is significantly higher.

{ShowReportIndex:PhotoPlusExpo2011}

LIKE 0

Flag as inappropriate

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions held by dpreview.com or any affiliated companies.

Pin It

Print view

Comments

Total comments: 13

Were these images really taken by the NEX at 3200 ISO?!?

0 upvotes

I must be missing something. The article title says "Report: Sigma at PPE" and the only report I see is a few product shots. No analysis, no interview, just a few captions and links to old articles. DP should be able to do more than this.

Comment edited 49 seconds after posting

0 upvotes

It's a stand report. We've been doing them in this format for a decade - we also conducted an interview, which is being edited at the moment.

1 upvote

Any word on the 50-150 F2.8 OS HSM ??

0 upvotes

I too came here looking for word on the 50-150 F2.8 OS HSM

0 upvotes

Not even a preproduction sample. No MRSP, no picture, no weight, no size (only a copy of the 70-200 data). There simply is no 50-150 OS. No problem, money saved for other stuff.

0 upvotes

Black nailpolish? DPR - Halloween party going on on the side? ;-)

Anyway, I am VERY disappointed they didn't bring along their long anticipated woodie version. I wanted to see the riot this might have caused!

http://www.dpreview.com/news/1110/11101210sigmasd1wood.asp

0 upvotes

The 120-300 at 2.8 is really very interesting .......waiting for some good review.....

0 upvotes

i'd be more interested if they developed a 100-400 f/4 OS HSM version...

0 upvotes

Foveon is not cool. Canon and Nikon wont do this.
Foveon looses in terms of color accuracy, the color itself on high iso, noise at high iso, speed of reading data, and bits per pixel. It only wins at slight resolution increase - which is not sufficient as resolution is already high and we are looking at whole picture, not pixel-peep.

0 upvotes

??? Did you try the SD1?... If I completely agree that the rise iso is not top above 1600 compared with the technology Nikon and Canon, the colorimetry of the SD1 is fantastic!!! And has nothing to do with the SD14 for example, furthermore, the global quality of the details of all the image is more and more impressive and crushes any sensor APS-C or APS-H, furthermore it remains more detailed that a sensor 24x36 even if he has no curvature and the bokeh of one 24x36... A fantastic sensor for precise images, objects, architecture, etc.... Do not speak about what you do not know!

1 upvote

The Foveon sensor is really cool. But you are right - Nikon and Canon will not care. To use the Foveon sensor you have to back on some properties - and its very traumatic to back for a company.

Some cool things.
- no AA filter to lessen local contrast
- no organic color filter that may age with time
- three readings per pixel making the image measured and not computed (in the spatial domain). Also makes it sharp!!

Some less cool things:
- faulty colors detected, making conversion hard to do, adding noise and makes color fidelity questionable
- complicated and expensive manufacturing
- owned by Sigma, not the best camera maker on this planet
- not main stream, so lack of resources for development, so its lagging behind

0 upvotes

what would be REALLY cool would be if Canon and Nikon were to source the Foveon sensors from Sigma for at least some of their camera bodies, like a particular mid/upper model range.

1 upvote

Total comments: 13