The camera will do better with matched lenses of which there are few. The best ones to date are the 70-200 OS; 50 f1.4; 85 f1.4; 70 f2.8; 50 f2.8. The 8-16 does reasonable well.

The 18-50 f2.8-4.5 OS is a good lens for the money ($200 last time I checked), but is not a good enough lens for this camera.

Rick Decker

The comments in this thread with the most hyperbole seem less relevant to me. I'm sure the SD1 is capable of excellent results and may be tricky to get the best out of.

Nothing conclusively bad about these images, with a few glimpses of excellence. Just have to wait and see...One thing's for sure, I won't be waiting in line for one now that I just checked my bank account balance. ;)

Nothing here that any of the better DSLRs couldn't mop the floor with.

The low ISO shots look good. For the price? Not a chance, medium format. Drop the price under $2000.00, might make a small dent. At current price? Dead man walking.

I find the images at high ISO kind of crunchy looking. Even what should be (based on what the range of luminance in the subject appears to be) pure black has luminance noise "texture." That's something also common with the m2/3 cameras, even at lower ISOs, but it is a bit disappointing to see it in large shadow areas even after processing from RAW.

And a big ditto ditto to "Sigma needs better lenses for this camera." I find the edges of many of the images to be appallingly un-sharp, sometimes just soft, sometimes linear-blur soft.

Some pics are realy outstanding, specialy last ones excluding one, the girl
is not very clear ??? however some of the rest could be
even more refined with more time. this examples are shot
with hurry in order to give a response to the demand urgent, right now,
this week , today, already. my conclusion is , this camera is not a toy
this is a superb and extraordinary camera. cheers

Britton ,
i suggest visit some of the threads in the sigma forum where they have found the best way to iron out some of the issues like SPP and also the lens that have been proven to produce good results. I heard things like the default spp sharpens too much the image which in foveon is already supersharp and needs -0.5, using silkypro etc.

The low ISO images look great, but at $7K this camera is just not going to sell. For that much money you are almost in Pentax 645D territory.

Looking at samples, I believe this camera can be a good choice for Studio, product and Fashion photography with few nice lenses.

High ISO still being that poor is probably a matter of SPP not working properly. You can`t expect magic from the in-camera JPEG engine.
When it comes to resolution... Take a picture of a (preferably sleeping) cat, especially that extremely fine fur around the nose.
Shot with good Macro lenses on all 3 cameras, the SD14 outresolved a D700 and a 50D. Just because their output was larger this does not translate into more detail- it was just more blurry-something without any detail in the fur.
And when it comes to DR- the SD14 performes almost better in that way than my PhaseOne P45+ Back- if you now how to correctly expose a Foveon camera.
High ISO of course has always been poor- everything from ISO 400 on was just bad with the SD14. But have you ever wondered why no colour-resolution tests with coloured Siemens stars in different colour combinations between Sigma and any other camera are performed? I think, let`s wait and see how the SD1 performes with a working SPP.
D

Sweet Mary mother of god, my eyes are bleeding haha. Certainly some pretty sharp 15mp APS-C pics here, especially with the macros and the 70-200.

Still, I can't say a 5D Mark 2 with a removed AA filter would not be just as good detail wise downsized to 15mp while enjoying many other advantages.

Would be a lot more impressive for $2K to be honest.

The test here was performed with a production SD1 with latest firmware. Again, the problem right now is the Raw Software Sigma Photo Pro SPP. Since no ther software maker supports SD1 files, you have to fall back on SPP- but that very SPP can not properly handle these files at the moment. It even renders additional luminance noise in stripe-patterns into images shot in bright, high contrast conditions. RAW is, and has always been, THE Sigma camera strenght. Sometimes SPP 4, and sometimes LR or Silkypix was the weapon of choice. But unless Sigma rolls out a bug free SPP version that can really handle the SD1 files, we will never see the true potential of this camera. Guess we still have to wait a little. Sad but true, for a camera that comes with that price tag.
D

Although these images look good below ISO 800. I see nothing better worth the price tag. I am hoping this is a preproduction model with preprod firmware DP has otherwise my $1700 E-5 gets images this sharp. Again the images look very good at low ISOs so if Sigma work out the higher ISOs (which with this HUGE sensor should not be a problem) the camera will be fantastic. Until then not worth the $$$$$

Wow, what a poor lens to demonstrate the camera. Not one shot looked very sharp. Really, a 18-50 f/2.8-4.5 is the best they could do?

I see no pictures that have what I call the "Wow Look". Can't say they are bad but for 7k I want WOW!!

Don

raw portrait ISO 200 looks fantastic

It appears to me that quite a few of these images are under-exposed and look pretty bad because of it.
Not using exposure compensation and getting bad photos is the sign of a careless/hurried/ridged photographer-- using default/basic settings at-all-costs for the review [big mistake], is not the camera's fault when shooting in the 100-1600 ISO range. I certainly speak from experience-- I shoot with E-30 and E-510 Olympus cameras.
(I've seen this same problem with many other DPR review images and it causes unecessary 'pseudo-noise' in the dark areas.)
These images don't look they came from a camera worth what Sigma is asking for it!
That, together with a rather slim selection of high-enough, quality lenses for this camera's sensor probably won't generate enough sales to recoup their investment!
Its a shame, if it had a low enough price and better selection of lens I could be interested in the SD1.

I hope that dpreview to take the standard studio scene with SD1, with which we can compare it with other cameras.

Few thoughts:
- iso 400 is close to clean (well, maybe NR soft bundle?);
- sigma finally has a device to check lens centering (look at house with blue sky);
- not bad details, but not sure if it is worth the money.

I was very excited to look at these, but I have to say I'm anything but impressed. I don't see the 'amazing detail' others seem to see here.

I agree with a previous comment that these looks oversharpened but don't seem to have the detail I would have expected from a true color pixel sensor.

I also don't think the colors looks particularly impressive, but that's no surprise. The second and third layer color channel is suffering from light loss of the layers above. The signal to noise ratio can't be anywhere close to Beyer sensor, thus it has a clear disadvantage in terms of colors.

The best detail I have seen recently was the samples from the Samsung NX200. That camera even outperforms the Sony A77 and is sharp into the corners and is amazing at handling contrast.

I've no doubt we'll see astounding images from this camera....
(the truck has a lovely sense of realism that hints at good things to come)
just not with this lens and not at high iso!
Many thanks to dpreview for letting us see the samples.
cheers,
john

Just what is it about these images that makes people want to shell out $7000 for this camera??

Low ISO images are incredible. This is what the SD1 is all about, not high ISO performance. The downside is that this really shows up the weakness of the lenses. The outer frame performance looks dreadful on pretty much all of these shots - soft with lots of chromatic aberration. Sigma need to release 1 or 2 high performance prime lenses to go with this sensor. Not necessarily wide aperture but sharp across the whole frame.

Anyone else noticed that all the sample photos have been crappy these last few months?

Ouch! Jagged edges all over the place and a LOT of color bleed on even moderately high ISO. Just look at the first photo... The red is bleeding all over the place. But, to be honest, many of the shots look bad simply because the lens used sucks. I do like the details, but it seems this camera will perform best in controlled environment such as a studio.

The color does seem to be very 'deep' or something, and in that sense i do see what they're saying about film-like. But once you up the iso, the noise is nothing like film and horribly digital, but then this is more of a studio or well-lid outdoor shoot camera with fancy lights and reflectors by ppl who have that kinda budget, so that isn't much of a problem. But it gotta see some side-by-sides with a regular bayer sensor cam for the true difference in color rendering (with the same lens)!

Nasty striped noise at high ISOs. Color stripes and luminance stripes. If that's the Foveon"look", you can keep it.

I love the IQ (of the "from raw" files). At 100% the images look somehow different to (and better than) ones from the Bayer sensor. Reminded me somehow the film's IQ.

Hope the patents for similar tech we have seen from Sony and Panasonic would bear fruits in the near future.