Reading mode: Light Dark

Nikon: why not go Foveon?

Go to last post
Why not indeed? Nikon has so far used Sony's sensor for it's low budget DSLR models but has now opted to go with Sony even with the D2X (which is taking forever to arrive).

I've read great things about Foveon and it's a pity that the fellow below posted a pic and cannot see the difference in every single aspect. I'd say your pic, with the right glass, is very comparable to my 1Ds in terms of resolution. Very far away from what a 6MP CCD could ever hope for.

Regards,
David
 
I would have focused on the eyes also. Great shot, thanks for sharing.
bobi2 said:
Paul Linder said:
bobi2 said:
Because....
Picture, taken with d70:

Click to expand...
I think I would rather have had the nose in focus, and anything
back from there. The Foveon can't make those decisions for you.
--
Paul Linder
Click to expand...
I have posted that pic. just to compare noise; and foveon have
plenty of it!!!
Dof is shalow, but eyes are sharp, and that was my point in that
pic ;)
Click to expand...
 
...Foveon is a poor company that produces small amout of 3 megapixel chips with big crop factor for Sigma DSLRs.

...both Nikon and Canon (especially Canon) want to produce their own CCDs/CMOSes

...i see nothing special in Your's photo example (besides some dust)



http://www.pbase.com/arra
 
You can speak tech all you want but quite several people who've seen Foveon images, look 3D and realistic. It's those subtle details our brain pickup. Foveon = closer to real data, Bayer = farther from real data.
agf1997 said:
sting said:
agf1997 said:
There's no
reason why you couldn't get similar colors from a bayer filter type
sensor.
Click to expand...
There is a definite issue with color sensitivity in single chip
sensors - relative color spatial sampling. All color channels are
not sampled at the same spatial resolution. At least with the
Foveon chip, each sensor location has the same color sensitivity,
at least in theory.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
the minute details fall in the right pixel sites and when up-sampled will produce seemingly sharper pics (3D) than a Bayer twice it's MP count.

Unlike Bayer, although has larger spatial coverage has actually more of false information (not in the right pixel sites).

I can discern it.
agf1997 said:
photogeek said:
If they fixed their color issues and ISO issues, I'd be the first
in line to buy a Foveon based camera. Right now its only advantage
is incredible sharpness, but that's not all there is to it for me.

Get me a foveon sensor with Nikon or Fuji colors and ISO
performance, in 1.5x-1.3x crop factor and with 5MP of resolution
(5MPx3 layers) and I'm buying. Though after reading about the
technology quite a bit I don't think it's even possible.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
I owned an SD9. The resolution was outstanding, perhaps better than the D70. However, with that camera you'll get yellow skin tones, guaranteed. Even the sample photos on the Foven and Sigma websites had yellow skin tones. Check out the Sigma forum. 99.9% of what they post are flowers, bugs, lizards. All of the people shots, even the ones posters brag and ooh and aah about, they all have yellow skin tones. I've got no idea if this is caused by Foveon or Sigma, but it ruined the camera for me. I am vastly happier with the D70.
 
Some Sigma lenses suffer from a slight yellow cast. No problem corecting this in PP though.
Dennis.
Schnauzer said:
I owned an SD9. The resolution was outstanding, perhaps better than
the D70. However, with that camera you'll get yellow skin tones,
guaranteed. Even the sample photos on the Foven and Sigma websites
had yellow skin tones. Check out the Sigma forum. 99.9% of what
they post are flowers, bugs, lizards. All of the people shots, even
the ones posters brag and ooh and aah about, they all have yellow
skin tones. I've got no idea if this is caused by Foveon or Sigma,
but it ruined the camera for me. I am vastly happier with the D70.
Click to expand...
--
'There were the following problems with your message:
We don't appreciate that kind of language here, sorry '
 
Joseph S. Wisniewski said:
Qiang said:
Nikon: why not go Foveon?
Click to expand...
He also wrote the same thing in the Pentax and Konica Minolta
forums...

But here's a few simple answers.

Foveon can't give you the electronic shutter that let a D70 have a
1/500 sec x-sync and 1/8000 sec top shutter speeds, even though it
has the mechanical shutter of a $180 N75 body.

ISO 1600.

Metamerism: Foveon has much worse problems with it than any Bayer
sensor.

Efficiency: The SD9 has resolution comparable (or slightly
exceeding) that of most 6mp Bayer sensor cameras, but it produces
as much data as a 10.2mp Bayer camera. That's 60% more stuff that
you have to process and store. 60% more CF cards to buy. And, for a
given cost in processor power, you get a camera with 60% of the
speed of a 6mp Bayer.

Note: there are also reasons to "go Foveon" (I'm looking to get one
myself, as soon as D-shell finishes his Nikon lens adapter for the
Sigma SD10) but Qing's question was specifically "why not go
Foveon?"

--
A cyberstalker told me not to post anymore...
So I'm posting even more!

Ciao!

Joe

http://www.swissarmyfork.com
Click to expand...
 
Schnauzer said:
I owned an SD9. The resolution was outstanding, perhaps better than
the D70. However, with that camera you'll get yellow skin tones,
guaranteed. Even the sample photos on the Foven and Sigma websites
had yellow skin tones. Check out the Sigma forum. 99.9% of what
they post are flowers, bugs, lizards. All of the people shots, even
the ones posters brag and ooh and aah about, they all have yellow
skin tones. I've got no idea if this is caused by Foveon or Sigma,
but it ruined the camera for me. I am vastly happier with the D70.
Click to expand...
 
photomik said:
You can speak tech all you want but quite several people who've
seen Foveon images, look 3D and realistic. It's those subtle
details our brain pickup. Foveon = closer to real data, Bayer =
farther from real data.
Click to expand...
I also noticed that Foveon colours have more depth (opacity if you like) and tend less to have the plastic look in some portraits (more texture).

Just an observation.

John
 
AngusG said:
That's a beautiful pic - and a very good question. Does anyone have
any insight as to why Nikon chose not to go for LBCAST in the D2x?
Click to expand...
Does LBCAST support random access, the way CMOS does? That's how the D2X gets the 8fps in center crop mode.

If LBCAST acts more like a CCD, you can dump rows, but you're still stuck clocking out complete rows in the horizontal part of the crop, then throwing away the left and right cropped colums, so the CMOS lets you boost speed by 78% in a 1.33x center crop, while a CCD (or possibly LBCAST) only nets you a 33% speed increase, so you couldn't make 8fps.

(although some CCD designs can let you get away with short clocking and dumping the right hand crop area, that still won't get you to 8fps).

--
A cyberstalker told me not to post anymore...
So I'm posting even more!

Ciao!

Joe

http://www.swissarmyfork.com
 
mchaboud said:
I'm somewhat curious as to why no one has made 3-chip SLRs. I know
that it would affect the form-factor somewhat, but 3-chip cameras
are the norm (with very good performance) in professional video/HD.

The crosstalk issue goes away, among other things.
Click to expand...
There are several reasons. First, because a 3 chip system requires twobeamsplitter prisms, and about the thinnedt you can make that is 2.5-3x the diagonal of the sensor. Existing SLR lenses are only designed with enough back focus (distance from the rear element to the sensor) to clear an SLR mirror and shutter, about the same as the sensor diagonal. So you'd need a whole flock of redesigned "long mount" lenses.

Second, because of color accuracy. Beam splitter sensors have color overlaps that don't bear much resemblance to the spectral responses of the human eye, so they can't do critical color reproduction. They have large color errors. This isn't too much of a problem in video, because the color coding (NTSC, PAL, SECAM) is so horrible to begin with that it completly overwhelms the errors from the sensor.

--
A cyberstalker told me not to post anymore...
So I'm posting even more!

Ciao!

Joe

http://www.swissarmyfork.com
 
dolgad said:
Why not indeed? Nikon has so far used Sony's sensor for it's low
budget DSLR models but has now opted to go with Sony even with the
D2X (which is taking forever to arrive).

I've read great things about Foveon and it's a pity that the fellow
below posted a pic and cannot see the difference in every single
aspect. I'd say your pic, with the right glass, is very comparable
to my 1Ds in terms of resolution.
Click to expand...
It should be. The Foveon requires you to transfer, store, and process 10.2 "megasomethings" of data, and your 1Ds requires you to store a comparable amount (11 megasomethings).

But personally, I disagee. I've done 1Ds work that, printed at the same size, simply leaves SD10 work in the dust.

--
A cyberstalker told me not to post anymore...
So I'm posting even more!

Ciao!

Joe

http://www.swissarmyfork.com
 
I know the Sigma crowd thinks the Foveon sensor can do no wrong. and if the sensor is as good as they say and you will hear them refute every argument against the sensor, then why would Nikon go and buy their big sensors from one of their main competitors. It would seem logical that they would be smarter to find someone who does not compete. Every dime they send Sonys way is just another dime that can go into bullets to send the other way.

I know people say, "well its a whole different division", so what, each quarter Sony gathers in all the money and the only thing investors care about is the bottom line. I find it interesting that Foveon and Nat Semi both trying to sell the chip have only been able to find one taker.

They did find some Chinese company to build a camera around their small chip and a shell company out of Hong Kong that bought the name Polaroid is going to sell the camera. If the technology is so good why doesn't a single real camera company adopt the smaller sensor. If we follow the logic that that has been thrown out that companies from Japan won't adopt US technology, then why doesn't Kodak use the Foveon sensor in its consumer cameras?
Qiang said:
A picture taken by Sigma SD10

Click to expand...
--
Ed
http://www.cbrycelea.com/photos/
 
Beam-splitter configurations could be troublesome, but you're dead wrong about color-coding in video. 10 and 12-bit YPbPr schemes are producing very good color results. They're sufficient for use in full-length feature films, many of which are now being shot in HD. Take a look at the colors displayed in The Company (accurate skintones, bright reds, deep blues). To note, all broadcast systems (NTSC, PAL, SECAM) use YUV color coding for transmission now.

Also, regarding color-segmentation for reception, any linearly non-dependent set of color coefficients can be accurately transformed into another space via a contribution matrix. I did this to 16-bit resolvable accuracy with PMTs and 12-bit resolvable accuracy with photodiodes at my last workplace. The color-coding schemes of video, even at 12-bit, are the limiting factor currently.

I'm sure that the optics of transposing the sensor plane could be problematic, but it's not a requirement of the lenses for an optical system.

Still, I'll admit that these are problems that camera manufacturers would likely not want to solve, as the cost and complexity of a system with three chips could rise considerably over a one-chip system. Technologically, the current crop of DSLRs still function as SLRs with digital sensors rather than taking advantage of the presence of high-accuracy sensors in the cameras (can you say failing D2H metering components?). Given that showing of the relative torpor of the industry leaders, a lack of optical re-designs is no large surprise.
Joseph S. Wisniewski said:
mchaboud said:
I'm somewhat curious as to why no one has made 3-chip SLRs. I know
that it would affect the form-factor somewhat, but 3-chip cameras
are the norm (with very good performance) in professional video/HD.

The crosstalk issue goes away, among other things.
Click to expand...
There are several reasons. First, because a 3 chip system requires
twobeamsplitter prisms, and about the thinnedt you can make that is
2.5-3x the diagonal of the sensor. Existing SLR lenses are only
designed with enough back focus (distance from the rear element to
the sensor) to clear an SLR mirror and shutter, about the same as
the sensor diagonal. So you'd need a whole flock of redesigned
"long mount" lenses.

Second, because of color accuracy. Beam splitter sensors have color
overlaps that don't bear much resemblance to the spectral responses
of the human eye, so they can't do critical color reproduction.
They have large color errors. This isn't too much of a problem in
video, because the color coding (NTSC, PAL, SECAM) is so horrible
to begin with that it completly overwhelms the errors from the
sensor.

--
A cyberstalker told me not to post anymore...
So I'm posting even more!

Ciao!

Joe

http://www.swissarmyfork.com
Click to expand...
 
The claim is LBCAST is CMOS with a different set of Transistors.
Joseph S. Wisniewski said:
AngusG said:
That's a beautiful pic - and a very good question. Does anyone have
any insight as to why Nikon chose not to go for LBCAST in the D2x?
Click to expand...
Does LBCAST support random access, the way CMOS does? That's how
the D2X gets the 8fps in center crop mode.

If LBCAST acts more like a CCD, you can dump rows, but you're still
stuck clocking out complete rows in the horizontal part of the
crop, then throwing away the left and right cropped colums, so the
CMOS lets you boost speed by 78% in a 1.33x center crop, while a
CCD (or possibly LBCAST) only nets you a 33% speed increase, so you
couldn't make 8fps.

(although some CCD designs can let you get away with short clocking
and dumping the right hand crop area, that still won't get you to
8fps).

--
A cyberstalker told me not to post anymore...
So I'm posting even more!

Ciao!

Joe

http://www.swissarmyfork.com
Click to expand...
--

'The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.' -- Abraham Lincoln
 
Qiang said:
A picture taken by Sigma SD10
Click to expand...
That is really interesting. A former boss of mine used to work for foveon and had a lot of interesting stories from the development effort there... I shouldn't go into any detail other than to say that it was very fascinating from an engineering perspective.

....I love my D70 the way it is, despite the imperfections :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Keyboard shortcuts

f
Forum
m
My threads
Mobile site
About
Editorial content
Cameras & Lenses
Community
All content, design, and layout are Copyright © 1998–2025 Digital Photography Review All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction in whole or part in any form or medium without specific written permission is prohibited.
When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission.
©GPS Media - Guides, Products, Services.
Back
Top