S2 obsolete before it's even out.

Oops, smack me in the head with that proverbial Halibut, you got me on this one . ( sitting here at my desk now smelling of fish, you rotten picky son-of-a-gun you KNEW what I meant )

Good point, however, I stand corrected......

Oh, by the way, you should have capitalized DIGITAL to make your point even more obvious....

Matti J. said:

Bill Dewey said:

First off, would people please quit calling this chip a "ccd"?
This is based on CMOS technology, not CCD. To date only one
camera, the Canon D30 uses CMOS, all others are CCD...

Click to expand...

--
Cheers,
Matti J.

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--Bill Deweywww.deweydrive.com

Carl, I am not sure what you meen with your first statement regarding looking at the site to see that this is a CMOS chip. That was my first point, people keep calling this a CCD when it is not.

As to your comment about spending money each year, this has to be balanced with opportunity cost lost. If my $5000 investment saves me $10000 this year in film and developing costs, or even in increased sales because I can show and print immediately, then the $5000 is well spent. If I wait a year to buy at, say $2500 then my net loss is the $10000 less the added $2500 for a net loss of $7500. It all depends on your situation, I think. Before I starting selling prints, I was shooting a minimum of 100 rolls of film per year, with no return at all. So my out-of-pocket cost was $1300 per year no matter what I did. This must be balanced as well even if you are doing nothing but shooting for "fun". Even at that level a $5000 camera pays for itself in just under 4 years.

Carl Peer said:

Bill Dewey said:

As to your statement about this not being the time to buy, I most
vigourously disagree. You must think of lost opportunity cost. I
we had all waited for 2 ghz P4 processors and systems to suppor
them, the technology would never have gotten there, as no one would
have bought earlier models which became "obsolete", therein funding
new development.

Same with cameras. Will there be a "better" one tomorrow?
Undoubtedly there will, but the S1's, D1/X/H's, Canon D30 and 1D
will all be very useful for many years. Putting this chip in a
consumer level camera makes great sense to me, in order to test the
waters, but a good D-SLR is much more than it's imaging chip. If
the Sigma software isn't up to snuff, I don't care whose chip they
use, it won't be worth squat.

Michael Brown said:

Read the news on the dpreview front page about the new Foveon CCD
and it's clear that any camera using a traditional CCD (and I
include Fuji Super-CCD here) will soon be obsolete.

Clearly the Sigma SD9 isn't suddenly going to become a reference
camera but I'm assuming that Foveon have entered into agreements
with other Camera mfrs. and we'll soon be seeing Foveon CCD based
cameras from Nikon, Canon, Olypmus etc.

Since Fuji have persisted with their own unique CCD tech it seems
unlikely that Foveon reached an agreement with them so they might
find themselves left out in the cold with yesterday's tech.

Now is definitely NOT the time to buy a new digital camera - the
future looks bright though!

Michael.
--
http://www.amarelo.jazznet.pt/photos/

Click to expand...

--
Bill Dewey
http://www.deweydrive.com

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--Bill Deweywww.deweydrive.com

KenEis said:

Why do you day that? Favion is already higher resolution then the
S2.

Click to expand...

It isn't. A traditional 3 MP CCD has a spatial resolution of 3 MP while the colour resolution is considerably lower -- 1.5 MP for green and 0.75 MP for red and blue. The honeycomb pattern of Fuji's SuperCCD puts the highest available resolution where it's needed most, leading to an increased useful resolution. Foveon's X3 CMOS chip offers a spatial resolution of 3 MP, just like any 3 MP CCD, but the colour resolution is 3 MP as well. Now the S2 Pro's SuperCCD has 6 MP, i.e. the spatial resolution is 6 MP and the colour resolution 3 MP (green) or 1.5 MP (red and blue). Given that again the SuperCCD's honeycomb pattern increases useful resolution, the S2 Pro should outperform any camera with an X3 chip: overall resolution should be much better, while colour resolution should be similar.

• Michael--------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.michael-hussmann.de

It seems to me that color resolution is a confusing term in this context. If you take a color image and convert to greyscale, resolution doesn't change. Color accuracy is what the Fovean chip does better, not image resolution.

Interpolating color works much better than interpolating pixels IMO. I already get better color with my S1 than shooting film, I'm more interested in seeing pixel density increase, and a full frame chip.

Dave

KenEis said:

Quentin Bargate said:

KenEis said:

Why do you day that? Favion is already higher resolution then the
S2.

Click to expand...

No it does not. Its true resolution is better than current 3
megapixel designs, but not 3 times as good - you are confusing
resolution with colour.

Yes, its a great chip etc etc, but don't go overboard . Lets
wait and see a direct comparison with the Fuji / latest Canon etc.
I'd be surprised if it won that battle, but we will have to wait
until some reliable comparative reviews.
--
Q

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

guys lets wait until the product ships and then we can do reviews and actually see the results about which technology is better
before coming to conclusions now without actually having a product at hand

John Bagdovitz said:

As far as the S2 being obsolete, we need to see alot more before
that day comes.

John

Michael Brown said:

As you said, your S1 images (and my E-10 images) aren't made any
worse with the announcement of the Foveon CCD and clearly any good
non-foveon camera around now or coming out in the near future is
still going to be a good and useable camera so it won't be obsolete
in that sense.

It's just a shame for Fuji that just as they announce what could
well be the benchmark DSLR (S2) that their thunder is stolen by a
new technology which means everything that went before is now old
technology. I'm sure that in the long run Foveon will be far
superior to Super-CCD or any other current CCD tech. Of course
Fuji may well be working on something similar themselves.

From the Foveon samples that Phil showed I think it will be sooner
(within next 6-12 months) rather than later that Foveon CCDs will
way outperform anything current in terms of any measurable
parameter.

Michael.

Quentin Bargate said:

The Fuji S2 and indeed the super CCD are still likely to be way
ahead of the 3.47 megapixel foveon for the forseeable future.
Foveon have done an excellent marketing job at the launch of their
new chip, but I'd wager there is a lot of life left in the "old"
technology for some time to come.

And who knows what other, new developments might be around the
corner from others?

It will be at least a year before foveon resolution catches up with
the current top end represented by the likes of Fuji with their S2.

I'm still plannning on buying an S2. My S1 is great, and the
pictures it takes are no worse after the foveon announcement than
they were before it.
--
Q

Michael Brown said:

Read the news on the dpreview front page about the new Foveon CCD
and it's clear that any camera using a traditional CCD (and I
include Fuji Super-CCD here) will soon be obsolete.

Clearly the Sigma SD9 isn't suddenly going to become a reference
camera but I'm assuming that Foveon have entered into agreements
with other Camera mfrs. and we'll soon be seeing Foveon CCD based
cameras from Nikon, Canon, Olypmus etc.

Since Fuji have persisted with their own unique CCD tech it seems
unlikely that Foveon reached an agreement with them so they might
find themselves left out in the cold with yesterday's tech.

Now is definitely NOT the time to buy a new digital camera - the
future looks bright though!

Michael.
--
http://www.amarelo.jazznet.pt/photos/

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--
http://www.amarelo.jazznet.pt/photos/

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--beam me up scottyim giving it all shes got captain

for whatever its worth be it that the foveon chip is indeed better or not
there will be more fuji sales compared to the sigma sales

simply because more people own and use nikon mount lenses compared to sigma mount lenses

so even if what you are saying that the foveon chip is better how many will care how many will run to the camera stores and buy a sigma camera that uses only a sigma mount

now if they were smart and made adapters that allowed people with otehr mounts to be able to mount their existing lenses to the sigma body without any liabilities and loss of features that would be a good thing

Quentin Bargate said:

I think the excitement whipped up by the foveon announcement is to
an extent justified, as any new digital imaging advance is, but to
read some of the messages on some of the other notice boards
suggests mass hysteria has broken out, with different posters vying
to make the most ridiculous claims for the new chip.

My guess is that, at the moment, in its current form (1.7
multiplier, unknown ISO performance etc etc) it would be
outperformed by the latest regular chips from the likes of Fuji and
Canon, and probably by Contax, uing the old, but full frame,
Philips chip.

Foveon want to sell to all and sundry, amd I expect Canon, Nikon
etc have known about this chip for a long time. As and when it is
the best option, they will pick it.

At the moment, I am much more interested in the S2, being a happy
S1 user.
--
Q

Click to expand...

--beam me up scottyim giving it all shes got captain

Sigma SD9 with Foveon X3 technolopgy is also CMOS and should be in the context of this board... context of DSLRs... if non-Fuji matters are context of this board anyway.

(Saw any smileys in my prev post?)

KenEis said:

Matti J. said:

Bill Dewey said:

First off, would people please quit calling this chip a "ccd"?
This is based on CMOS technology, not CCD. To date only one
camera, the Canon D30 uses CMOS, all others are CCD...

Click to expand...

--
Cheers,
Matti J.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--Cheers,Matti J.