28-200mm lens: $450
--Yes, that is why it is hard to tell much about the camera qualityProbably not. Foliage looks noisy as it is.
from foliage.
Direct Sun shine is probably one of the most demanding conditions
for photography, particularly digitals and the evidence so far is
that the SD9 has problems with bright light. The SD9 seems to
have problems with bright to dark contrast and gets purple blowouts
and then there are bright saturated Reds/Oranges turning white
(such as the picture of the traffic cone turning white in the horse
track shot).
It would seem that the SD9 would do best on low contrast days like
overcast conditions.
I have a lot of problems with the SD9 as a general use camera based
on my experience with a D30. I think there are way too many
conditions where the SD9 would not be usable. Such as:
Sunny days - blown out colors and purple blowouts
Night time - blown out lights and noisey at higher ISO
Sports - Even kids sports are best shot at 1/500th or faster
shutter speed to cut down motion blur. On sunny days you have to
worry about blow outs (this is an issue for any digital and even
film, but seems particularly bad on the SD9). Most longer zooms
which are often used to capture sports are F5.6 (at the long end)
and on cloudy days, late afternoon or early morning you will have
to be at ISO400 to ISO800 to keep the shutter speed up. The
performance of the SD9 at high ISOs it not good compared to other
cameras. So I can't see shooting kids sports except on bright
overcast (thin clouds).
Flash - I often shoot at ISO400 with flash to reduce the harshness
of the flash and to take advantage of available light (to keep it
from looking like people are standing in the dark). This would
not be an issue with studio lighting, but with typical candid shots
it is a big issue.
So the way I see it, an SD9 would sit in the closet waiting for the
"right" conditions. Most amatuers need a general purpose camera
and not one for just taking still lifes on overcast days.
Karl
--I'm just hoping it can do at least okay in the dark just to at
least keep in the running.
--
Ulysses
Repository of Some of My Stuff
http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=4291269101
I'm an uncle!!!
Karl
--Yes, that is why it is hard to tell much about the camera qualityProbably not. Foliage looks noisy as it is.
from foliage.
Direct Sun shine is probably one of the most demanding conditions
for photography, particularly digitals and the evidence so far is
that the SD9 has problems with bright light. The SD9 seems to
have problems with bright to dark contrast and gets purple blowouts
and then there are bright saturated Reds/Oranges turning white
(such as the picture of the traffic cone turning white in the horse
track shot).
It would seem that the SD9 would do best on low contrast days like
overcast conditions.
I have a lot of problems with the SD9 as a general use camera based
on my experience with a D30. I think there are way too many
conditions where the SD9 would not be usable. Such as:
Sunny days - blown out colors and purple blowouts
Night time - blown out lights and noisey at higher ISO
Sports - Even kids sports are best shot at 1/500th or faster
shutter speed to cut down motion blur. On sunny days you have to
worry about blow outs (this is an issue for any digital and even
film, but seems particularly bad on the SD9). Most longer zooms
which are often used to capture sports are F5.6 (at the long end)
and on cloudy days, late afternoon or early morning you will have
to be at ISO400 to ISO800 to keep the shutter speed up. The
performance of the SD9 at high ISOs it not good compared to other
cameras. So I can't see shooting kids sports except on bright
overcast (thin clouds).
Flash - I often shoot at ISO400 with flash to reduce the harshness
of the flash and to take advantage of available light (to keep it
from looking like people are standing in the dark). This would
not be an issue with studio lighting, but with typical candid shots
it is a big issue.
So the way I see it, an SD9 would sit in the closet waiting for the
"right" conditions. Most amatuers need a general purpose camera
and not one for just taking still lifes on overcast days.
Karl
--I'm just hoping it can do at least okay in the dark just to at
least keep in the running.
--
Ulysses
Repository of Some of My Stuff
http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=4291269101
I'm an uncle!!!
Karl
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com
A large part of the picture is fine. But what about the cones were they totally lost the color? Let say you are out shooting soccer in the Sun. Are you going to accept the teams wearing red uniform blowing out all the color?
If the lighting is even and not contrasty, the SD9 seems to be ok. The problem is that there are a lot of situations where people take pictures where the lighting is not the best.
Not owning/having used a Digital SLR seems to be a common for many of the SD9/Foveon fans. If I had a choice between the current Foveon sensor in a Canon mount (since I have Canon lenses -- thus ignoring the "Simga issues") or the D30 (no less the D60) sensor, I would still rather have the D30. I can't remember EVER loosing a shot due to the Bayer pattern. The SD9 would have better resolution than the D30, but the limitations of when I could use the SD9 would be terrible.
I think this is one of the big issues. To get a camera and a "cheap" consumer grade lens you are talking $2,000 plus batteries and flash/microdrives. This is a big jump up from a $500-800 point and shoot. Plus a consumer can get a 50F1.8 for about $85 where the closes thing in the Sigma line is a 50F2.8 Macro that costs about $200 more.
As Eric pointed out, this is a lot of apples to oranges and backing out the extras gets you back to about a $420 difference. Ignoring the shell game of the packages, the diffrence is about 20% for the D60 body.
I would prefer to see an actual picture of kids (or adults) playing
Part of me would like to get a D60, because I own a Canon G2, and
It would be nice to buy my first SLR. I would enjoy that. Regular
Karl,
--
--
Currently I see no advantage. Resolution is resolution - it
The future is where I think the Foveon will really shine.
-Eric
My gut feeling tells me the RAW conversion software is responsible for at least some of the blowing out of non-diffused reflected parts (e.g., specular reflections and light sources) because the dynamic range in those cases are much larger than that from diffused reflective surfaces. Non-specular reflections don't have much dynamic range; for example, a good photographic print only has about 45 dB or so, or about 8 bits, worth of DR.
And like darkroom work, there is no such thing as a "default setting" that works for all occasions, which seems to be what most people, with the exception of Phil now, are using. I believe Jefrrey has stated that he did not see blown reds in the RAW image, but he did not confirm after the initial message. The baton (literally) now goes to Sam (thank you so, so much by the way, Jeffrey-san, if you are reading).This one brought a big smile to my face. I wonder if Ansel Adams has taken 20,000 pictures in his lifetime!
You are into some important observations! It's difficult to describe what it is, but it's definately there, this "something" about the SD9 images that makes it more "alive and kicking"!
Take a look at fine textures, Geir.
. We are used to seeing certain textures in real life, when they are smeared in images, we feel they don't look natural (posterized, whatever) but often can't put a precise handle on it., otherwise your brains just don't click. It is something that is hard to measure, but easy to "feel." But when assembled together, gives the entire image your "alive and kicking" perception. Your mind is not playing any new tricks on you anymore than what it is already doing when you see a naturall scene.Certainly is could be the software. But then the puzzling thing is why? Compressing the dynamic range is not a hard problem - otherwise the competing cameras would usually have the same problem. (And they do, but to a much lesser extent.)
So it's fair to jump to conclusions that it's a software bug? Either jump (and justify your answer) or don't jump. Can't have it both ways ;-)
Yes, we all are waiting for more info. But w/o speculation from incomplete data, this forum would be empty!
Well, it's unusual for "standard settings" to make a bad print from a perfect negative. So can we be blamed for assuming the starting point is imperfect? The alternative is to assume major flaws in the standard processing. Which is more common?
I don't know about you, but I rarely get the lighting I want. If the kids are playing in the sun or shade, that is what I get. I can try and position myself based on the lighting and use different lenses and focal lengths and F-numbers, but often the situation dictates what you can do. If they are wearing bright red uniforms, I can't ask them to change into a neutral color. I'm not afraid to shoot at night with my D30 as well.
On that I would agree. I would really like to try a few experiments myself. I know people find test patterns and test picture boring, but they let you see more clearly what is going on. A "real" picture is so busy with information that it makes it impossible to get beyond subjective criteria (in which case we need to do double blind tests to take out the biases).
.----
Ulysses
Repository of Some of My Stuff
http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=4291269101
I'm an uncle!!!
