Reading mode: Light Dark

Why is Sigma and Foveon still relevant for the serious amateur?

Go to last post
DMillier said:
Considering that 99% of Sigma's revenues come from sales of Canon and Nikon mount lenses, I wouldn't be so confident. What camera makers should be doing is building smartphone shareability features into cameras, like Thom Hogan suggests. But they still think people ought to wait until they get home to their computer and card reader. That model won't fly any more...
Click to expand...
You can do that already with EyeFi cards and the like, but I do agree additional camera integration with smartphones can be nice - it boggles my mind no camera yet provides a bluetooth beacon which could simply tell a smartphone when an image is taken, so the smartphone could record GPS data... no need to bake all that into camera hardware.
 
Could you please, please tell me where you get this information about how many cameras Sigma has sold? Unless you are employed by Sigma in the Marketing and Sales Divisions, or a memeber of the Yamaki family you absolutely do not know "anything" definitive about how many cameras Sigma has sold. Sigma is a family held private company who do not publish their sales statistics. You might make assumptions based on what you see on the shelves in your country, but if you go to Japan where there are more than 128,000,000 people, a large percentage of whom are photographers and camera owners, you will see Sigma cameras in virtually all serious camera stores.

The bottom line is that people who think they know things about Sigma's world-wide sales are simply measurbating. Sigma's sales numbers are simply not known and for people to frequently make posts as if they truly know this is an exercise in futility and spreads disinformation.

Maybe Sigma's sales are very, very low. Maybe Sigma's camera sales are quite healthy - it's simply an unknown.

Best regards,

Lin

Fraulain Uebermueller said:
snip

Considering tha Sigma has sold very few cameras, fewer than just about any other niche player (maybe Ricoh, excluding Pentax has sold fewer?), and that the camera has one strength and many weaknessess, it is hard to imagine why one would think that Sigma/Foveon had ever been relevant for the arbitrarily defined group of "serious amateurs". There are individuals who fit into the definitiion and prefer Sigma/Foveon, many in this very forum I am sure, but the number for serious amateurs using Sigma/Foveon is very low indeed (which is easy to see on how invisible the brand is in all kinds of photography contests and because of the fact that Sigma cameras do not suit many kind of photography nearly as well as the largest brand cameras, like birding or action. In all my years of photography I've only seen one Sigma camera in use and not in the hands of someone I'd call serious photographer).
Click to expand...
 
DMillier said:
Considering that 99% of Sigma's revenues come from sales of Canon and Nikon mount lenses, I wouldn't be so confident. What camera makers should be doing is building smartphone shareability features into cameras, like Thom Hogan suggests.
Click to expand...
I thought they were doing that. I was under the impression that Wi-Fi in cameras was for that and remotely controlling the camera functions (including remote shooting/triggering, with remote live-view and review capabilities). The fact that people can review the images means that they can at least see jpegs from the camera, which they can share to Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, Pinterest, or wherever they want (like their Zenfolio or SmugMug account maybe). Am I mistaken about this?

Loading…

www.usa.canon.com
DavidMillier said:
But they still think people ought to wait until they get home to their computer and card reader. That model won't fly any more...
Click to expand...
And it's NOT flying. That's why they're including the new photo sharing and other features in the new cameras. Here's another link to prove what I'm saying is happening . . . http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sony-alpha-a7r/11
DavidMillier said:
--
"...while I am tempted to bludgeon you, I would rather have you come away with an improved understanding of how these sensors work" ---- Eric Fossum
Galleries and website: http://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmillier/
Click to expand...
 
Really? 99% of Sigma's revenues come from sales of Canon and Nikon mount lenses???? Please, please tell me where you got this information? Where are these statistics published which enable you to make these kinds of assertions as if they were factual David???

Best regards,

Lin
DMillier said:
Considering that 99% of Sigma's revenues come from sales of Canon and Nikon mount lenses, I wouldn't be so confident. What camera makers should be doing is building smartphone shareability features into cameras, like Thom Hogan suggests. But they still think people ought to wait until they get home to their computer and card reader. That model won't fly any more...

--
"...while I am tempted to bludgeon you, I would rather have you come away with an improved understanding of how these sensors work" ---- Eric Fossum
Galleries and website: http://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmillier/
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Kendall Helmstetter Gelner said:
DMillier said:
Considering that 99% of Sigma's revenues come from sales of Canon and Nikon mount lenses, I wouldn't be so confident. What camera makers should be doing is building smartphone shareability features into cameras, like Thom Hogan suggests. But they still think people ought to wait until they get home to their computer and card reader. That model won't fly any more...
Click to expand...
You can do that already with EyeFi cards and the like, but I do agree additional camera integration with smartphones can be nice - it boggles my mind no camera yet provides a bluetooth beacon which could simply tell a smartphone when an image is taken, so the smartphone could record GPS data... no need to bake all that into camera hardware.
Click to expand...
 
Lin Evans said:
Could you please, please tell me where you get this information about how many cameras Sigma has sold? Unless you are employed by Sigma in the Marketing and Sales Divisions, or a memeber of the Yamaki family you absolutely do not know "anything" definitive about how many cameras Sigma has sold. Sigma is a family held private company who do not publish their sales statistics. You might make assumptions based on what you see on the shelves in your country, but if you go to Japan where there are more than 128,000,000 people, a large percentage of whom are photographers and camera owners, you will see Sigma cameras in virtually all serious camera stores.

The bottom line is that people who think they know things about Sigma's world-wide sales are simply measurbating. Sigma's sales numbers are simply not known and for people to frequently make posts as if they truly know this is an exercise in futility and spreads disinformation.

Maybe Sigma's sales are very, very low. Maybe Sigma's camera sales are quite healthy - it's simply an unknown.

Best regards,

Lin
Click to expand...
We have a healthy local market for used cameras here in Vancouver. There were a hundred and fifty sellers in our last local camera swap meet, selling over a thousand cameras, and there were exactly 2 Sigmas available.

Our Craigslist is very active with thousands of cameras available. The last Sigma was months ago.

No local dealer sells Sigma cameras, and we have several large photo retailers here.

Perhaps Sigma sells some cameras in Japan but I think that it is very reasonable to assume that they sell very, very few here compared to other manufacturers.

Jan

DP1s
 
Last edited:
Lin Evans said:
Really? 99% of Sigma's revenues come from sales of Canon and Nikon mount lenses???? Please, please tell me where you got this information? Where are these statistics published which enable you to make these kinds of assertions as if they were factual David???

Best regards,

Lin
DMillier said:
Considering that 99% of Sigma's revenues come from sales of Canon and Nikon mount lenses, I wouldn't be so confident. What camera makers should be doing is building smartphone shareability features into cameras, like Thom Hogan suggests. But they still think people ought to wait until they get home to their computer and card reader. That model won't fly any more...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Kendall Helmstetter Gelner said:
Truman Prevatt said:
Kendall Helmstetter Gelner said:
You can see other cameras having issues all the time, just pay attention to images in news stories. It's even more clear when you shoot in a studio with other shooters and compare other results. Do you deny that Canon and Nikon juice green colors and tend to lean skin shades to be more pink?

Sigma does a great job of handling this, you can either have a truly neutral photo or choose a color mode that leans the way you like for a particular image - independent of white balance.
Click to expand...
And at the end of the day color is one of the more subjective aspects of photography. It was always a treat to teach the beginning color course - oh some would almost come to fistfights to over the "proper color" and this was between people that didn't even see the actual scene in person!
Click to expand...
Over time I've totally come to the same conclusion about color. Which is why it bothers me so much when someone claims the Foveon cameras have inaccurate color, and failing to recognize the universality of this condition. Every camera is going to give you images where you have to work on color.
Click to expand...
My experience is it is more subtle than that - because at the root of it color is subjective. It gets down to people want to see the color they visualize and the color that pleases them - not necessarily the color as it was and the camera produces the three channels it saw given the ambient lighting. Foveon sensors are no better or worse in color than any other sensor in reasonable and strong lighting conditions close to white. I think the Foveon does have some issues in mixed lighting - especially when it is low light - conditions which results in blotches and issues in the shadows.

One reason I have no interest in color is once the color is stripped away then you can explore the image. If it is color - most people never get past the color. That's pretty obvious when you listen to the forums. That is why at most serious art institutes with photography programs - the first course a student takes for a photography is a year of Black and White film Photography. At the serious art schools we still start with the fundamentals and that is B&W film photography. There is also a year of digital photography required today. There wasn't when I attended.
 
jande9 said:
Lin Evans said:
Could you please, please tell me where you get this information about how many cameras Sigma has sold? Unless you are employed by Sigma in the Marketing and Sales Divisions, or a memeber of the Yamaki family you absolutely do not know "anything" definitive about how many cameras Sigma has sold. Sigma is a family held private company who do not publish their sales statistics. You might make assumptions based on what you see on the shelves in your country, but if you go to Japan where there are more than 128,000,000 people, a large percentage of whom are photographers and camera owners, you will see Sigma cameras in virtually all serious camera stores.

The bottom line is that people who think they know things about Sigma's world-wide sales are simply measurbating. Sigma's sales numbers are simply not known and for people to frequently make posts as if they truly know this is an exercise in futility and spreads disinformation.

Maybe Sigma's sales are very, very low. Maybe Sigma's camera sales are quite healthy - it's simply an unknown.

Best regards,

Lin
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Hi Jan,

Of course the population of Canada is about a quarter of the population of Japan, and as I said, In Japan, Sigma cameras are found in virtually all serious camera stores. The percentage of "photographers" in Japan is also much higher than the percentages in the US, the UK, France, Germany and Canada combined. Almost everyone in Japan carries a camera and not just phone cameras so one would assume that Sigma is much better represented there than in other places. There is no "perhaps" about it. Sigma sells plenty of cameras in Japan. There is also no doubt that they are quite under-represented in many other places. The salient point is that we simply don't know how many cameras they actually sell.

Best regards,

Lin
jande9 said:
We have a healthy local market for used cameras here in Vancouver. There were a hundred and fifty sellers in our last local camera swap meet, selling over a thousand cameras, and there were exactly 2 Sigmas available.

Our Craigslist is very active with thousands of cameras available. The last Sigma was months ago.

No local dealer sells Sigma cameras, and we have several large photo retailers here.

Perhaps Sigma sells some cameras in Japan but I think that it is very reasonable to assume that they sell very, very few here compared to other manufacturers.

Jan

DP1s
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
D Cox said:
Truman Prevatt said:
D Cox said:
D Cox said:
In my opinion the reflex mirror is an obsolete focussing method, so I would not buy any kind of DSLR. But people do.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
For some forms of photography it is. For others the EVF's are not a good choice. Action, sports and most street work, low light all come to mind. However, I do see the DX or ASP-C sensor DSLR's disappearing those formats will be mainly mirror less. However, for FF sensors I expect the DSLR will be around for the foreseeable future. Especially since there are a very large number of working pros, semi-pros and serious amateurs with huge investments in Canon and Nikon FF SLR lenses.
Click to expand...
I'm sure people will go on buying SLRs for years to come. But my opinion is that they are obsolete.

For street work, I think a tilted LCD is the best viewfinder, with the camera at waist level. Same for low light.
Click to expand...
I've been doing street work since 1971 - not the only format I do - I've been around on the street probably for a long time before you were born. I love cameras with waist level finders and have used many in my day and still have a few. However, with a waist level finder - you see bellow buttons. But for street work - they are not the cats meow. The ultimate street camera was the Leica - not because Henri Cartier-Bresson, W. Eugene Smith and others use a Leica. They used a Leica because it was the best tool. For street work a OVF is almost mandatory.

The problem with an EVF for street work is lag - what you see is in the EVF was what happened a 1/10th of a second ago. Add to that shutter lag we are talking a 150 msec. The second problem with an EVF for street work is the EVF sucks in low light. The best viewfinder for street work is a rangefinder - you always have you eye on the subject even when you push the shutter. The next best is an SLR OVF.

Trust me I've been there for over 40 years.
 
It seems reasonably clear to me that our Dear FU is not entirely legit.

And she is full of something in addition to opinions. Of which "she" seems to have plenty. Just check her posting history...

And it is an odd post, insulting to both Sigma AND to the Sigma users.

Any attempt at a discussion or debate with "her" strikes me as a waste of time, but yes, a brief rebuttal seems about right.

Richard
 
richard stone said:
It seems reasonably clear to me that our Dear FU is not entirely legit.
Click to expand...
Can't even spell Fraulein or Uber for that matter ;-)
richard stone said:
And she is full of something in addition to opinions. Of which "she" seems to have plenty. Just check her posting history...

And it is an odd post, insulting to both Sigma AND to the Sigma users.

Any attempt at a discussion or debate with "her" strikes me as a waste of time, but yes, a brief rebuttal seems about right.
Click to expand...
Seems to me like two words brief would do it . . .
 
Forgive me, Lin, you are correct. I'd forgotten to take into account sales of Sigma TV's, CD players, washing machines, cars and large airliners.

My assumption was that they are an independent lens manufacturer and that most of the cameras made with interchangeable lenses are made by Canon and Nikon.
 
Wake up and smell the sushi David. Sony owns a huge and growing percentage of interchangeable lens cameras and Sigma makes at least seventeen or more lenses with Alpha mount.

http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/arti...ating-digital-camera-market-while-canon-nikon

Here's a quote from the Dun and Bradstreet statistics quoted in the link above:

"Canon, Nikon and Olympus cannot regain their lost glory. DSLRs of Canon and Nikon are occupying less than 30 percent market share in the entire market of interchangeable-lens cameras, left behind by mirroless cameras. The market share of Olympus also shrank to 10 percent, as the company failed to introduce new products."

The point is that throwing out percentages as if they were viable assumptions can lead you down a dead end, one way street.

Best regards,

Lin
DMillier said:
Forgive me, Lin, you are correct. I'd forgotten to take into account sales of Sigma TV's, CD players, washing machines, cars and large airliners.

My assumption was that they are an independent lens manufacturer and that most of the cameras made with interchangeable lenses are made by Canon and Nikon.

--
"...while I am tempted to bludgeon you, I would rather have you come away with an improved understanding of how these sensors work" ---- Eric Fossum
Galleries and website: http://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmillier/
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Scottelly said:
Two-way networking via Blue-Tooth would be cool, because not only would it mean there would be way less power consumed, but people could do the GPS data thing and the camera could be made to use the phone's GPS data, tagging the images (or is that what you mean?). People could also develop an app to use the smart phone as a remote triggering device too . . . and even a time-lapse shooting device, which could have all sorts of functionality, such as bracketing, for shooting HDR sets, longer and shorter delays, based on the time of day, etc. They could add Blue-Tooth control and triggering to their flash units and really offer something special, huh?
Click to expand...
Sony do most of these things.

They even sell cameras without viewfinders or LCDs, for use with a phone as the screen. You can either clip the camera onto a phone, or put it on a tripod several metres away.
 
Forgive me again, Sigma make 99% of their revenue from selling lenses to Canon, Nikon and Sony owners....

This is getting ridiculous. The point is only that Sigma won't benefit from the decline in sales to owners of other brands unless they make up the shortfall by selling an equal number of Sigma cameras. And that ain't going to happen unless they transform the company into something very different. If the rest of the photographic industry dies, Sigma die with it, there's no point dreaming they will benefit.

--
"...while I am tempted to bludgeon you, I would rather have you come away with an improved understanding of how these sensors work" ---- Eric Fossum
Galleries and website: http://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmillier/
 
Last edited:
Sony would make cameras with legs that could perform stand up comedy if they thought they'd sell. They are not a photography company, just a sales company.Sigma seem to be in the weird world of not being a photography company either but only a wannabe sales company such is the poverty of their camera marketing.
 
DMillier said:
Sony would make cameras with legs that could perform stand up comedy if they thought they'd sell. They are not a photography company, just a sales company.Sigma seem to be in the weird world of not being a photography company either but only a wannabe sales company such is the poverty of their camera marketing.
Click to expand...
Paucity too, at least over here and maybe over there in Yuurp. Contrast the said marketing with the long-running Samsung commercial where the image of a spider on the Galaxy phone (on a restaurant table) scares girlies.

--
Cheers,
Ted
 
Last edited:
Horse pucky!

You haven't a clue about the history of Sony and photography and that's obvious David. Please do a bit of research into Sony's position in the history of digital cameras. They were innovators at the very beginning of digital photography and have been since. They have a very solid position in the history of professional video cameras and the movie film business and were making digital cameras before Canon and Nikon got into the business. To say that they are not a "photography company" is ludicrous.

Lin
DMillier said:
Sony would make cameras with legs that could perform stand up comedy if they thought they'd sell. They are not a photography company, just a sales company.Sigma seem to be in the weird world of not being a photography company either but only a wannabe sales company such is the poverty of their camera marketing.

--
"...while I am tempted to bludgeon you, I would rather have you come away with an improved understanding of how these sensors work" ---- Eric Fossum
Galleries and website: http://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmillier/
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Truman Prevatt said:
My experience is it is more subtle than that - because at the root of it color is subjective. It gets down to people want to see the color they visualize and the color that pleases them - not necessarily the color as it was
Click to expand...
Kodak discovered this long ago and made films accordingly.
Truman Prevatt said:
and the camera produces the three channels it saw given the ambient lighting. Foveon sensors are no better or worse in color than any other sensor in reasonable and strong lighting conditions close to white. I think the Foveon does have some issues in mixed lighting - especially when it is low light - conditions which results in blotches and issues in the shadows.
Click to expand...
I can't say I've noticed any problems with colour on the DP3M, except for the usual infra-red flowers that spook most systems (including film).
Truman Prevatt said:
One reason I have no interest in color is once the color is stripped away then you can explore the image.
Click to expand...
Why not strip away the luminance and explore the colour ?
Truman Prevatt said:
If it is color - most people never get past the color. That's pretty obvious when you listen to the forums. That is why at most serious art institutes with photography programs - the first course a student takes for a photography is a year of Black and White film Photography.
Click to expand...
I think that derives from the big difference in cost between colour and B&W films and papers. Also, it is much easier for a beginner to process B&W than colour.
Truman Prevatt said:
At the serious art schools we still start with the fundamentals and that is B&W film photography.
Click to expand...
It seems absurd to say that this is still fundamental in 2014. Why not glass plates and collodion ?
Truman Prevatt said:
There is also a year of digital photography required today. There wasn't when I attended.
Click to expand...
 
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