Discovering the SD15...

Hi Ted

Because Lightroom can handle the older cameras, I always use it for raw conversions as I don't like SPP.  I haven't noticed much difference between LR and SPP conversions either - despite several people claiming LR is inferior - which never really surprised me as I'm sure I've read that Sigma supplied Adobe with the processing pipeline.  I think you've pointed out some differences with out of gamut colours but for general shooting I've never felt I was missing SPP.

I've also read (prob on these forums) that SD14s have their colour calibrated in the factory and burnt into the firmware so that SPP can individually correct each camera and that LR doesn't use this - hence a bigger problem with colour casts.

I have built a number of DNG colour profiles with the adobe tool and also the colour checker passport software including profiles for my SD9 and SD14. My experience is that the profiles work pretty well with the SD14 and I've build a number of variants for different colour temps and one or two special effects ones.  The SD9 is altogether different. None of my profiles really seem to make a big difference, it's just a bit too weird to be tameable with a simple DNG correction.  Maybe you know how?

xpatUSA wrote:

Roland Karlsson wrote:

So .... then we are back to the pre Merrill color look. Flower photos with strangely colored and desaturated greens. That is a property for the sensor found in all the pre Merrill DP cameras and SD14 and SD15.

I have owned 3 SD14s. From raw with correct WB they all produce oversaturated greens in SPP 3.5 or SPP 5.5.

So why does the SD14 appear in the above list? Was the SD14 included in the above quote as a sweeping statement? AFAIK, the quoteé has never owned an SD14. A sample of three beats a sample of none any day

As noted by many, JPEGs from the SD14 do have a green cast - that was the reason I sold my first SD14 which was intended to replace a Nikon D50 for general purpose shooting.

I will also mention that recently purchased DP1s and DPs had very good grass color rendition based on a limited outside session, and will ask the same question as above.

I have owned many SD9s and SD10s - without exception, all produced desaturated greens and DCraw produced slightly purple skies. Not a portrait guy, so no comment on yellow faces.

My opinion is that camera profiles, e.g. *.dcp, can be used for any Sigma camera to fix any of these ills - just as Bayer shooters already do, see ACR - and just as can be done in RawTherapee which I have successfully used for brown reds under CFL lighting for the SD9.

There is an application called CoCa which can produce a camera profile from a Macbeth card shot. I have done that for Merrill shots produced by DCraw but sold the SD1M before finalizing that work.

I will further state that the sensors are all quite close to to each other as far as sensor output is concerned and the color differences that we whine about are due to the different conversion used for each succeeding model. Sigma can't even get the max possible raw output for a sensor from each model the same:

SD9 - up to 12,000 or so.

SD10 - up to 14,000 or so.

SD14 - up to 10,000 or so.

DP1&DP2s - up to 2,000 or so.

SD1M - up to 4,000 or so.

Above list has nothing to do with well capacity, so no obfuscation needed there, thank you.

Here's hoping that Kalpanika will handle all model variations and perhaps even provide the ability to use camera profiles (asking a bit much, I know)