If Quattro can beat this, I am in!!!

I have been thinking lately especially about the new Quattro.

Since the sample pictures surfaced yesterday I am sure I am not satisfied with the output the files have and it is because of the strange noise that they show (visible in almost all shots but for sure in the ship shot and the motorcycle single shot).

I was really hoping there would be improvements in the sensor design or on the processing side of the files but so far the only thing that would make me wanna buy the SDQ (H) is the SFD functionality and most likely a faster processing and faster writing to memory cards.

I always thought there is no problem with my SD1(M) but since I recently had a model telling me I should just fire away and choose a good shot later got me thinking about whats going on in the industry lately. I have never been so insecure about my abilities until that moment because up until now I took my time preparing the shot and taking very few shots.

However thats not what this industry wants and especially the models want an easy way out, they want to move around, pose, getting told what to do less and less and just have fun (and there is nothing wrong with that either).

So I took a day off and walked around this really lovely Irish city of Galway. On my way along the Salthill promenade I spotted a ship going to the sea and I happily snapped a picture of it with my trusty old SD1(M).

Boy was it a joy to take a look at that picture on the computer and I started experimenting. It is really clean from the start and with the (now) free NIK Collection Google provides, I made sure that even the noise was well under control (Dfine2 for anyone wondering).

A little uprezzing was also part of my experiments and I went to go a bit above of what the output size of the SDQ H would be so I made it 6333x4222 big. So far I believe that the SDQ H would have a hard time beating this quality under controlled circumstances.

It would be faster, yes, it would be more convenient, yes but would it be as nice? I would certainly like to try both side by side and see for myself. But as far as the SD1(M) files go, they are certainly easy to deal with noise wise and also very nice to look at without that weird feeling that it could have been better in some way.

I tried using my skills on the sample images with the motorcycle and the ship image but to no positive outcome. They are iffy to say the least.

I hope Sigma can improve the output of the quattros somewhat better so there would be a worthy successor to the SD1(M).

Take a look at the file and let me know if there is something that can be done better.