Sand on the fire

Don't you think that from the pixel-peepers point of view, all Quattro settings are worse than the Merrill output? It is either watercolored or noisy.

I am surprised that you tried luminance NR. Shouldn't chrominace NR the way to go? I still believe that the strange noise comes from the chroma undersampling and the attempt of SPP to calculate the full chroma resolution.

It is very sad that the discussion about Merrill AND Quattro turned into a fight Merrill VS. Quattro.

I am not so much into pixel-peeping. On the other hand, that crispness of the Foveon (Merrill) is something special. Thnx to Meuh, we were able to play with the same scene in Q and M raws. I tried my best, but I could always see the waxy watercolored background in the Q image. Even if I turned "Details" up to the extreme, it was not completely gone but I got problems in the foreground with a "digital noisy" look. I don't think that the problem is due to background vs. foreground, it is more about very fine detail in the range of the size of the middle and lower pixels. And, of course in landscapes, one typically finds more detail (with lower contrast) in the background.

I look at my pictures on a 27" 5k iMac. This is set to full resolution, so a picture of my SD1 (in ladscape orientation) almost fully fits in, 1:1. This is comparable to a print of that size (OK, at least as close at it can get on a screen).

I was so much hoping for the sd Quattro H, mirrorless and with a larger sensor. But currently (firmware, SPP), I have the fear of losing that special Foveon accutance.