Is the JPEG-Quality of the SIGMA SD15 useable ?

41mm wrote:

"Sometimes and sometimes not."

I love it

;–)

I think it depends on in-camera settings and the content of the image. For some reason some subjects seem to look better than others . . . from one camera to another. I believe that the Quattro cameras are better for shooting nice portraits, such as wedding photos vs the Merrill cameras. I'm sure it's the same sort of thing with the SD 15 vs the SD 14, but maybe not to the same degree, because the sensor is actually the same sensor from the SD 14 to the SD 15. It's just the in-camera processing that seems to be different. I've read numerous times that the SD 15 produces better colors. The SD 15 has an AFE, but the SD 14 is "ISO-less" (no AFE). Just in case there is someone reading this who does not know what AFE means, it means "analog front end." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_front-end (Most cameras have them for boosting the signals from the sensor, when a higher ISO setting is used. The SD 14 does not. The Merrill cameras do not either. The SD 15 and some of the early DP series camera and ALL the Quattro cameras have AFEs. Why is a bit of a mystery. My SD1 Merrill seems to work just fine without one.)

For example, here's what I consider to be an acceptable ISO 800 shot from my SD1 Merrill:

Sigma SD1 Merrill w/ 17-50mm f2.8 EX OS set to 50mm f8 1/125 ISO 800

This might look a little green (I actually made it slightly more brown in GIMP, when I performed local sharpening on the spider). This was exported from a raw file to jpeg at level 11 compression (not critical work). I used standard noise reduction settings and reduced sharpness all the way to -2.0 (because I planned to sharpen the jpeg in GIMP). Too bad about the motion blur (yes, that spider's web was moving in the breeze. That's why I had to step up to ISO 800, rather than shooting at a slower shutter speed and ISO 200.

I think if an ISO 800 shot can look like that without an AFE, maybe one isn't really necessary, but Sigma seems to know what they're going. It would be nice/interesting to know what their reasoning is though.