What would the FFF have to do in order to be competative?

dellaaa wrote:

Reading a recent post that included a 60M pixel Bayer sensor shot, the the discussion turned into a debate as to whether the FFF would ever arrive.

Looking at the Bayer photo what do you believe the FFF sensor would have to do better than the current generation of Bayer sensors? What are the design criteria the FFF design team have?

I don't know but given the physics of the design and the past Foveons, low light performance would most likely not be on par with the Bayer, agreed?

Historically, Sigmas have required extensive image processing both while taking the shot and afterwords (SPP). Will the FFF shoot at the frame rates of the current Bayers? Again, given the history, this seems doubtful.

So with low light and speed out of the equation, whats left, detail and color rendition.

As for detail, how would the specs of the proposed FFF stack up against the 60M plus Bayer sensors? Would the advantage in detail make up for the shortcoming?

The remaining design criteria, is color. Would Sigma's color rendition be enough for people to buy it?

I don't know and would like rational, opinions as just what will the FFF bring to the table, and why any non L mount people in 2023 would buy it when 100M pixel Bayers are on the horizon that take great low light picture at high frame rates.

At this point, fanboys aside, the fact that we are still discussing this seems a bit absurd to me, so why did I start this thread lol?.

IMHO the Foveon sensor has potential advantages over color filter array (CFA) sensors in terms of

-  tonality, i.e. the sensor recognizes and keeps fine differences between the shades of neighbouring pixels,

-  “3D” rendering (I assume as a consequence of better tonality),

-  “clarity” (I assume also as a consequence of better tonality),

-  more intensive and natural color rendering.

In my view those advantages are not completely overcome by the higher resolution of modern CFA sensors and/or by modern methods of image manipulation.

So I would love to see a Foveon sensor camera producing an image quality similar or better than the SD14, SD15, DP series cameras, but with a higher resolution, obviously.

The bigger sensor will help a little with low-light performance and noise.

And the L-Mount will enable Photographers to swap the camera with a compatible CFA camera, say a S5 II, for use cases not suitable for a Foveon sensor.