A REAL MAJOR PHOTOGRAPHIC REVOLUTION ! The perfect of color's restitution !

In a first time excuse me for my bad english wrtitten... i'm a french old professionnal photographer and i used more than half of my career the argentic system...  When i used for the first time the numeric sensors  i had to see that the colors are not really precise when you compare them to the natural subtilities  of colors of skins, flowers, , differents of greens  for the grass for exemple.. : It's very important to understand how the standard bayer color capture is using.. , it's IMPOSSIBLE to this to have a real retranscription of  colors, espescially for the green nuances and  deep of colors of the human skins for exemple.. When i'd use the Foveon's sensor, i understand immediatly that it's THE "miracle" and unique solution to have the potential of exact and  best color's restitution. It's really incredible, this sensor use the same principe of the argentic negative, no artefacts, no interpolations, just and only THE REAL COLORS !!! Please go to the Sigma's official web site and read and see, , they said the thrue, and they prouve it, you can trust  them, this sensor is really a major revolution !

You know that Sigma is a small and young office  if you compare it about Nikon, Canon or Leica, , i'm sure that if it was Leica who discover this Foveon sensor, with their incredible mecanical perfections of their cameras and lenses they may be  became  a new time the king of the photographic world !! But  Sigma had the property of this perfect image capture sensor system and  with this camera, the SD1,  you have the same emotion and image quality than an argentic Hasselblad, deep of colors, , finest of details, and only with an APS-C sensor size !!! You can print  a A0 size with this 15 millions of pixel sensor, cause the finest  of the final RAW image is the same than  a 46 million pix of Bayer sensor.., but with the perfect of color restitution more !! For exemple  with the Sigma's SD15  you have only a final pict with 5 millions of pixels, but you can print a A3 size, it look's like a 15 million of classic bayer's sensor, and deep of colors more.. INCREDIBLE ! Test it  and you will see !

I hope that Sigma make a "SD2 Ultimate" with a 24x36mm sensor size, with the same number of pixels from the SD1 ( 3 x 15millions), but with more bigger size for the photosites, and they can resolve the unique problem of their system : The noise !, cause with this sensor and with the SD15 and SD1  you can use it only to 50 iso to maxi 400 iso. Personaly i use their camera's only at 50 iso's cause i make only statics pics, macro lands, portraits and the results after a small work with the original RAW file is just  PERFECT !!

Thank's to Sigma  to trust  with the foveon's technologie, they give to  the maniacs argentics photographers the same sensations with numerics  than the argentic's deep, natural and exact colors !

Uman R-B

This is going to be a very long thread ..... and all the trolls will be jumping all over it! 

From my perspective, i will respect the statements from a professional photografer trying to replace his equipment with something that gives the same 'feeling' like his film equipment did. 

"Personaly i use their camera's only at 50 iso's cause i make only statics pics..."

The SD1 has only 100 ISO...

For those those who didn't get "argentic" I think it means silver halide film i.e. film cameras.

Don't jump on this guy; he did his best. As an engineer, I once wrote "filete matrix" for female screw thread in spanish. Better yet, I wrote our customer in Mexico a "feliz ano nuevo" which means happy new butt-hole - not quite what I meant to say.

anfat wrote:

"Personaly i use their camera's only at 50 iso's cause i make only statics pics..."

The SD1 has only 100 ISO...

If the scene permits I prefer shooting in the iso 64-80 range, either via exposure compensation, if in AE mode, or manual exposure. I find it produces the best overall "look" having minimum shadow noise without blowing out the highlights, depending on the DR of the scene.

Monsieur FoveonForever, your written English beats my written French. There is something unique about Foveon, I agree. I enjoyed monochrome film shooting in the 1960s and 1970s, and now have come to enjoy digital imaging with post-processing application of Favorite Monochrome  Filters and to enjoy digital color on both Bayer sensors (Canon) and Foveon. The Foveon images are special.

Happy new anus?  Now that has to be one of the better "uh, not exactly" examples of Spanish as written by non-Spanish speaker. Unless said non-Spanish speaker is a surgeon who just fixed the guy's hemorrhoids.

All expressions of photographic enthusiasm are welcome.

I am totally stunned. Speechless.

I love your title.  Mentally your title is exactly what goes through my mind when I look at yet another beautifully captured image treating colors with the utmost of respect...

Hi, I have recovered now from all the CAPS written words and all the superlatives.

Bayer sensors are based on RGB filters. Generally, the color rendition is very accurate. Much more accurate than color film. The high degree of accuracy might be somewhat boring. So, its quite customary today to enhance the colors for more spectacular photography.

Bayer sensors have problems with color based micro contrast. This is both due to the fact that often AA filters are used and that 2 out of 3 colors are computed instead of measured.

Regarding Foveon and color accuracy, there are different opinions. It is quite customary that the colors just go crazy. Yellow skin, green sand, pink cars, orange waterposts, cyan sky, ... etc, etc, .... You might also get (e.g. green) color cast in the corners. But you can also get delightful colors. Its not so easy to get boring correct colors

So, you are of course entitled to your opinion ... but that Foveon should have more accurate colors than Bayer I don´t believe and that Bayer cannot reproduce accurate colors I know to be untrue.

When it comes to resolution and sharpness, that's also debatable. A 24 MP APS-C is the same kind of resolution as SD1 and a 35 MP FF camera has more and a medium format much more. But ... sharpness is not the same as resolution. Sharpness depends on resolution and accutance.

You can get more accutance from Bayer cameras by using some sharpening tool. But ... the images Foveon already have that accutance. The latter is probably to prefer.

Lots of people have tried to show/test the difference. Its not easy.

So ... nice you are enthusiastic. But ... I think you have to come down to earth.

BTW - never heard the name Argentic for silver based systems before. Glad to learn a new name. I know though that Ag is silver.

3dreal wrote:

Argentique is french for silvery or silver-, maybe he translated wrongly.

It actually seems like argentic photography is an accepted term for silver based photography.

I have never heard it before - but a search on google gives lots of hits.