… Sigma and Wabi Sabi

Sorry Don, I don't mind the Bayer sensor as long as it's used for normal documentary shots like you posted (boat harbor). But the Bayer sensor does not reach the quality of negative film due to its low image density, I do not consider it a successor to film. Also, its image is flat (caused, among other things, by only one layer of the sensor) compared to the film, and even more so compared to the Foveon 1:1:1 sensor, whose 3D appearance is even stronger than from the film. I also see that his image is not naturally sharp enough. In addition, the Bayer sensor cannot detect colors. He invents some kind of artificial, unnatural "laboratory" colors. Bayer is an unnatural step back. Foveon is a natural step forward.

This is my view on the matter, I know that many who work with a camera with a Bayer sensor will oppose me and be angry with me. They can, but I see it as I wrote, for me the Bayer sensor is not good enough. That's why I switched from film to the Foveon sensor and will stick with it. Otherwise, I would still be photographing on the Pentax 67II, or I wouldn't be photographing at all, which is what I originally intended. Because for me it is a completely fundamental thing.

http://kronometric.org/phot/sensor/fov/Color_Alias_White_Paper_FinalHiRes.pdf

I apologize for the harshness with which I rated the Bayer type sensor in my previous post.

All the best Don Peter

Hi DMillier.
It's here, the first objector you are probably taking pictures with a camera with a Bayer sensor.
Well, I didn't write which color is better, because Bayer can't read color, he's as blind as a patron, he can't see any colors. Everything I wrote about Bayer and Foveon sensors is principled and cannot be questioned in any way, because they are facts. So this is not about some "human methods" of comparison. The Bayer sensor is color blind and done! It records only brightness. It has only one layer, in which one point is divided into three, so it does not reach the image density and therefore not the point sharpness as Foveon has, for the same reason Bayer is not able to produce a 3D image, because it needs more layers of sensing stored under each other - as film had and as Foveon has.

I only stated the facts, not my opinion. You need to study the facts my friend, you know, Foveon is Foveon, Foveon is not Bayer 

Peter, Slovakia

Iain G Foulds wrote:

If Sigma can eventually refine Foveon colour to keep its strengths and avoid the odd breakdowns, it would be a significant step forward.

… Absolutely. Sigma is an obscure and irrelevant camera manufacturer because they settled on flawed products- flaws that lost them all but the most dedicated photographic processors- as evidenced by the technical nature of the Sigma forum.

… Only hoping that Sigma will refine it’s unique gift to photographic technology.

Iain,

If "Sigma is an obscure and irrelevant camera manufacturer because they settled on flawed products" why do you bother with anything Sigma at all.?

They have made digital cameras with various Foveon sensors since 2002, you, it seems to me, being a fan of the earliest DPs, which have a certain charm are nowhere near as good as the later DP Ms and dp Qs.

I my opinion each new model up to the Quattros were an improvement on what went before and all are well capable of top class photography with some limitations.

Isn't that true of all camera types.

By the way I like the kind of images you produce. I like photographers that do their own thing.

S

David, Your conclusion is correct: We can't trust our brains.
If you allow: Trust your heart and mind, then you will find the way to the truth. My heart and mind chose Foveon.

I wish you all good things.
Peter, Slovakia

Iain,

If "Sigma is an obscure and irrelevant camera manufacturer because they settled on flawed products" why do you bother with anything Sigma at all.?

… Sigma is an obscure and irrelevant camera manufacturer because almost no one has ever heard of it, and it has otherwise no influence on photographic technology. After 20 years of shooting Nikon, I only heard of SIgmas through a comment by Don Cox (I believe) at another forum.

… Sigma images are in a class by themselves. They are a specialized camera. They are not a general  “all purpose” camera. I only comment because Sigma allows itself to be judged as just another all purpose camera, and appears to design towards becoming just another all purpose camera.

… And, thanks for the good comment on my images. The cleanness and clarity of the Foveon opens up great compositional possibilities.

DMillier wrote:

Peter Slovakia wrote:

Hi DMillier.
It's here, the first objector and it is clear to me that you take photos with a camera with a Bayer sensor.
Well, I didn't write which color is better, because Bayer can't read color, he's as blind as a patron, he can't see any colors. Everything I wrote about Bayer and Foveon sensors is principled and cannot be questioned in any way, because they are facts. So this is not about some "human methods" of comparison. The Bayer sensor is color blind and done! It records only brightness. It has only one layer, in which one point is divided into three, so it does not reach the image density and therefore not the point sharpness as Foveon has, for the same reason Bayer is not able to produce a 3D image, because it needs more layers of sensing stored under each other - as film had and as Foveon has.

I only stated the facts, not my opinion. For me closed. I will not continue the discussion on this topic. My previous reply was to Don, not you, my friend.
Peter, Slovakia

Edited:

Peter

Are you here to state your opinions to be absolute facts? Or to discuss?

I have a SD9 and a SD14 and used to have a DP1 and a DP2M. That's that cleared up. You are so keen to launch to the attack that you didn't even bother to understand my point (which had nothing to about taking sides as to which sensor was better, as you seem to think).

Also, some of your so-called facts can be challenged. For the record, there is nothing that can detect colours directly because colours don't exist as a physical property, they are purely constructs of the brain. Light has a number of properties: wavelength, frequency, intensity, polarisation etc, but colour isn't one of them.

Sensors, Bayer and Foveon based (and retinas), detect intensity filtered into bands of wavelengths. Bayer sensors use organic dyes to split the wavelengths into 3 bands, Foveon uses silicon depth as the filter. The filtering methods are different kinds of filters, but the concept is the same: measuring the intensity of 3 bands of wavelengths.

The practical similarity is that both approaches end up with one red, one green and one blue measure for each spatial pixel in your file. Once you have colour triplets, the brain can compare the relative strengths of each of the components and assign the result to invent the perceptual experience of "colour" but it isn't a physical thing.

The advantage of Foveon is that each of the three detectors are located at the same spatial location on the 2D grid, while the Bayer detectors are offset and require some clever image processing to recover the full colour triplet. The absence of this colour processing gives Foveon higher acutance and better colour resolution for a given number of 2D grid pixels. The disadvantage is that the silicon filters are not really aligned with the colour perception of the human eye and the processing required to convert to a reasonable colour space adds noise and the occasional colour misfire.

So, advantages and disadvanges to both, you pick your poison.

But nothing in the above has anything to do with my previous post. That was all about well researched facts that go way beyond image editing. If you want to understand subjective perceptions across a broad spread of people (rather than just yourself), the only game in town is to do research using double blind methods to remove observer bias.

For example, if I were investigating whether 50 people taken at random could tell the difference between Foveon and Bayer photographs, I might start by providing 50 prints, half taken with a Foveon, half with Bayer and asking my test subjects to say whether there was anything about the pictures that would cause them to divide the prints into two groups. And to please sort the pictures into two groups.

If the differences were purely imaginary, you would expect people to split the pictures into two random groups. But if (say) there was a big and obvious difference between Foveon and Bayer, you would expect to find all the foveon images selected together and all the Bayer images selected together.

It the latter result occurred and the exercise was well designed and executed under purely blind conditions, it would be suggestive that randomly selected people can distinguish an obvious difference between the sensor types. You'd then be able to dream up ever more subtle tests to explore exactly what it was people were detecting.

I'd love to participate in such an exercise, wouldn't you?

ps

In the ongoing leadership of the UK Tory party/Prime Minister selection competition, a pollster ran a survey to find out how well known the candidates were. They included a made up fake candidate in the survey. 12% of respondents considered the fake candidate to be well known. Makes you think, doesn't it?

https://www.indy100.com/politics/stewart-lewis-tory-leadership-poll

We can't trust our brains.

It shows that the candidates are so unattractive to voters that nobody knows or cares who they are. Boris is a star turn, the rest are nowhere. It's not like cameras, where most of the current models are very good.

I'm not claiming that we can trust our brains, but that the brains of voters are bored and disgusted by the whole business.

Don

Hi Don, please, correct your post with my correct text if you can. Or don't copy it there at all so that it remains as I left it on the page. The text you published under my name is not there.

Original text:

"Hi DMillier.
It's here, the first objector you are probably taking pictures with a camera with a Bayer sensor.
Well, I didn't write which color is better, because Bayer can't read color, he's as blind as a patron, he can't see any colors. Everything I wrote about Bayer and Foveon sensors is principled and cannot be questioned in any way, because they are facts. So this is not about some "human methods" of comparison. The Bayer sensor is color blind and done! It records only brightness. It has only one layer, in which one point is divided into three, so it does not reach the image density and therefore not the point sharpness as Foveon has, for the same reason Bayer is not able to produce a 3D image, because it needs more layers of sensing stored under each other - as film had and as Foveon has.

I only stated the facts, not my opinion. You need to study the facts my friend, you know, Foveon is Foveon, Foveon is not Bayer."

I think there's no need to copy the lyrics, then it's an endless story

Thank you very much, Don. Peter

DMillier wrote:

Sigma's marketing of its cameras has been a mystery. They insist on trying to compete with mainstream products. Which doesn't work because neither the camera bodies nor the sensors can compete feature for feature.

They would be better off marketing their wares as special purpose that stand aside from the mainstream, emphasising uniqueness. They could start by making their gear fixed ISO rather than pretending they have any hope of making useful ISO 3200.

Got my my vote on that!

One would then perforce respect the sensor's native capabilities - instead of believing that it can see in the dark by "increasing the sensitivity" ...

xpatUSA wrote:

DMillier wrote:

Sigma's marketing of its cameras has been a mystery. They insist on trying to compete with mainstream products. Which doesn't work because neither the camera bodies nor the sensors can compete feature for feature.

They would be better off marketing their wares as special purpose that stand aside from the mainstream, emphasising uniqueness. They could start by making their gear fixed ISO rather than pretending they have any hope of making useful ISO 3200.

Got my my vote on that!

One would then perforce respect the sensor's native capabilities - instead of believing that it can see in the dark by "increasing the sensitivity" ...

If the FF X3 sensor becomes a reality, one would hope that it could be used at an ISO setting higher than 400. In other words, it needs to have much less noise, especially in the shadows (which of course are "underexposed" even at ISO 100).

Meanwhile, nothing stops you using your Foveon cameras at a fixed ISO if you want to. I find that 200 gives the least trouble, with exposure compensation as needed.

FP4 or Plus-X used to be good films, usable in a wide variety of situations at the rated ISO 125.

Don

DMillier wrote:

Sigma's marketing of its cameras has been a mystery. They insist on trying to compete with mainstream products. Which doesn't work because neither the camera bodies nor the sensors can compete feature for feature.

… Perfect. Like the grocery business. Often the best products have the worst marketing.

D Cox wrote:

xpatUSA wrote:

DMillier wrote:

Sigma's marketing of its cameras has been a mystery. They insist on trying to compete with mainstream products. Which doesn't work because neither the camera bodies nor the sensors can compete feature for feature.

They would be better off marketing their wares as special purpose that stand aside from the mainstream, emphasising uniqueness. They could start by making their gear fixed ISO rather than pretending they have any hope of making useful ISO 3200.

Got my my vote on that!

One would then perforce respect the sensor's native capabilities - instead of believing that it can see in the dark by "increasing the sensitivity" ...

If the FF X3 sensor becomes a reality, one would hope that it could be used at an ISO setting higher than 400. In other words, it needs to have much less noise, especially in the shadows (which of course are "underexposed" even at ISO 100).

I imagine that shutter time would be a factor, too - for a given mean underexposure (also known as "ISO" )

Meanwhile, nothing stops you using your Foveon cameras at a fixed ISO if you want to.

Indeed and nothing ever has ...

I find that 200 gives the least trouble, with exposure compensation as needed.

For me, with about 100 ISOsat being "native" to my Foveon sensor, that value has always made sense to me.

FP4 or Plus-X used to be good films, usable in a wide variety of situations at the rated ISO 125.

xpatUSA wrote:

Scottelly wrote:

I love the colors from the SD 14.

I remember that shot!

One of your finest compositions, Scott.

Thanks Ted.

Brev00 wrote:

Scottelly wrote:

I found the SD14 did indeed make jpegs that had a green tint to them, but it was like Fuji film from back in the days when Kodachrome was still available. Kodak offered great reds, but Fuji offered great greens.

I love the colors from the SD 14.

I am very disappointed! I thought you were going to share some Fuji film scans for comparison! lol. Do you see this cast in images of scenes that are more green free?

Yes, if I remember correctly, but it's generally pretty easy to process a raw file in SPP in a way that produces an image which doesn't seem to have the green cast, so I think it's created by the in-camera jpeg engine.

DMillier wrote:

Iain G Foulds wrote:

DMillier wrote:

Sigma's marketing of its cameras has been a mystery. They insist on trying to compete with mainstream products. Which doesn't work because neither the camera bodies nor the sensors can compete feature for feature.

… Perfect. Like the grocery business. Often the best products have the worst marketing.

Maybe market it like a Leica Monochrom or an Infrared camera: focus on what it does that is different from Bayer sensors rather than trying to pretend it is better than Bayer sensors at all the things they are good at.

The one thing that it is clearly totally superior to Bayer sensors hardly gets a mention: freedom from digital artefacts such as colour aliasing/moiree and demosaicing artefacts, leading to greater enlargeability and very crisp edges without sharpening halos when viewed at 100%.

You do have to turn down the Sharpening control in SPP to avoid halos. The sharpness of fine detail from the Merrill still amazes me, but you have to view at 100% to see it.

Not that every photo needs to have ultra sharp fine detail.

Don