Sigma SD1 Merill 46Mp DSLR

Re: Sample shots.

Seems like some of the first digital shots to really enthuse me since my fave old buddy Canon-A1 possibly with Kodak Ektachrome or some nice Fuji film like Velvia, or any good film really.

The resolution and freshness seem way ahead on the Sigma, but the colors and everything else seem similarly charming like the A1. By charming I mean deep and intense, not half-assed like a faded print.

Especially similar to the original super-fresh condition secondhand Canon A1 I had with a stock F1.2 50mm that some Ned scrote nicked from Burger King in Edinburgh many years ago. I have another one now, but it's not the same and the lens seems it isn't anything as good ... a slightly different F1.4 50mm. Wahhh ;)

I still have the original's crazy-ass manual with new 1970s VW beetles and serious flared jeans everywhere. And proud descriptions of the automatic digital-table light computer / settings enabling electronic beast inside.

Me want Sigma ... well maybe. Movie mode would be a bonus, as would enough dough to buy it ;)

Re: "The SD1 is a camera that will work magic in studio or landscape photography"

I had an SD-14 which could produce astounding images at low ISOs and in bright light, but the noise issue and general mechanical unreliability with an overheating sensor and poor sealing made it an immensely frustrating camera to use. When it was good, it was better than any APS-C camera of the period, but it couldn't rival a full frame camera.

The biggest issue for anyone who thinks about switching to Sigma is that you are pretty much stuck with using Sigma hardware and software. Many stores won't carry lenses with the Sigma mount and the range is not huge, and as for the software - if you ever thought Adobe produced the worst software on Earth you haven't been unlucky enough to Sigma Photo Pro. Slow, buggy and incompatible with just about everything.

Re: "The SD1 is a camera that will work magic in studio or landscape photography"

I'm not sure I'd agree. I've owned Foveon cameras in the past and although the output is smaller than the marketing material would suggest, the images are some of the cleanest I've had from any camera, be it compact or DSLR (and with fantastic dynamic range). It's widely claimed (justifiably) that these images enlarge better than a lot of bayer sensor images because they're so clean (unless you go to high ISOs).

Re: "The SD1 is a camera that will work magic in studio or landscape photography"

It's different rather than all round better. You have the microcontrast associated with medium format digital (which normally lack an aa filter), the ease of use of a dslr, luminance and colour are not interpolated but you get very poor high iso. I've heard it bandied about that this is about as good as a circa 30mp bayer sensor when you are comparing large prints but without the issues that come with pixels that small on a small sensor (diffraction).

The key reason this kills for studio and landscape is the colour reproduction, no moire and less diffraction for the detail. Does it replace a 1dx or 5d3 for say a wedding photographer or a sports stringer, no, is it an interesting option for a landscape photographer, even more for studio fashion work, yes ver much so. Even at 6k its just over half the price of a cheapo mfd camera.

I still love my old rz and film, but sitting on the lanai with a laptop and a bottle of wine beats the darkroom anyday. Then there is the drying cabinet, prepping the slides for scanning, scanning them then cleaning and archiving the slides.

Fwiw sigma also make some decent glass if you can get a good copy.

Re: meh

Argh, I meant "pray", that's what happens when you have a horrible coffee deficit.

Also.. beware the quoted resolution of those sensors, as well as the crappy low light performance.. and.. and...

Only the Foveon concept isn't particularly good

The colour filters on a bayer sensor can be designed to replicate the colour response of the human eye, in which there is a large amount of overlap between red and green. A Foveon sensor can't do this because of the way it separates the colour. Imagine a monochromatic orange light. A bayer sensor will pick some up in each of the red and green channels, which will tell the camera that it's recording orange. A Foveon sensor will record it in either the red channel or the green channel, depending on the wavelength, and can't know that it's all gone wrong. It's like a 3CCD, and those are going out of fashion too.

Additionally, despite the marketing material that suggests that Foveon records red/green/blue in its three layers, it's actually recording white in the top layer, yellow in the middle and red in the bottom. It then introduces large amounts of noise as it performs the maths required to turn this back in to red/green/blue.

And that's completely ignoring the complete dishonesty in marketing it as a "46MP" camera.

You probably don't actually want Foveon, although Sigma does make some good lenses.

Re: Foveon sensor good, Lens bad

Actually, the sensor is a lot worse in practise than you'd imagine, and certainly isn't the resolution claimed. Also, the low light performance is shockingly poor.

The sensor is interesting, but it's half-baked. It might be interesting to speculate about how good it would be if made by someone like Sony (whose sensors turn up in various other brands), and if that would have made it better. However, Sigma generally provide shoddy implementations and somewhat misleading marketing material.

Any of the "big three" vendors will sell you a better and more reliable camera that takes better pictures for half the price.

Re: GPS? HDR? Pano?

Can see where you're coming from but you know from a Limey point of view the Grand Canyon sets our teeth on edge a bit, as everyone and their dog from over here "does" the canyon in the same way that they would "do" Disney World. But we don't do it like Evel Knievel, sadly ;)

I could mention a typical example being my brother-in-law trying to get "unique" footage from it with a *video* camera but people might think I'm being catty - I mean, you know, stills might be better as it "doesn't move".

Carlsbad caverns look cool .... thanks dude, I never knew before :)

re: "they didn't do the Canon trick of changing their mounts for digital, so old lenses still fit)"

It wasn't digital Canon changed the mount for and Nikon didn't. It was autofocus.

The EF mount was used on both film and digital cameras. It replaced the FD mount which was film only. EF-S is digital only - but only because they only do digital now - the EF-S is actually for APS-C sensors, it's about sensor size rather than film/digital.

Re: Only the Foveon concept isn't particularly good

Not from a purely RGB data you can't

Imagine an object on the reddish end of green.

In a bayer chip the filters overlap, just like your eye's response, so it will record say 80%in green and 20% in red.

In the foveon (or a 3chipper) it will show up in the green data only - you could add some of this signal to the red, but you don't know if this object was blue-green, pure green or red-green so you don't know what percentage to add to simulate the leak.

Re: Only the Foveon concept isn't particularly good

The monochromatic orange was an extreme example to illustrate the problem based on the human eye's red/green overlap.

In practice, if you have two objects that look to the human eye like they are the same colour under a particular light source, but have very different spectra (i.e. metamers), a 3CCD or Foveon will make them look different, and there's no way around that. Meanwhile a well designed bayer filter array doesn't have this problem.