foveon

Sigma SD1: Wait, did we say $9,700? We meant $3,300

Sigma has radically repriced its SD1 camera, saying manufacturing improvements let it lower the unusual SLR's cost by two-thirds to $3,300.

Sigma introduced the SD1 in 2011 with a premium price of $9,700--chiefly for its Foveon sensor, given that other specifications were ordinary. Although the sensor is small, about the size of those on mainstream SLRs from Nikon and Canon, it has the unusual ability to capture red, green, and blue light values for each pixel, not just a single color as with conventional sensors.

The Foveon design therefore can produce better detail, at least theoretically, … Read more

Sigma aims SD1 at pro photographers

Sigma has announced it'll ship its SD1 camera in June for $9,700, a price that suggests it's aiming its new flagship SLR almost exclusively at professional photographers.

The Japanese company unveiled the Sigma SD1 last year at the Photokina trade show. The camera embodies the company's aspirations to rise beyond its present role as a maker of third-party lenses into a camera rival to powerhouses such as Nikon and Canon.

The SD1 pricing, though, indicates that Sigma is trying to leapfrog Canon's top-end, $7,500 1Ds Mark III and Nikon's competing $5,900 D3x … Read more

Sigma's high-end compact gets an update

Sigma on Tuesday released another firmware update to its high-end compact camera, the 14MP DP2, which became available in February.

Version 1.02 adds several updates to the camera. For one, improvements have been made to auto focus. When using the manual focus, the magnification display function can be selected by just pressing the OK button. Sigma has issued a Notice of Function Change amending the information in the user's guide based on the functionality the new firmware allows.

We generally recommend installing the latest firmware updates for your camera so you can get the most out of your … Read more

Sigma updates high-end 14MP compact camera

Sigma has announced the DP2, a high-end 14-megapixel compact camera and a follow-up to the DP1. It's almost identical to the DP1, in fact, except with a 41mm f2.8 fixed lens, compared with the DP1's 28mm f4.0 lens. It also incorporates Sigma's new True II image-processing engine for a performance boost over the DP1. It should be available in the spring of 2009. No pricing is yet available, but for reference, the DP1 can be had for around $699.

Foveon still has a place in Sigma DP1

Sigma has delayed the release of its DP1 to revamp the high-end compact camera, but one thing that won't change is the Foveon sensor at its heart.

When Sigma said last week that it was changing the DP1's image processing "pipeline" to meet quality and performance goals and that the Japanese company "had to change some of the specifications that we had announced," I naturally wondered whether the changes might have evicted the image sensor.

Not so, according to Richard Turner, vice president of marketing and applications at the San Jose, Calif.-based start-up. … Read more

Sigma delays, redesigns high-end DP1 compact camera

Sigma has delayed the debut of the DP1, a high-end compact camera with an unusually large image sensor, to redesign its image-processing technology.

The Japanese company had shown off the DP1 at the Photokina show in 2006 and later at the Photo Marketing Association show in March 2007, where it said it planned to ship the DP1 in the summer. The camera's sensor, made by start-up Foveon, is as large as the one used in Sigma's SD line of SLR cameras, offering the potential for much greater sensitivity and dynamic range than the much smaller chips typically used … Read more

Sigma's compact DP1 gets some exposure

Japanese camera and lens maker Sigma began showing off its DP1 digital camera, a compact model using the unusual Foveon image sensor.

Each pixel in a Foveon sensor can detect red, green and blue light, a different approach compared to most "Bayer pattern" sensors that have a checkerboard of pixels that only capture a single color. The Foveon sensors have been used earlier in Sigma's SLR cameras.

The camera image has a resolution of 4.7 megapixels, but each pixel has all three colors; most cameras have only one color and extrapolate values for the others.

The … Read more