Thank you for this! I'm a massive Foveon fan - I own a few of the Foveon 3 cameras - and I drink in any information I can find on them. So few people, even here on UA-cam, have experience with these marvellous sensors. In an era where the bulk of the photographic world is chasing lightning-fast sensor readouts or global shutters and amazing cinema-like video features, the Foveon seems more and more archaic as the years go on. But for those of us willing to put up with it's (admittedly, rather severe) quirks and shortcomings, I still insist the images that come out of my Sigma sd Quattro out-resolve images taken on my Fuji GFX 100s. I've been waiting 8 years now for a full-frame Foveon... fingers still tightly crossed!
I've been shooting Foveon for several years. DP1/2/3 Merrill, DP0/2 Quattro and SD Quattro H. Amazing sensor and optics hamstrung by rubbish processors, battery life and the mess that is sigma photo pro. The output almost ALMOST makes it worth the pain. I walked the fence for many years before giving up and moving on. I'm still holding out for the full frame version in L mount if they ever bring that out. I've met Kazuto San and I asked him and all he said was "soon" and this was 2 years ago.
I am convinced foveon is dead. Sigma is doing great with their lenses now unlike 5-10 years ago. They don't need to chase another fledgling LOB that is a resource hog and money pit.
What is also interesting is I've also moved to a Pentax 645z. I can confidently say that the dp3 merrill is as good as the 645z with the 90/2.8 macro BUT with a lot less latitude when it comes to shooting conditions.
@@gsrox2007 They are a company that is at least driven in part by passion because they are not publicly traded(thank god I think they are still planning for it but found the low light and processing was too slow. I hope I'm right anyway
Well done guys, A few things I have found over the years of owning a full Sigma sd system. Defo shoot raw and edit in Sigma photo pro. I love the 3d pop foveon offers regardless of what lens used. I think there would be a great market for Sigma Foveon sensors in film scanners. You cannot beat full rgb at every pixel location with no interpolation. The foveon is a black and white master! My batch settings are as follows White balance 5500k (I shoot in Auto white balance to avoid the view finder bleeding color) Detail 2 Contrast -1 Color 1 to 2 sharpness -1.3 fill +1 I adjust exposure as needed. My lens line up. 30mm f1.4 art prime 70mm f2.8 art macro 8-16 f 5.6 18-35 f1.8 50-100 f1.8 120-300 f1.8 Battery grip is a must for the bigger lens.
That would impact the price, portability, weight and usability significantly. But then again, does Sigma even manufacture medium format lenses? But would be an interesting system for sure.
@@kunstsein I couldn't imagine it would need to be any larger than any other medium format digital back. My phase one cameras are the smallest and lightest bits in my professional kit. Yes, it would cost more than a small format camera. But most new medium format digital backs are more expensive than small format, by orders of magnitude. So I see no real alarm bells there. Unless it came in at twice that of an IQ4150. But just imagine the prints from a 100mp foveon. The colour, acuity, and unique aesthetic of a large foveon print would easily make it a no brainer for me. Hands down, on paper at least, it should rank at the very pinnacle of photographic image making tools.
I think Sigma's mistake was making their camera with a new proprietary mount. I think they could have sold a lot more camera bodies if they adopted at least one, though more off-patent and orphaned mounts. Yes, it would have cost them more to produce multiple models but im sure a lot of folks with those older lenses would have been happy to pick up a modern body for their lens collection.
Sublime -- I was thinking about this yesterday. I'd put a bid on a cheap 5DS and, while only slightly outbid and the clock still ticking, felt unimpressed with the dynamic range and grain of sample shots and thought what would be the ultimate full frame sensor? It (Sigma's potential FF Foveon) needs to be able to deal with less than ideal lighting, perform fast in-camera processing, pixel shift, PDAF and not cost so much that only rich nerds can afford it. It doesn't need to have a wild capture rate, but it can't be a studio/ambient light queen. So many second-hand FF cameras are becoming affordable. I only own one so far, the OG Pentax K-1 which I love so much and purchased new years ago. But I must collect everything weird. Kind of want a Sony A99-mkII...with an AF mirror tele.
I don't think foveon and pdaf will ever mix. Pdaf is a part of the cfa layer and not the underlying substrate. There is no cfa in foveon. Adding a "transparent" cfa layer to incorporate cfa will have its own share of issues. In my experience, pdaf is detrimental to image quality, colour accuracy and dynamic range. S1R and 645z are incredible because they use cdaf. DSLRs don't use on sensor pdaf so they don't encounter similar issues.
Foveon by its nature is always going to struggle with sensitivity per-pixel. A bayer sensor is combining the color information for neighboring photosites, so it gets a free advantage in light gathering ability as a result as more area is contributing to each computed pixel at the expense of resolution/sharpness. Pixel shift is sort of interesting, but really less necessary on a foveon sensor. Pixel shift enables non-foveon cameras to replicate foveon resolution by basically undoing the mosaic'd nature of the color filter through three exposures rather than having the photosites actually stacked on top of each other. The SD Quattro has a "high def" multiple exposure mode already, but rather than shifting the sensor it just combines multiple exposure levels to compensate for the lower dynamic range and to lower the noise.
long overdue. Sigma is thinking about it since years... cannot be in times of fats processors that big issue anymore. A nice rangefinder style, L mount, FF Foveon camera, with a good IBIS... thats all. Not asking for much :D :D
Foveon was the only time a color sensor gave me monochrome sensor results when doing a BW conversion during editing, at low ISOs obviously. I can’t say ever enjoyed the foveon colors though. I don’t have my Sigma Quattro Foveon anymore but I do have a Pentax monochrome so it scratches that rich black and white depth that the sigma gave me.
Nice!! I may grab that Pentax one of these days. Colors on my quattro feel better than my old sd10 and sd14. Still quite different out of camera than other cameras.
Of the lenses I have for my SD Quattro, the ones I use the most are the 30mm Art (beautiful, light and I got it used for less than $200!) and the 105mm Macro f2.8 with optical stabilization (even though I do almost no macro photography but love the 3D quality it renders generally)(the stabilization reliably gives me 3-4 stops shake reduction). I have the 18-35 and the 100-400 but they are so long and heavy.
Wow that 105 sounds great. I love my 18-35. The 100-400 is okay. Usable and good, but not great like some of the other ones. That's probably tough to do in a lens like that though.
the Bayer sensors are good enough nowadays, even incredible compared to those 10 yrs ago. and it’ll cost sigma a hell lot of r&d costs and bring probably very little sales in return.
There are very good 60Mp cameras. Sony even has one in development over 100 Mp. MF already has 100 Mp. So, it isn't clear that color filter array is an issue that will force Foveon. I like that sensor but I don't believe it will ever be mainstream.
@@gsrox2007 Multiple colours sampled separately from the exact same domain in space? That seems like a major similarity between foveon and 3-chip. Curious to hear your reasoning.
@@gsrox2007 From what i understand, many earlier camcorders with 3-chip sensors definitely used beam splitting to project the image onto separate red, green, and blue sensors, without a colour filter array. It was an entirely different class of sensors than conventional cmos or ccd. One example would be the Sony VX-2100.
Idk if its just me, but using DNG files with the SD Quattro were bassiically unusable. The X3F files were always clean with transitions and colors you would expect. With DNG's i would get blotchy green and purples in really off putting.
Do you need it? It would be expensive, and what mount wound it use? The SA mount for instance isn't really FULL FRAME. So, what else... What mount are they going to use for the lenses? They already kicked up to APS-C, and it is still foveon, so still has some issues.
And SA mount is full frame compatible. There are SA-E mount adapters for example. You can use SA mount lenses on full frame cameras. I used an adapter to use my SA 35/1.4 on my A7R4 as well as the SDQH. But it is safe to say that the SA mount is dead and gone.
On Yongnuo, I have two lenses for Canon EF - the 50mm f/1.8 (although I now have a Canon50mm f/1.8 STM, which is why I bought the Yongnuo version in the first places - waited for right lens at right price) and the 35mm f/2, because the Canon version is, for some reason, rare and expensive. Both lenses produce really nice images: the only noticeable negative is focusing speed and noise but that might not be a problem for some or in most circumstances 🫡🇬🇧
Thank you for this! I'm a massive Foveon fan - I own a few of the Foveon 3 cameras - and I drink in any information I can find on them. So few people, even here on UA-cam, have experience with these marvellous sensors. In an era where the bulk of the photographic world is chasing lightning-fast sensor readouts or global shutters and amazing cinema-like video features, the Foveon seems more and more archaic as the years go on. But for those of us willing to put up with it's (admittedly, rather severe) quirks and shortcomings, I still insist the images that come out of my Sigma sd Quattro out-resolve images taken on my Fuji GFX 100s. I've been waiting 8 years now for a full-frame Foveon... fingers still tightly crossed!
I've been shooting Foveon for several years. DP1/2/3 Merrill, DP0/2 Quattro and SD Quattro H. Amazing sensor and optics hamstrung by rubbish processors, battery life and the mess that is sigma photo pro.
The output almost ALMOST makes it worth the pain. I walked the fence for many years before giving up and moving on. I'm still holding out for the full frame version in L mount if they ever bring that out. I've met Kazuto San and I asked him and all he said was "soon" and this was 2 years ago.
I am convinced foveon is dead. Sigma is doing great with their lenses now unlike 5-10 years ago. They don't need to chase another fledgling LOB that is a resource hog and money pit.
I love the ability to select just the blue layer data for monochrome...
What is also interesting is I've also moved to a Pentax 645z. I can confidently say that the dp3 merrill is as good as the 645z with the 90/2.8 macro BUT with a lot less latitude when it comes to shooting conditions.
@@gsrox2007 They are a company that is at least driven in part by passion because they are not publicly traded(thank god I think they are still planning for it but found the low light and processing was too slow. I hope I'm right anyway
Well done guys, A few things I have found over the years of owning a full Sigma sd system. Defo shoot raw and edit in Sigma photo pro. I love the 3d pop foveon offers regardless of what lens used. I think there would be a great market for Sigma Foveon sensors in film scanners. You cannot beat full rgb at every pixel location with no interpolation. The foveon is a black and white master!
My batch settings are as follows
White balance 5500k (I shoot in Auto white balance to avoid the view finder bleeding color)
Detail 2
Contrast -1
Color 1 to 2
sharpness -1.3
fill +1
I adjust exposure as needed.
My lens line up.
30mm f1.4 art prime
70mm f2.8 art macro
8-16 f 5.6
18-35 f1.8
50-100 f1.8
120-300 f1.8
Battery grip is a must for the bigger lens.
Thanks for sharing! How do you like that macro?
Jpeg / dng is fine, you all obsess too much
@@snappiness The Marco is exceptional! I scan my 6x6 b&w negatives with it.
That’s the most important question in digital photography right now.
You sound like you have t d s
Skip Full Frame, go Medium Format.
Imagine a Hasselblad with a Foveon 🤤
Yes, just imagine 80-100mp of foveon goodness on a 645 sized sensor. If only they would/could make an M645 compatible foveon back.
That would impact the price, portability, weight and usability significantly. But then again, does Sigma even manufacture medium format lenses? But would be an interesting system for sure.
@@kunstsein I couldn't imagine it would need to be any larger than any other medium format digital back. My phase one cameras are the smallest and lightest bits in my professional kit. Yes, it would cost more than a small format camera. But most new medium format digital backs are more expensive than small format, by orders of magnitude. So I see no real alarm bells there. Unless it came in at twice that of an IQ4150. But just imagine the prints from a 100mp foveon. The colour, acuity, and unique aesthetic of a large foveon print would easily make it a no brainer for me. Hands down, on paper at least, it should rank at the very pinnacle of photographic image making tools.
they already shoot like medformat😂
I think Sigma's mistake was making their camera with a new proprietary mount. I think they could have sold a lot more camera bodies if they adopted at least one, though more off-patent and orphaned mounts. Yes, it would have cost them more to produce multiple models but im sure a lot of folks with those older lenses would have been happy to pick up a modern body for their lens collection.
I think that the L mount Alliance will be the new mount for Sigma going forward.
Sublime -- I was thinking about this yesterday. I'd put a bid on a cheap 5DS and, while only slightly outbid and the clock still ticking, felt unimpressed with the dynamic range and grain of sample shots and thought what would be the ultimate full frame sensor? It (Sigma's potential FF Foveon) needs to be able to deal with less than ideal lighting, perform fast in-camera processing, pixel shift, PDAF and not cost so much that only rich nerds can afford it. It doesn't need to have a wild capture rate, but it can't be a studio/ambient light queen.
So many second-hand FF cameras are becoming affordable. I only own one so far, the OG Pentax K-1 which I love so much and purchased new years ago. But I must collect everything weird. Kind of want a Sony A99-mkII...with an AF mirror tele.
I don't think foveon and pdaf will ever mix. Pdaf is a part of the cfa layer and not the underlying substrate. There is no cfa in foveon.
Adding a "transparent" cfa layer to incorporate cfa will have its own share of issues.
In my experience, pdaf is detrimental to image quality, colour accuracy and dynamic range. S1R and 645z are incredible because they use cdaf. DSLRs don't use on sensor pdaf so they don't encounter similar issues.
@@gsrox2007 The SD quattro H already has on-sensor pdaf
Foveon by its nature is always going to struggle with sensitivity per-pixel. A bayer sensor is combining the color information for neighboring photosites, so it gets a free advantage in light gathering ability as a result as more area is contributing to each computed pixel at the expense of resolution/sharpness. Pixel shift is sort of interesting, but really less necessary on a foveon sensor. Pixel shift enables non-foveon cameras to replicate foveon resolution by basically undoing the mosaic'd nature of the color filter through three exposures rather than having the photosites actually stacked on top of each other. The SD Quattro has a "high def" multiple exposure mode already, but rather than shifting the sensor it just combines multiple exposure levels to compensate for the lower dynamic range and to lower the noise.
Foveon sensors take amazing black and white photos. How do we follow your guest ?
long overdue. Sigma is thinking about it since years... cannot be in times of fats processors that big issue anymore. A nice rangefinder style, L mount, FF Foveon camera, with a good IBIS... thats all. Not asking for much :D :D
28:00 My SD1s AF misses more often than it hits. I installed a split-prism viewfinder screen for manual focusing.
That's a great idea
One problem that Foveon solved was moire patterns.
Foveon was the only time a color sensor gave me monochrome sensor results when doing a BW conversion during editing, at low ISOs obviously. I can’t say ever enjoyed the foveon colors though.
I don’t have my Sigma Quattro Foveon anymore but I do have a Pentax monochrome so it scratches that rich black and white depth that the sigma gave me.
Nice!! I may grab that Pentax one of these days. Colors on my quattro feel better than my old sd10 and sd14. Still quite different out of camera than other cameras.
Of the lenses I have for my SD Quattro, the ones I use the most are the 30mm Art (beautiful, light and I got it used for less than $200!) and the 105mm Macro f2.8 with optical stabilization (even though I do almost no macro photography but love the 3D quality it renders generally)(the stabilization reliably gives me 3-4 stops shake reduction). I have the 18-35 and the 100-400 but they are so long and heavy.
Wow that 105 sounds great. I love my 18-35. The 100-400 is okay. Usable and good, but not great like some of the other ones. That's probably tough to do in a lens like that though.
Out of the blue but how was light settings on this video, just curious
Does Cory (Corey?) have photos online anywhere?
I might have to steal that phrase “image character” :)
the Bayer sensors are good enough nowadays, even incredible compared to those 10 yrs ago. and it’ll cost sigma a hell lot of r&d costs and bring probably very little sales in return.
the podcast could be named Happy yappin' =)
There are very good 60Mp cameras. Sony even has one in development over 100 Mp. MF already has 100 Mp. So, it isn't clear that color filter array is an issue that will force Foveon. I like that sensor but I don't believe it will ever be mainstream.
Life gets in the way but worth living.
Only reason I kept my L mount lenses is because I wish I can use them on full frame foveon oneday
interesing for him to draw the connection with camcorders, considering how many of them used separated RGB sensors!
Foveon works nothing like that in reality.
@@gsrox2007 Multiple colours sampled separately from the exact same domain in space? That seems like a major similarity between foveon and 3-chip. Curious to hear your reasoning.
There is no beam splitting and there is no colour filter array, two of the mechanisms used in acquiring colour data.
@@gsrox2007 From what i understand, many earlier camcorders with 3-chip sensors definitely used beam splitting to project the image onto separate red, green, and blue sensors, without a colour filter array. It was an entirely different class of sensors than conventional cmos or ccd. One example would be the Sony VX-2100.
and for what its worth, I'm by no means the first person to draw comparison between 3-chip camcorders and the foveon sensor.
Idk if its just me, but using DNG files with the SD Quattro were bassiically unusable. The X3F files were always clean with transitions and colors you would expect. With DNG's i would get blotchy green and purples in really off putting.
Okay, I need to look into that and see if it's the same for me
Do you need it?
It would be expensive, and what mount wound it use? The SA mount for instance isn't really FULL FRAME. So, what else... What mount are they going to use for the lenses?
They already kicked up to APS-C, and it is still foveon, so still has some issues.
L mount obviously!
And SA mount is full frame compatible. There are SA-E mount adapters for example. You can use SA mount lenses on full frame cameras. I used an adapter to use my SA 35/1.4 on my A7R4 as well as the SDQH.
But it is safe to say that the SA mount is dead and gone.
L mount makes sense to me. SA is FF - is was originally for 35mm film.
Sigma has 35mm film cameras with SA mount. I use my Art lenses on my film SA-9 , SD Quattro, and fp.
It was fine talking but I expected a bit more about the history, development and differences between generations.
Can i please have the android camera?
Don’t have a phobia about a foveon.
I don't we need one, aps h is fine. We need better Af, perhaps a m42 mount
I get horrible artifacts with quattro's DNG files...
Interesting! I hadn't heard that from others when I was researching. I still haven't tried DNGs.
@@snappiness The issue might be software dependent, but I seriously doubt the ouptut totally complies with DNG format conventions...
Me too! DNG is unusable for me
first, HA!
Please don't use that potato again for anything longer than 30 seconds.
Unwatchable
On Yongnuo, I have two lenses for Canon EF - the 50mm f/1.8 (although I now have a Canon50mm f/1.8 STM, which is why I bought the Yongnuo version in the first places - waited for right lens at right price) and the 35mm f/2, because the Canon version is, for some reason, rare and expensive. Both lenses produce really nice images: the only noticeable negative is focusing speed and noise but that might not be a problem for some or in most circumstances 🫡🇬🇧
nice!