Richard wrote:
>>... miss a major point: Sigma DSLR pictures suck, and that's a technical
term :-)
<<
In general I can't tell any of these higher end cameras apart when looking
at typical prints (unless WB is wrong), but I sure can see some photographers
whose work I much prefer. So as always, "its the photographer stupid" to
paraphrase a presidential campaign slogan.
In general I agree with Skip's view , choose the camera based on handling
auto-focus,lenses or other issues that are important to you, the sensors are
likely all acceptable.
On the other hand as a technologist, I am interested in the the
fundamental limits of things, and the Foveon sensor is something different from
the rest of the pack, with a significantly different set of trade-offs. It
will be interesting to see if any of the big camera manufacturers use the
Foveon sensors when the Sigma exclusive ends at the end of this year. Cannon
has a big investment in it's own chips and so has a big financial incentive to
use it's in-house chips. Nikon might be a more likely partner. Olympus
currently has close ties to Kodak getting some sensors and making some cameras
for K. The really big market is lower resolution phone cameras,but this is
commodity stuff so tough to compete in. National Semi has Foveon IP rights for
low resolution.
A problem for Foveon is the off the shelf post processing chips are
organized for Bayer interpolation, not Foveon color orthogonalization. This
makes it tough for the whole package to be as highly integrated, low
power,cheap and fast as a Sony,Cannon or Kodak sensor chip set solutions.
Foveon apparently uses an Arm processor and semi-custom hardware, but this lack
of special hardware is probably why they don't save to JPEG as an option, and
why the burst speed is not good.
Richard, maybe if your Imagecraft ARM compiler is really efficent, you could
trade them a copy for a free camera!
Tim Hughes
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