DC.watch interviewed Sigma president Yamaki Kazuto. And those are some of the most interesting news:
– He believes time will come when Mirrorless will outsell DSLR. But DSLR will always exist as a niche product.
– We aim to achieve medium and large format quality with our foveon sensor tech
– We receive many request to make a Full Frame Foveon. And we are aware the tendency now is to make larger sensors and with even more Megapixels.
– Sigma has no plan to make an interchangeable mirrorless system camera yet.
– There is no plan yet to make a DP camera with zoom lens
4 Responses
As usual, same lack of interest in designing a mirror less camera users want! Great, an interview in which nothing of value is said!
I totally agree that mirrorless cameras should and will replace the DSLRs.
There are presently three pieces of technology missing to make this possible.
1. On-sensor AF does not match speed and accuracy of reflex PDAF.
2. The clarity of the EVF is inferior to that of an OVF.
3. The recovery of the EVF image after exposure is too slow.
A lot of people on the photo forums seem to think that Sony or Sigma is going to step in with new technology and take over the camera industry.
Sigma is already in the enviable position of producing excellent third party lenses for Canon and Nikon. Sigma should continue to do exactly that, especially to the new, high MP cameras coming on the market.
Sony produces the best image sensors and EVFs on the market. I hope they will continue to improve these to make pro-level mirrorless cameras a reality.
Like the DSLR, the Bayer color filter is long overdue for replacement. The Foveon sensor has already been here long enough for a chance to make this happen, so I do not think it will.
I put my hope to a new and brilliant technology from Sony which they call an Active Pixel Color Sampling Sensor. It simply replaces each group of four small Bayer colored pixels with one larger pixel plus an oscillating color filter array which gives the camera processor a chance to read the exact complement of red, green and blue for each pixel.
The Sony pixel color sampling sensor should result in larger pixels with higher ISO and more accurate color.
1. CDAF has faster focusing speed than PDAF, and it doesnt fail like separate PDAF that gets misalligned in time and from lightest drops way too often, requiring calibrating every lens and every PDAF point.
PDAF only has a small speed benefit in C-AF but its already negligent even between top sport DSLR and top DSLM. It is about software now on and possible to do some amazing things like Sony A6000 tracking capability or Panasonic GH4 DFD.
2.The sharpness sure is inferior (2.3Mpix vs human eye) but DSLM lile E-M1 already has a larger EVF magnification than top DSLR OVF. OVF is inferior in low light, backlight, fast situations and doesnt have all the benefitical features like a magnification, focus peaking, under-/over-exposure warnings, real time exposure, realtime white balance, live motion tracking and other very benefitical features like face detection, eye focus (left/right, closest) etc etc. That makes EVF far superior to any OVF. With OVF you can’t shoot video = very bad, you can’t review photos on VF =very bad in bright scenery (studio or sunlight etc) so you need to relay to histograms etc.
3. Too slow actually isn’t there. It is little slower than mirror slapping in some DSLR but there are many top DSLR that mirror is slower.
Sigma will continue making lenses to Canikon, their own sensor and camera doesn’t meant they abandon their cameras.
And Sony doesn’t make best EVF, Olympus does. And highly the EVF in E-M1 successor will be improved even more and be released as VF-5 for previous cameras.
Mirrorless already wins DSLR in capable hands and the technical limits are achieved only at very extreme situations that are like 0.00xx% of the photography time spent on field.
The photography is already changing to cinematography where we extract 8Mpix photos from 4K footage and in that Panasonic GH4 is amazing with the high bitrate and colors. Even Canon 1D C has difficulties where GH4 succeed.
Mirrorless needs little improvement in C-AF area and some polishing in tracking department and all that is in software, that can be changed easily.
Everybody knows that CDAF is more accurate than PDAF. If it also offers faster focus tracking, you need to tell the world.
I agree about the EVF. I would like to have a FF, mirrorless camera with a fast EVF.
However, I also insist on a full set of top IQ prime lenses for it.