Sigma Rumors posted a rumor saying that Sigma will make a Micro Four Thirds camera with Foveon sensor. We don’t have track of the site reliability yet. But one of my very trusted sources told me that it’s TRUE that Sigma will launch an interchangeable mirrorless camera with Foveon sensor in 2014!
I can only say…finally Sigma!
61 Responses
Let s hope that it is indeed a m4/3rds and that they have a decent system against dust
Harold
Interesting news. I just hope that Sigma does NOT come up with a small Micro Four Thirds sensor. I see absolutely no value in that. The DP Merrills have bigger sensors and paired with fantastic lenses. All this for great prices at the moment.
So if Sigma comes with an interchangable system, I hope the sensor will be as big as possible combined with ultra high quality lenses that match that sensor.
For me, that is the strenght of the Foveon. Use it as a technical camera, not a compact point and shoot.
I agree!!! Going bigger would gain the foveon sensor in useable ISO, but a smaller sensor would be even more limiting. To be honest, though, I was hoping, rather, for a full frame SD1 type camera.
What do you mean “small m43 sensor”? (BTW, it is a 43 sensor, as there is no such thing as a m43 sensor.) And the 43 sensor is NOT small. You guys need to get that through your thick heads.
You have no idea how good that sensor is in the E-M5 and the E-M1. And to call it a compact point and shoot shows how really IGNORANT you are. Clueless.
I hope they do launch a mirrorless m43 camera with Foveon sensor. That will be a terrific camera. And there are plenty of excellent m43 (and 43) lenses out there.
And, BTW, I also have a Sigma SD15 and DP1, so I know what the Foveon sensor can do. With current sensor technology, a 43 Foveon will provide excellent IQ and resolution.
Yeah, totally agree here. APS-C and four thirds/micro four thrids are essentially identical in size, especially for all practical purposes. Lens quality and sensor technology are far more significant than the tiny difference in size.
To me, a softball and a baseball are the same size too. To someone who plays the sport they are drastically different.
There is not an insignificant size difference between a 4/3″ sensor and a APS-C sensor.
The difference exists and it cannot be denied, but it seems to be way more significant in argumentation than it is in use.
I bet the price will be on the unafordable side for commons people and there is only a slow kit zoom on launch 🙂 Unless Sigma goes µ4/3, so they can start with a very good bunch of lenses. A µ4/3 foveon with oly 75mm will certainly appeal to portrait photographer.
“A µ4/3 foveon with oly 75mm will certainly appeal to portrait photographer.”
That camera already exists. It is called the DP 3 Merrill.
It has a lens that is as good as the best Leica has to offer AND has a bigger sensor than micro 4/3. It can be had for just 550 euro’s at the moment.
I just don’t see the point for a micro 4/3 system for Sigma from a photographers standpoint.
Would love to see Sigma make a system that resembles medium format mirrorless like the Mamiya 7.
With respect having both. the Oly 75mm is f1.8 and stunning optics wide open. The DP3 lens is good, but from what I see daily, not as good as the 75mm open. No where near evem close.
It is out of the question at the moment for Sigma to go medium format. The infrastructure is not there.For professionals and most people today, time is expensive and waiting for Photo Pro to render from the Merrills is slow enough. There needs to be a step up in the work flow before full frame and medium format is going to be even considered commercially viable. Yes it would be great , wishes and dreams are great, but the commercial reality, is that Sigma does not have everything in place yet to entice the mass market, or those’s with time constraints. If a m4/3 camera does arrive, I can see the many attractions and a possible in road to a new market for sigma which may also attract people towards the existing range. Ideally yes, a medium format would be amazing, Cannot see it though. Nor full frame,as mentioned, the work flow, but I have often been incorrect on many things.
The 75mm on the DP certainly doesn’t match the quality of the Olympus 75mm f/1.8, with the latter being one of the sharpest lenses on any system. Access to the incredible wealth of micro four thirds glass out there would be a huge asset, even with the shortcomings of the DP series. Getting that amazing foveon look from my existing Olympus glass would be really cool. 🙂
> with the latter being one of the sharpest lenses on any system
Unreasonably broad generalization alarm went off. And it keeps ringing.
The DP3 lens is excellent, but 50mm, 75mm equivalent. The OLympus is 75mm and 150mm equivalent, quite a bit of difference in field of view IMO.
YES!
No thanks, too little, too late….
Without lightroom support and high ISO, these cameras are limiting. Completely beautiful results at times with the DP Merrill series, but they are not consistent.
This is what I do: open files in SPP, make as few adjustments as possible (don’t mess with X3 fill light because that’s what puts banding in the sky. Then save to 16 bit tiff, import the tiff into Lightroom, convert the tiff to dng for a smaller file. Et-voila, full lightroom support! The quality I get from my DP2 merrill is better than what I get with my D600 + 50mm f/1.4 afd.
Ah yes!! The DP Merrills were amazing, once you realise they’re completely different, and the quality makes up for it, and you try shooting medium format film and realise it’s just a more efficient version of that.
Would work well with M43, would still far out do a FF, sure it’ll still be MF type quality, most of the extra things you want from FF will be lacking on the Sigma cameras, ISO isn’t going to be any good as FF, it’s not a fast camera really.
Still would love to see FF foveon sensor, think it’s a smart move going to M43, makes me regret selling the 12mm prime.
Don’t think it will be µFT, every other camera they build up to date has APS-C inside.
E-Mount would be a reasonable choice, they have three lenses for this mount which has been actually designed for APS-C.
Actually, the Foveon sensor has always been smaller than APS-C – it is even smaller than Canon APS-C with its 1.6x crop factor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_sensor_format. A Foveon sensor is about as tall as an MFT sensor, but it is wider because of its 3:2 ratio, that is all.
I am sure every whiner about MFT sensor size regularly crops their APS-C images way below MFT crop factor without noticing any IQ issue.
The Foveon has a 1.73x crop factor, 1.6x for Canon and 1.5x for Nikon. So yeah, pretty close to four thirds. Practically speaking, APS-Cs are really not significantly larger than four thirds and are close enough that lens choice, sensor generation and photographic technique are far more significant factors in attainable image quality. The size difference is really negligible.
For Sigma, I think standardizing on micro four thirds would be a huge boon, because they otherwise don’t really have access to a mount which is both widely adopted and possible to license. There simply aren’t any widely used open standards for APS-C sensors.
The fixed lens market is never really going to reach the audience they want to reach. Neither is yet another proprietary mount. It really is the obvious choice.
They could use the existing sensor with a m43 mount and offer mult-aspect. That way we could use wider 3:2 and 16:9 aspect for landscape shots.
That would be fantastic!
New Foveon is NOT 1.7x, that was the old Foveon, the new Foveon is APS-C sized (23.5mm x 15.7mm)
APS-C isn’t really “a” size, you see. The old foveon and the new foveon are both the same size, and that size is called (by Sigma) APS-C. Nikon calls APS-C something with a 1.5x crop factor, Canon, something with a 1.6x, and Sigma, something with a 1.73x crop factor, which incidentally is nearly identical in height to (micro) four thirds.
Also, the four thrids sensor isn’t 4/3″. It’s defined by a 22.5mm diameter image circle at any aspect ratio and is *usually* 4:3 aspect ratio. Cinema four thirds sensors tend to be 16:9 which have the same diagonal but a larger area.
There is no performance distinction between current gen APS-C sensors and four thirds ones. Nikon and Sony have a slight edge because they have a newer sensor technology, but Canon has been lagging behind for years in virtually every respect. The differences in performance between four thirds and the APS-Cs are much less than the variation in performance among APS-C sensors, making the sensor size (in this range) an insignificant and unreliable predictor of performance, obviously. In terms of area, they’re all very close. There’s also well under a stop of difference in DOF from the largest APS-C (Nikon) to the smallest (Sigma) to four thirds. Sigma’s APS-C is much closer in size to four thirds than it is to Nikon’s.
Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_sensor_format
Eric is right about the new Foveon sensors being larger than the early ones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APS-C. I forgot they increased the sensor size with the Merrill editions.
Neither is APS-C really, as that format was slightly larger than any digital format that claimed the same name, but it sounds like anything that is offering a crop factor >= 1.5X, has 3:2 aspect ratio, and is slightly larger than MFT is considered to be APS-C! 🙂
Ah…my mistake. But yeah, APS-Cs exist at many ratios between 1.5 and 2.0. The whole design ethic behind four thirds was to make it a similar size to APS-C while eliminating the coma and edge artifacts that plague larger digital sensors, especially using wide angle lenses.
It makes more sense to view APS-C and four thirds as similar sizes, especially when comparing to full frame which is twice as large diagonally. Crop factor is misleading that way, because 1.5 is much closer to two than to 1.0. 🙂
Quick google shows Foveon sensor area 30% less than Sony/Nikon Aps-C, the likely benchmark for high IQ junkies. That means for same pixel count 30% smaller pixels. Obvious concern is ISO. My best scrutiny is Foveon is about 2X resolution vs bayer, sad to give 30% back on light gathering.
On the other hand the point on open mount is a strong argument for m43, and would be weird and Very expensive to change sensor size – so rumor is likely accurate.
Big question on my mind is whether this is a new sensor generation, or just an m43 mount in front of current sensor…
Good news! hope it’s true. Whatever happens this should mean a wider range of CSC lenses from Sigma.
I like the idea of a super fast M43 camera with a foveon sensor. However, I also think Sigma should introduce a FF Foveon with M mount. So, one fast auto focusing high tech, the other one is very much going back to basic manual everything…
Yes!!!!!
I hope they fixed the color leak problem?
And fix all the little quirky issues and battery life.
This could be cool, especially if the M43 switch allows them to fix the battery life issues and (maybe) better focus speed. The DPM cams are interesting for studio and landscape type of work. It would be great to seem them catch up in more general use categories.
Seriously, who is interested in a M43 Foveon? That would be a step back from the DP Merrills. Sigma can only go bigger in sensor size, there lies the potential for Foveon.
No thanslks. In olympus I trust.
M43 is dead. Hope Sigma goes BIG in sensor
Too intelligent a move to be real. But then again, one can always hope that common sense will strike Sigma’s camera division and they will finally produce a compelling product.
Sounds good – let’s hope for usable manual focus implementation (usable AF could be asking for too much 🙂 ) and one or 2 fast lenses.
Yes…oh wait,they already have that, don’t they? Sigma SD1???
Nevermind.. I missed the “mirrorless” part.
I will buy one!! Can’t wait. Thanks Sigma!!
Oh yay! the one ISO sensor is back! One good iso, crap in all the rest.
Does this mean that Sigma will release some of their long lenses in the M-4/3rds format? I’d like to see the 105 macro and 150-500 hopefully without OS.
Foveon sensor is exremely bad when light does not come perpendiculary (even SLR 50mm retro lenses cause issues!). This alone renders it useless for mirrorless unless the lenses are specifically designed for it. Thus m4/3 will never happen.
ROTFL I use the same 19 and 30mm of the Merrills on my E-M5, and they are excellent.
DP1M, DP2M and DP3M are all Mirrorless, so I don’t understand what you mean by mirrorless.
The DP Merrills are fixed lens cameras, not mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras.
Whole series of DP Sigma cameras are mirrorless, and always was, but they are fixed lens cameras. Lenses in them are superb quality, much higher then you see in other brands, in this price range.
It is easy math. APS-C is more enjoyable in terms of FOV. Sigma used to produce 1.7X crop factor DSLR / DP series. I hope that it produces APS-C instead of 4/3 (17X13mm). Leica M is cropped too much on m4/3 body.
More enjoyable how? If you’re using equivalent focal lengths, the field of view will be the same. If you’re shooting at equivalent iris settings the DOF will be the same, but at higher shutter speed or lower ISO. And only slightly. In most cases, you can take exactly the same photo on any format, provided you’re using the right lens and camera settings. For any crop factors between 1 and 2 it’s generally pretty easy.
But if you’re talking about adapted lenses, you’re right. There aren’t many good old full frame lenses that would make a good normal on MFT. Full frame wide angles sucked. And good luck finding a rectilinear 12 or 14mm among your classic lenses. So for the normal lenses, you have a point, because there are good 35’s on full frame, which, when adapted to APS-C would be a normal. But your 35mm will be a 24mm, and we all know how hard good 24mm lenses were to come by. Especially if you want something fast. And you’ve still got no hope of finding a good wide angle to adapt.
On both formats, the best adapted full frame lenses tend to be full frame normals and up. One of my favorites on MFT is the Pentax Super-Takumar 55 mm F/1.8, a bit of nostalgia from my Spotmatic years. It’s an incredible lens, to be fair. But I’d be kidding myself if I said it was better than the very affordable Olympus 45mm f/1.8, especially on a digital sensor.
But to each his own, I guess.
In fact, Sigma should make a Foveon medium format digital back. MF is lack of economic option and Foveon has good potential to emerge into this market. It should be designed into open mount format that can adopt to all the system such as Hasseelblad H/V, Mamiya, Phase One, etc. in native 30-40MP which cost $3,000-4000 USD is attractive.
If she dares,make a mirrorless EOS EF or Nikon F mount to control the 135 format lenses and then let photographer use tele lenses which can cover the sensor just like the HCam-B1 made by Hartblei(http://www.hartblei.de/en/hartbleicam1.htm). As you know, the patent of EOS EF mount is expired and the lenses manufacturer is able to produce compatible lenses and camera without the patent fee. Sigma should explore by this chance. I always wonder if Sigma produce EF mount body rather than SA mount, I believe Canon should beware about this. Of course, it never happens.
Where´s the point? The A7 and A7R are the new benchmark. I dont see any benefit to go for a crop sensor for just a few 100$ less.
Yes, you’re right, you’re missing the point, although I can’t argue that the a7 makes Olympus’s price look a little high. We’d all like to see their prices come down. But I’d have a hard time calling the a7 a better camera, especially with the distinct lack of available glass, lack of phase detection and slow burst rate.
To really match the feature set of the E-M1 you’re looking at the a7R. And I can’t stress the glass problem enough. The available lenses for the E-M1 make it a serious option for pro photography. You certainly can’t say the same for the a7, at least not yet.
Agreed. Although I must say the benchmark is rather the DP2 and DP3 Merrill.
It sensor/lens combo is better then anything I have seen on my D800E.
Also someone here mentioned the lens on the DP3 is not as good as the Olympus 75mm.
I think that is false. It is at least as good, if not better because it is matched perfectly with the sensor of the Merrill.
nobody who uses Sigma’s Merrill camera(s) would argue that 😉 those DP Merrills are little high-res monsters
Well I wonder. Since the DP1 has exactly the same 19mm lens that I use daily, I know that it is good but probably not worth a Zeiss Tuit.
Now the DP1 beats even the A7r.
So the only explanation I have is that the Foveon being layered, each layer needs only a smaller resolution lens, than if it were FF35.
Is it correct?
Isn’t the Tuoit 12mm?
That is not really right, the only way the DP competes with the 36mp A7R or D800/D800e is in colour depth at base ISO.It is behind in resolution, DR, shadow noise and so on. And above 400ISO you are close to P&S quality.
None the less it is an excellent low ISO performer especially for its price and size.It also comes with a very good performing lens. Why they have not put it in a decent body is beyond me. I would love this sensor in a GX7 style body
do you have DP Merrill and D800?
For those who blabber about a FF 35 foveon sensor, did they ever compare the small one to a FF 35 mirrorless such as the Sony? LOL
http://www.the.me/japan-autumn-leaf-viewing-mount-fuji-the-sony-a7r-and-lots-of-legacy-lenses/
Nobody needs a 35mm foveon, just a fast reactive shell around it.
can’t imagine them going 43 way, not after Merrill series of cameras which are equipped with APS-C sized Foveon sensors.