New Siggy DSLR, start saving...

Think Ill pass! Ugly styling, huge price and limited to Sigma lenses.
 
I think that Sigma make some great lenses and I'm sure that I personally could live with the following line up...

20mm f1.8, 30mm f1.4, 50mm f1.4, 50mm f2.8 macro, 85mm f1.4, 150mm f2.8 and on the zoom side a 12-24mm, 18-50mm f2.8 and a 70-200mm f2.8 or a 70-300mm of some description and in fact I already have 5 of those lenses and I'm sure that I could swap my remaining Canon and Tamron lenses for Siggy equivalents without shedding too many tears or losing any quality but I think that the sad fact is that there's a lot of brand snobbery out there that'll mean that many will never consider buying a Siggy body with a Siggy lens mount even if the performance of this camera when fitted with some of Siggy's better lenses is stellar.

I'll be interested to read the reviews though and I suppose some will buy based on dynamic range, image quality or bloody mindedness.
 
Must admit that Sigma do great lens, I have the 150-500mm and the 105mm macro, both great lens :thumbs: would never get a 50mm macro, working distance is to close for bugs and insects
 
Last edited:
They do some fantastic lenses, but I wouldn't want them to be my only option.
 
Maybe there'll be some sort of adapter available, there are for most mounts and if this camera is good people may want to use the very best lenses on it.
 
I dunno what weed they're smoking, but it must be good....
 
As the article says, the price may be because the sensor is difficult to make with low yields. Gotta admire them for doing it though... if the image quality or dynamic range or both are good.
 
Sigma camera buffs are in shock. Up until today the expectation was that that the SD1 would be priced to compete with one 7D not seven of them.
 
Low yield, as in... they'll make a batch and they'll have a lot of rejects.

Sometimes when you make stuff that's hard to make you get a lot of rejects and just a few good ones, this is often called low yield. You get this with lots of stuff, not just electronics.

When I used to work (I don't now) some electronic stuff had 100% batch rejection and we had to make it all again... and again... until we got some good stuff. It's a pain but it's the way it is and of course if it's the way it is the price you have to charge goes up.
 
Last edited:
Just Dave said:
Must be a misprint in price $970 not $9700
Click to expand...

No, definitely $9700, that's really the crux of the article.

I honestly can't see how they expect to sell many, at any price. Even for it's supposed benefits, the market for cameras at that price is small and limiited to very wealthy amateurs and professionals, and it's probably safe to assume they'll already be committed to a system. Brand snobbery or not, Sigma just don't have the reputation in this price bracket.

In addition, although Sigma produce some good lenses, there's enough ongoing concerns about their quality control to put off many people from changing to Sigma and relying solely on their lenses.
 
woof woof said:
Low yield, as in... they'll make a batch and they'll have a lot of rejects.

Sometimes when you make stuff that's hard to make you get a lot of rejects and just a few good ones, this is often called low yield. You get this with lots of stuff, not just electronics.

When I used to work (I don't now) some electronic stuff had 100% batch rejection and we had to make it all again... and again... until we got some good stuff. It's a pain but it's the way it is and of course if it's the way it is the price you have to charge goes up.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the explanation Alan, :thumbs::thumbs::thumbs:
 
APS-C sized senor and 15.3 megapixel! Unless the image quality is totally incredible, they're having a laugh.

At this price, must be aimed at the premership footballer category :gag:
 
johnnypanic said:
APS-C sized senor and 15.3 megapixel! Unless the image quality is totally incredible, they're having a laugh.

At this price, must be aimed at the premership footballer category :gag:
Click to expand...

Ah, but unlike all other manufacturers they're not lying about the 15 megapixels.

The foveon sensor has 3 15 megapixel layers, one for each colour channel, where as the sensors all the other brands have one layer where each pixel record only R, B or G, then the camera interpolates the file so each pixel has a R, B and G value. So with normal sensors, the resolution is actually more like 1/3 of what they spec it as, but the sigma is actually truly 15 megapixels.

So in terms of resolution, it's actually equal to a whopping 46 megapixels in terms of how other manufacturers spec it.

No idea how an ASP-C sensor handles that kind of resolution, but suddenly it seems more in line with it's almost medium format level pricing.
 
Last edited:
I'll be very interested to see how this camera performs. Foveon still has quite a following and this is a big step up in terms of megapixels for Sigma. However, I can't help but feel that the rest of the camera looks a little outdated, for example the LCD is half the resolution of modern (and much cheaper DSLRs). I suspect Sigma have been developing this for a long time, much like the highly anticipated Sony A-77.
 
I'm interested to see how the new tech sensor performs too but paying that much for a camera with a xxxD style rear control "wheel" wouldn't seem right.
 
Some day all cameras might have this sort of sensor so it will be interesting to follow developments and I'm sure that it'll sell, if only in small numbers.

The Luminous Landscape review will be a must read for me to see how the Siggy does against the Pentax and Leica.
 
If you want a Sigma dslr just wait until it's been on the market a few months and they'll be giving them away. The last one went from something like £1500 down to around £200 and they still struggled to shift them.
 
[QUOTEAt this price, must be aimed at the premership footballer category ][/QUOTE]

Glad you didn't name anyone in particular
 
You should see the furore over at the DPR forums... rats, sinking ships springs to mind!

My more sanguine view is that this is commercial bravery which may well make or break the Sigma SLR range and the SA mount as a result; their decent lens range will of course carry on for other manufacturers.

If the camera truly does match a medium format quality, then its target market is very small - because most who already shoot that stuff have a preferred system, and Sigma just doesn't have the pedigree of Hass, Pentax, Leaf no matter how hard they try.

If it doesn't, then the target market is even smaller - because nobody will spring for a camera twice the price of a 1DS, D3X or an M9 when all those cameras [Canon, Nikon, Leica] have long pedigrees, end user support, quality control and preferred uses/users out in the field.

Plus, the Sigma SA mount offers no unique advantage because all the very best Sigma lenses are available in EF or F mount aswell.

I like Sigma, always championing the underdog, but this makes a Leica S2 or a Pentax 645D look like a sensible decision. Time will tell - if the SD1 is £3000 street in 12 months time, then stocks aren't shifting.
 
danbroad said:
.......- if the SD1 is £3000 street in 12 months time, then stocks aren't shifting.
Click to expand...

For the reasons already ably stated above, I think it will bomb.
Sigma just don't have the quality control or cachet of Nikon or Canon.
Those with an existing investment in glass won't jump ship.
MF users won't want to switch to crop, 45MP or not.
Can't decide if I think it's a very brave (but ultimately foolish) move or suicidal tendencies.
I'd love to see a high resolution Foveon sensor in a full frame 35mm body (ideally in a Canon body).
This £6,199.99 leap in the dark is doomed to failure, I fear.
 
Surely it all depends on how good the image quality is? If they have been working on this for a long time it could be good and if it is it probably will sell if only in small numbers to wedding togs, fashion photographers and gear heads. Maybe Siggy just want to keep the Forvon idea alive in the market place until better (or even better) and cheaper cameras are possible?

I do disagree with what seems to be the almost automatic assumption that Siggy QC is crap and can't be improved. It's possible that they'll see this as a flagship product and put some good people and procedures in place, after all, they're charging enough for it and it's not as if it relies on back engineering like Canon lens mount lenses.
 
Last edited:
It seems to have an identity chrisis. In some ways it seems to think it's a medium format camera in which case the price is about right. In other ways not in which case the price is barking.
 
zeugma said:
That got the (limited) brain cells working.
Are you, perhaps, a Sciuinztist?
Click to expand...

I am not wholly unfamiliar with the concept. I know some people who are. :)
 
Thing to remember is that you have to compare like for like.

The sensor is entirely different - it's not CMOS or CCD.. It's not really a 15MP sensor CMOS - in theory it's a 46MP sensor.

Like the article says, think of it more like a 30MP sensor and your in the right region. But likely with significantly better colour reproduction that a normal CMOS.

Now your looking at something more like the pentax 645d or the Baby hassalbard ( the 31MP version ) that was in AP a few months ago - which were around the £10k-£15k region.

So your £6k is now competing against absolutely top of the range full frame Canon and Nikon, and probably quite well against medium format. And you also get access to a range of good, cheap glass.

The flip side is also called out by the article - it's not called Canon, Nikon or Hassalbard, so likely won't sell - but I reckon it'll be a damn good camera.


Due Diligence - I know a guy who was contracted to write some of the firmware for this camera and some of the test harnesses for the image processing stuff. He reckons it's a cracker of a camera - and has done similar work for canon, pentax and Nikon.

Extra due diligence - thats just one guys opinion, and to be fair to him, he is more of a nerd than an artistic sort of guy.

For what it's worth, I think the camera styling is great - to my eyes, camera's should have edges - not be smooth and curvy like Canon and especially Nikon.

Steve
 
SlowSteve said:
The sensor is entirely different - it's not CMOS or CCD.. It's not really a 15MP sensor CMOS - in theory it's a 46MP sensor.

Like the article says, think of it more like a 30MP sensor and your in the right region. But likely with significantly better colour reproduction that a normal CMOS...

So your £6k is now competing against absolutely top of the range full frame Canon and Nikon, and probably quite well against medium format. And you also get access to a range of good, cheap glass.

Steve
Click to expand...

the Foveon debate will run and run. It's not a 45MP sensor, in the same way that Bayer sensors aren't [megapixels x 4] due to their 4-array of colour pixels. However, 24-30MP may well be a valid equivalent; but that's no real resolution advantage over, say, the D3X [full frame, to boot] or the forthcoming Sony A77 [APS-C]. Issues of absolute count are largely irrelevant, however - it's the colour rendition that differs, and for this camera to sell on those grounds it's got to blow away the established competition.

There is one real issue, though - who, in their right mind, considers cheap glass as a selling point of a 10k camera - especially when it's available in non-proprietary mounts aswell?
 
Cheap glass?

Well, several Sigma lenses can easily be considered to be the best in their class when compared to Canon or Nikon and it'd be a brave photographer who'd claim that the very best lenses available are made by Canon or Nikon.

To me the issue isn't resolution as I never print bigger than A3 and I rarely feel the need to do heroic crops. What I'd like to see is an increase in dynamic range and image quality and I hope that the Siggy delivers both as lets face it... Canon in particular need someone somewhere to shake them (IMVHO and they may be a bit of a simplification :)) into doing something more than increasing the MP count and screen size with each new body as to me IQ is standing still.
 
The fact is that Sigma, deservedly or not, has a reputation for so-so QC. I wouldn't have believed it if it weren't for a recent bad experience myself with the 24mm f/1.8.. those gold rings or red rings are a far more predictable monitor of quality, whether better or not.

Still, that aside, if they're going after MF then they're not competing with Canon, or Nikon; they're competing with Hass, Mamiya, Pentax, P1. These companies not only provide a proven record of QC, but they have a professional support network that reaches worldwide. Do Sigma?
 
Sigma have lost the plot. There have been some wacky cameras launched over the years, and this is right up there with them.

Sigma have never been any good at making cameras. Innovative but flawed concepts that failed to deliver. The Foveon sensor has never lived up to it promise, and this one starts at a major disadvantage (considering Sigma's alleged ambitions to compete with medium format) of not even being half the size of full frame. Pixels mean diddly. And it's got a Sigma mount. And the price is pure fantasy.

They'll sell three. And lose their shirt. Again :(
 
danbroad said:
Do Sigma?
Click to expand...

Probably not but maybe they could build a brand reputation over coming years if the product is good enough over this and future models and updates. The odds and brand snobbery are against them...

I'm hoping that the camera is good and that Siggy can provide a few shocks if only to shake the likes of Canon out of their stupor and own quality and development gaffs which lets face it have been considerable and repeated in recent years over several models.
 
From LL...

"If I were asked to problem solve I would immediately announce that the camera is indeed launching at $9,700, but that this price is for a "time-limited special edition" which includes a good selection of Sigma's best lenses, primes and zooms. It could be promoted that this will allow early buyers to make maximum use of the image quality that the SD1 is capable of."

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/rationalizing_the_irrational.shtml

Yup. That seems like the answer to me but it's so sensible it'll never happen :) but I do wonder how much of a struggle it'll be to put the lens selection together to make it look like it's worth the cost.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top