The GetDPI Photography Forum

Great to see you here. Join our insightful photographic forum today and start tapping into a huge wealth of photographic knowledge. Completing our simple registration process will allow you to gain access to exclusive content, add your own topics and posts, share your work and connect with other members through your own private inbox! And don’t forget to say hi!

New Sigma DP Merrill's?

raist3d

Well-known member
No, absolutely not.

The optical formula, glass used and all are strictly the same.

The lens is bigger because Focus motor and housing are not the same. There is also wires to the AF assist beam at the front of the lens.
If putting the illuminator LED elsewhere would have saved lens diameter, I would have preferred that for the size, but I can see a better motor should help/can help a lot with the AF.

- Ricardo
 

raist3d

Well-known member
Some explanations from da Boss :

CP+2014
This is a great video, someone translated and summarized the gist of it at dpreview.

I also took notice of the color responses of the layers, so the top layer can indeed be called a "type of blue" but it does register red and green luminance too. This means that the B&W won't be as pure neutral as I thought but on the other hand, color accuracy can increase a bit.

So more than reducing wholesale the whole chroma to 1/4th, it's more like Blue = 19.6 MP but red & green ( and I am using the color terms loosely, it's not exactly RGB) are 4.9 MP.

Because the top layer is 1/2 sensitive to green and 1/4th sensitive to red (approx.) there are some guesstimates that could be done to increase the resolution, in particular of red- but not in all situations, and is tricky. But it's better than nothing.

While B&W is not as good as I had thought if this was a pure or mostly pure luminance layer, (the top one), it should still be pretty good.

And given the noise the Merrill has in red in particular, vs the old design, this design may very well capture in many situations as much detail with that color.

The top layer is effectively (take out your favorite photoshop RGB color wheel) - 255 B , 128 G, 64 R = a type of cyan.

Also the Sigma CEO mentions they improved the sensitivity by 1 ISO stop but they are still working on it. A bit of a bummer I was counting on two, but maybe they can eek out 1.25-1.5.

Also in a refreshing act of candid honesty, he mentioned that "Foveon's strong suit is not low light, and probably will never be, so if you are shooting in low light you should probably be using a better tool (camera) for that" (paraphrased). I respect and applaud his candid honesty here.

Given my experiments with the Merril at ISO 1600, 3200 and 6400 in B&W, I am still hoping that the new sensor could do decent B&W at ISO 6400 and I still wonder how much gain it would be in color when using Low Raw (true X3 capture with a super sampled "blue layer").

- Ricardo
 

raist3d

Well-known member
Battery life has emerged from the preview interview- CIPA 200, the first one apparently was CIPA 100.

I would imagine this may be more of 180 shots but much better than the first anyway. Two batteries should be reasonable to walk around an afternoon. And three for the "extra safety."

- Ricardo
 

The Ute

Well-known member
Sigma CEO was asked when he hopes to have the Quattro available to the public ?

He said, "He hopes it will be available by June".

The interviewer did not ask about pricing.
 

lordmetroid

New member
One of the big advantage with the DP series is the small size. I am a little bit skeptical to the extended body. I fear the camera will become to cumbersome compared to the DP s/x and Merrill designs.
 
Top