Sunday, 30 March 2008
Sigma DP-1
« Claimed for Technorati | Main | Tip: "When Flash-based movies freeze in Firefox for Windows XP" »Everybody loves gadgets. Some just can't resist buying them, especially those phone-camera hybrids. While a lot of today's mobile phones have a built-in camera, the picture quality still leaves a lot to be desired. The lenses are vastly inferior and the image processing pipeline, if any at all to speak of, is usually quite flaky.
For now you'll still need a separate camera to get by. But do they make 'em small enough? Enter the Sigma DP-1: according to its manufacturer 'a full-spec compact digital camera with all the power of digital single lens reflex camera'.
I've always been on the lookout for a small form factor camera which could double up as an IT professional's Swiss Army knife, archiving white boards after meetings or documenting the back-of-the-rack cable mess in poorly lit data centers. As this might be it, I couldn't resist temptation and ordered me one. Stay tuned for some sample galleries!
So, thats a brief technical description of Sigma DP1 which looks very much fetching. What makes new Sigma even more unique both for professionals and common users are:
- manual focus and AF area selection (9 focusing points)
- large 2.5inch 230,000 pixels TFT color LCD monitor
- it is also possible to record 30fps movies with QVGA (320 x 240)
- as an extra you get dedicated lens hood (blocks out extraneous light) and free exclusive SIGA Photopro software for easy handling with Raw format pics adjustments and converting.
The camera had been released in march this year, and, obviously it still has quite a success on a market due to well done advertising (http://www.sigma-dp1.com/main.html) and actual characteristics of a gadget. My purpose here, frankly, wasn't about pro or contras. By following this link you'll find lots of exhaustive responses to this product: http://mydp1.wordpress.com/
Myself, i found cognitive to read complementary about image-sensor built into Sigma DP1. To lay it in the line more or less understandable (and as comprehensive as it can be at one time), i picked out basic things from Wikipedia:
The Foveon X3 sensor is a CMOS (Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor) image sensor for digital cameras, designed by Foveon, Inc. and manufactured by National Semiconductor and Dongbu Electronics. It uses an array of photosites, each of which consists of three vertically stacked photodiodes, that are organized in a two-dimensional grid. Each of the three stacked photodiodes responds to different wavelengths of light, i.e., each has a different spectral sensitivity curve. This is due to that fact that different wavelengths of light penetrate silicon to different depths. The signals from the three photodiodes are then processed, resulting in data that provides the three additive primary colors, red, green, and blue.
As of March, 2008, the Sigma SD14 digital SLR camera the Polaroid X530, and the Sigma DP-1 compact camera (released in Japan on 3 March 2008) are the only consumer cameras shipping with a Foveon X3 sensor.(!)
The Foveon X3 sensor is also used in the Hanvision HVDUO-5M and HVDUO-10M scientific and industrial cameras, though the sensors in these products, one of which is the same as in the Polaroid x530, are at end-of-life status. It was also used in the Sigma SD9 and SD10 consumer digital SLR cameras. These cameras are no longer in production.
*Comparison to Bayer filter sensors – operational differences (view the illustration):
The operation of the Foveon X3 sensor is quite different from that of the Bayer filter image sensor more commonly used in digital cameras. In the Bayer sensor, each photosite in the array consists of a single light sensor (either CMOS or CCD) that, as a result of filtration, is exposed to only one of the three primary colors, red, green, or blue. Constructing a full color image from a Bayer sensor requires demosaicing, an interpolative process in which the output pixel associated with each photosite is assigned an RGB value based on the level of red, green, and blue reported by those photosites adjacent to it. The Foveon X3 sensor creates its RGB color output for each photosite by combining the outputs of each of the stacked photodiodes at each of its photosites. This operational difference results in several significant consequences.