12-09-2010, 11:50 PM
[quote name='Brightcolours' timestamp='1291903831' post='4904']
Maybe some find aliased, moire-ed images with very bad high ISO noise performance pleasing.
[/quote]
Don't mind my stepping in here... I have a soft spot for Foveon actually... I think their sensors are wrongly understood, especially in relation to noise. Like I explained in a discussion relating to the D7000 elsewhere, we're still in relatively dark ages of photography publications (thanks to the incompetence of sites like dpreview). Noise shouldn't be compared between sensors without considering resolved detail (call it real resolution). Foveon images do upscale easily to 3x their total MPs and are detail-wise very comparable to images from Bayer sensors of that larger resolution. Since native Foveon images pack more information than Bayer images of the same image dimensions, we shouldn't be too quick to criticise them for noise before doing that resolution normalisation I mentioned. The upscaling also makes Foveon edges look less aliased and more Bayer-like.
Don't get me wrong... I'm not saying that Foveon's just as good as Bayer sensors... just saying that the way most people compare them is not quite right.
Also about the comment on pleasing-ness was mostly directed at Sigma lenses, more than at Foveon's quirks (e.g. colour shifts, etc.) <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='
' />
GTW
Maybe some find aliased, moire-ed images with very bad high ISO noise performance pleasing.
[/quote]
Don't mind my stepping in here... I have a soft spot for Foveon actually... I think their sensors are wrongly understood, especially in relation to noise. Like I explained in a discussion relating to the D7000 elsewhere, we're still in relatively dark ages of photography publications (thanks to the incompetence of sites like dpreview). Noise shouldn't be compared between sensors without considering resolved detail (call it real resolution). Foveon images do upscale easily to 3x their total MPs and are detail-wise very comparable to images from Bayer sensors of that larger resolution. Since native Foveon images pack more information than Bayer images of the same image dimensions, we shouldn't be too quick to criticise them for noise before doing that resolution normalisation I mentioned. The upscaling also makes Foveon edges look less aliased and more Bayer-like.
Don't get me wrong... I'm not saying that Foveon's just as good as Bayer sensors... just saying that the way most people compare them is not quite right.
Also about the comment on pleasing-ness was mostly directed at Sigma lenses, more than at Foveon's quirks (e.g. colour shifts, etc.) <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='
' />GTW