Sigma acquires Feveon, maker of the X3 image sensor

Foveon (developer of the X3 image sensor for digital cameras) has just announced that they have been acquired by Sigma, the Tokyo-based camera and lens company. According to the press release, Foveon -- whose image sensors are already being used in Sigma's entire digital camera line -- will remain in San Jose, continuing to "evolve and improve the X3 sensor technology." Congratulations, you crazy kids! And best of luck to you. We mean it.

[Francesco @ Nov 11th 2008 12:03PM]

Don't you mean "Foveon" Joe? I've never heard of "Feveon".

[Patrick @ Nov 11th 2008 12:18PM]

Yes, but he did write Foveon in the description. woops. I guess he has Foveon fever. :D

[Kiran Nesarajah @ Nov 11th 2008 12:16PM]

FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVEEEEEEEEEEEEON !! :)

[Mark Galvan @ Nov 11th 2008 12:19PM]

How about some proof reading today?

[Craig @ Nov 11th 2008 1:31PM]

You can have that with a side-order of shut the fuck up.

;-)

[Liam @ Nov 11th 2008 1:04PM]

I've always liked the idea of this tech, maybe once people realize packing more pixels into CCD's and CMOS sensors is silly, this will be seized upon as the new way to improve on image quality. It should, in theory, gather light better, be sharper per-pixel, and reproduce colour more accurately. It's not really up to 'normal' dSLR sensors yet, but seeing as in the last few years there don't seem to have been any major developments, I guess it could be time for Sigma to take the initiative?

[rcappo @ Nov 11th 2008 2:03PM]

I like their sensor too, but they need to work on getting better lens or a small 4/3rds type removable lens. Also, they need to work on getting it to take better night-time pictures, not that my digital camera is much better though.

[Bad Beaver @ Nov 11th 2008 1:35PM]

Well, nice. However, unless anyone by chance also dropped a hint on when to expect the DP2, it is not really that interesting.

[Foof @ Nov 11th 2008 2:12PM]

So much for that. Best of luck to Sigma and Foveon, but it sounds like this officially ends the (longshot) bid for a truly revolutionary sensor technology to propagate beyond a single camera manufacturer.

[xconan @ Nov 11th 2008 2:27PM]

It's probably a lack of marketing on Foveon's end to sell it to other manufacturers. i.e. Sony's ccd is also used by other camera manufacturers like Nikon, Ricoh, etc. If Sigma had some good marketing foveon sensors can probably be found in other manufacturers.

[Foof @ Nov 11th 2008 2:37PM]

I think it has more to do with the sensors and manufacturing than any lack of marketing. I remember back in the day, there was talk that Foveon was discussing with Nikon and some other large manufacturers. But as good as the sensor was in theory, it had problems with speed, scalability, low-light sensitivity and dynamic range compared to existing Bayer-pattern sensors. The processing required to extract the light data from a stacked sensor was significantly more intensive, and large camera manufacturers also had to consider the risks of going with a startup, as opposed to a large, stable manufacturer such as Sony, which has proven capacity and a fleshed-out future product pipeline. Foveon really never got off the ground, and couldn't keep up with the pace of bayer-pattern development, which was able to overcome the technical advantage of the X3 with cheaper brute force methods (more pixels to offset the resolution advantage).

[Salsa Shark @ Nov 11th 2008 2:37PM]

Yeah, because Sigma doesn't manufacture any products for other camera manufacturers.

Well, except for Canon, Nikon, etc.

Dumbass.

[Foof @ Nov 11th 2008 2:50PM]

Salsa Shark,

Setting aside your flippant remark, I don't think you're really thought through what you are saying.

I have several Sigma lenses for my Nikon, and they're great, affordable products. But a sensor is not an end-buyer-purchased add-on device like a lens, it's a low-level systems component that a camera maker would need to contract for and build into their cameras. Does Nikon or Canon pay for or promote, or do they merely tolerate (perhaps through expiration of patents on E- and F-mount IP) 3rd party lenses sold by Sigma, Tokina and Tamron and purchased by their customers? Can you tell me if Nikon or Canon have purchased and used any Sigma ICs or designs in any of their cameras in the past?

[Raj @ Nov 11th 2008 2:36PM]

Hope this means a really capable Sigma compact successor to the DP1 to compete with micro 4/3rds. Micro 4/3rds was supposed to be less expensive, but the Lumix G1 is $800 (and no video). Hope Sigma can come up with something better.

[Plothole @ Nov 12th 2008 2:15AM]

I wouldn't count the micro-four-thirds system out yet. The Panasonic G1 is more of a "premium" body really. Essentially a miniaturized version of the L10, which itself is a mid-range model as far as 4:3 SLRs are concerned. Olympus by contrast would actually appear to be aiming for the high end compact market with its own prototype. It would be a shock if this less powerful model were inevitably priced similar to the G1.

[Ian @ Nov 11th 2008 6:47PM]

I've always found the Foveon sensor a bit weird, and felt the sensor's development was always limited by Foveon themselves, and their limited resources. Each pixel gets 3 times more light than the standard pixel on the typical Bayer sensor (assuming they were the same physical size), and yet its high ISO performance is pathetic. Pretty crazy, really. They also didn't manage to increase the number of pixels to something like 8 MP (or 24 MP (8 x 3), by their definition), which would put them on par with 12 MP DSLR bayer sensors because they don't need to use surrounding pixels to interpolate. Or I guess you could think about it the other way around, that a typical 12 MP sensor only gives around 8 MP of actual detail. Either way, Foveon can only match 8 MP camera sensors right now, and that hurt them a lot.

[Mikeo @ Nov 11th 2008 7:21PM]

Err... somebody did a comparison to a FULL FRAME Canon EOS 5D (Mark I then), which was rather the pinnacle of extremely expensive digital cameras. The SD14 lost a little in monochrome resolution, but convincingly beat it in terms of capturing subtlety and resolving *color* details.

I'm pretty convinced the X3 sensor's shortcomings are in 1) The sensor size (still slightly smaller than your average camera) 2) No real in-camera noise processing. Well, everything you see after ISO800 on normal cameras have been processed, especially for the Nikons and Canons. (Sony just leaves it there and gets called noisy as well)

1 is more of a minor niggle, 2 is supposedly being helped out in the DP2 and SD15 cameras with a new image processor.

But I disgress. Most people not doing sports or action tracking would hardly touch 1600 and above. Plus, it's not like normal consumer cams still rock at 1600. I've seen ISO1600 images from the 350/400D and they were frankly, awful.

[Foof @ Nov 12th 2008 1:26AM]

Actually, at best (pure white light), each Foveon pixel *in theory, at 100% efficiency* can get only the same amount of light as a bayer pattern pixel, it just splits it three ways through each layer. With any other color of light, you have varying degrees of light loss through leakage and imperfect efficiency in each layer, meaning that a Foveon pixel receives less light than a bayer pattern pixel, which gets 100% of the photons hitting it for any given dyed surface. So a red bayer pixel gets close to 100% of the red hitting it because nothing else obstructs it. However, if a Foveon pixel is designed with red at the lowest level, it may lose 5% through the green layer and 5% through the blue layer, giving it only 90% of the red light striking the top surface of the sensor.

This correlates with the decreased high-ISO performance from the X3 sensor, which is too bad. It's still a good idea, but as mentioned, they were too small to keep up with the R&D and manufacturing resources of Sony or Canon.