B&H is not Responsible for Advertisers Lies in their Catalog
 

It's important to realize, that it is not B&H that is responsible for the
error regarding Sigma in their catalog. Sigma pays for advertising in the
B&H catalog, it's called cooperative advertising. Just as the weekly ads for
department stores are mostly paid for by the manufacturers whose products
appear in the ads. Sigma can put whatever they want in their ads; the laws
in the U.S. for false advertising are very lax, despite the cries you often
hear from people about false advertising. In Japan, I read that Sigma had to
got the Japanese government to redefine what a pixel is, in order to
advertise 10.2 megapixels. Amazing.

The important thing to remember is that the Sigma and Foveon lies about
megapixels were fairly recent. When the SD9 was introduced, both companies
were quite honest about the resolution.

Sigma used to accurately state: "...for every pixel on a Foveon(R) X3 image
sensor, there's actually a stack of three photodetectors..."

Foveon used to accurately state: "The Foveon X3 technology breakthrough is
accomplished by embedding three photodetectors in silicon at each pixel."

This was clear and unambiguous. So obviously it had to be changed!

What happened was that neither Foveon nor Sigma were prepared for the slew
of 6 megapixel, and higher, Bayer SLRs, beginning with the Canon 10D.
Suddenly they were competing against the high-end Canon 10D, and Sigma had
only 3.4 megapixels, while Canon had 6 megapixels. Worse, the Canon picture
quality was far better than that of the Sigma SLRs so they couldn't even
compete on quality. No doubt some marketing person decided that it would be
better to count sensors than pixels. Then they decided to simply try to
redefine a sensor as a pixel. Some naive people, such as GP, actually fell
for this. Sigma had to crash the price on the SD9, to under $1000, less than
a third of what they planned to sell it for.

If I were Foveon and Sigma, I wouldn't have been so hasty. They've lost all
credibility with consumers. Foveon is continuing the sensor=pixels story
with the Polaroid X530, a 1.5 megapixel point and shoot. Unless it actually
solves all the issues that have plagued Sigma, it will be a very hard sell.

Re: B&H is not Responsible for Advertisers Lies in their Catalog
 

Good post Steven. Factual and well written.

Re: B&H is not Responsible for Advertisers Lies in their Catalog
 

On 2004-06-08, Steven M. Scharf <scharf.steven@linkearth.net> wrote:
> Foveon is continuing the sensor=pixels story
> with the Polaroid X530, a 1.5 megapixel point and shoot.

One twist to the Polaroid story. The JPEG output of that
camera will be:

High: 2460 x 1836, 4.5 MP
Normal: 2048 x 1536, 3.1 MP
Low: 1420 x 1064, 1.5 MP

at least according to
http://polaroid.plawa-digital.com/in...kel=0530&tg=17

So, at least for the consumer model, they've decided to make
the camera output match the marketing megapixels.

--
Erik

Re: B&H is not Responsible for Advertisers Lies in their Catalog
 

Steven wrote:
>It's important to realize, that it is not B&H that is responsible for the
>error regarding Sigma in their catalog. Sigma pays for advertising ...

So, it looks like the Nordic Group will be reducing its position with Foveon
and Sigma. Great. I'll put a good word in with the Nordic Group CTO for you.

---Bob Gross---

Re: B&H is not Responsible for Advertisers Lies in their Catalog
 

In message <WCqxc.55702$w34.2158991@twister.tampabay.rr.com >,
"E. Magnuson" <edjpgcom@yahoo.com> wrote:

>On 2004-06-08, Steven M. Scharf <scharf.steven@linkearth.net> wrote:
>> Foveon is continuing the sensor=pixels story
>> with the Polaroid X530, a 1.5 megapixel point and shoot.
>
>One twist to the Polaroid story. The JPEG output of that
>camera will be:
>
>High: 2460 x 1836, 4.5 MP
>Normal: 2048 x 1536, 3.1 MP
>Low: 1420 x 1064, 1.5 MP
>
>at least according to
>http://polaroid.plawa-digital.com/in...kel=0530&tg=17
>
>So, at least for the consumer model, they've decided to make
>the camera output match the marketing megapixels.

How will GP/SG/OW deal with the extremely low pix-to-pixel contrast at
4.5MP?
--

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John P Sheehy <JPS@no.komm>
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