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Dave Martindale wrote:

> Were they sharpened appropriately? The Sigma raw converter includes
> rather strong sharpening by default (you have to set sharpness to "-1"
> to turn this off) so most Sigma images you see will be strongly
> sharpened even if the text says they are straight out of the raw
> converter.

How do you know this? This is an honest question. I'd like to hear
your rationale for this or read the source of this information.

"Frank Weston" <> wrote in message
news:9q6dnSBJpclJfXCiRVn-...
> Dave,
>
> I'm comparing end results, attained by whatever means the photographer
> thought best. I really don't care what the means were....I'm interested
in
> the image quality as presented, not the process required to attain it. I
> looked at a lot of images, and I'm sure all had been manipulated in some
way
> to fit or look better, but that makes no difference. Most photographers
> are going to try to present their work in the best way possible. So, in
> essence, by looking at a lot of images, all from the same viewpoint of my
> monitor, I'm comparing the best to the best for one given set of
> circumstances. That seems a pretty fair comparison, far better than the
> incomplete, restricted sample comparisons done by most photo review sites.
> And, by looking at a lot of work by a lot of photographers, any bias on
the
> part of one particular reviewer is pretty much eliminated.

That seems reasonable to me since I do the same thing. Also, shots of
resolution charts and color charts are important but do not tell the whole
story. A large sample of the real work of lots of photographers is a
valuable resource, but time consuming. The test shots are justified on this
basis and that's sensible.

> Please look at some photos...lots of them and come back and tell me what
you
> think. I'm really curious to get a feel for the general perception of an
> unbiased group of viewers...if there is such a thing.

Absolute non-bias is not possible. However, some are better at it than
others. There are lots of great photos on the web and they are the progeny
of a wide range of equipment and users. If you are interested, some of my
stuff is at
http://home.comcast.net/~charlesschu...tos.html-.html

I, too, find some of the SD9 photos to be quite nice! However, my current
camera is a 300D.

Frank Weston wrote:

[snip]

> Sigma SD9 images in general showed better resolution and depth of color, and
> appeared more vibrant to me than either Canon 10D or Nikon D100 images.
> This could be the camera, or it could be that the level of skill of the
> photographers who chose the SD9 was on average higher than those who chose
> otherwise.

[snip]

I'm sure you've looked at the dpreview.com review. I've looked at
the sample pics here:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sigmasd9/page20.asp

and these are my opinions:

The first SD9 enlargement clearly shows the shingles on the roof.
The D60 doesn't.

In the second enlargement, I can more easily detect the panes in the
windows in the SD9 image.

The third and fourth are pretty close, but again, the stones in the
building and the panes in the windows are more easily discernible in
the SD9 images.

I can't really read much in either of the fifth enlargement except
for "CHARTERS LTD."

The sixth enlargement is kind of a kicker, I think, since the SD9
image shows the "pickets" (or "tines," maybe) in the red fringe on
the riverboat. The D60 image is just a blur.

The images are pretty close in the seventh enlargement, but I think
the SD9 is slightly better since it looks to me like there's a bulb
in more of those sockets.

The eighth and ninth enlargements are pretty close, but the SD9
images are slightly sharper.

The D60 is clearly better in the tenth enlargement, since the gold
color is blown out in the SD9 image.

The eleventh and twelfth enlargements are close, I'd say.

In the images I've looked at on the web, including George's, the
detail of some of the SD9 images is remarkable -- the resolution of
eyelashes, for example. The SD10 supposedly fixes the color problems
some SD9 images have.

Confession: I shoot a 3 meg Epson PhotoPC 3100Z, which I like well
enough. I also have a Nikon FM from circa 1983, a great camera,
though I haven't used it in a couple of years.

But I am interested in a DSLR. I want to see what is announced in
February at PMA, I think it's called. Canon has said they're going
to release 20 new digital cameras this year. I'd like to see Sigma
announce something, too, maybe an 18 meg sensor or something. And as
long as I'm wishing, I'd like to see another manufacturer
(Konica-Minolta?) adopt the Foveon sensor, though I doubt it would
be Konica-Minolta. I'd also like to be surprised by Nikon, please,
but they seem pretty conservative and move a bit slowly.

"Frank Weston" <> writes:

>I'm comparing end results, attained by whatever means the photographer
>thought best. I really don't care what the means were....I'm interested in
>the image quality as presented, not the process required to attain it.

Ok. Just avoid the review sites like dpreview, where the images are
deliberately *not* shown at their best, rather the way they come out of
the camera in the name of honest reporting.

>Please look at some photos...lots of them and come back and tell me what you
>think. I'm really curious to get a feel for the general perception of an
>unbiased group of viewers...if there is such a thing.

I doubt if you'd consider me unbiased, since I'm one of the people
pointing out George's falsehoods. But my opinion is that the SD9 looks
great for some images, and bad for some others, depending greatly on the
subject matter.

For myself, I'd prefer a camera that behaved more uniformly with all
subjects. It's my judgement that shooting with a 6 MP Bayer camera and
downsampling to 3 MP with a bit of sharpening will give consistently
good results regardless of subject matter, while the SD9 will be hit or
miss.

Dave

Edward Seabass <> writes:

>> Were they sharpened appropriately? The Sigma raw converter includes
>> rather strong sharpening by default (you have to set sharpness to "-1"
>> to turn this off) so most Sigma images you see will be strongly
>> sharpened even if the text says they are straight out of the raw
>> converter.

>How do you know this? This is an honest question. I'd like to hear
>your rationale for this or read the source of this information.

Check back in this newsgroup 3 weeks or a month. There was someone who
started out with a piece of software that processes RAW data from
digital cameras under Linux, including the Sigma cameras. By disabling
most of the Sigma-specific processing, he showed some examples of what
the raw "RGB" data from the SD9 really looks like. Comparison with
Sigma's SPP software output showed that even "sharpening 0" did a
significant amount of sharpening.

Someone else further back posted that you had to set the sharpening to
-1 to actually get no sharpening. All of this is in the archives of the
group that can be found at Google groups.

Dave

"George Preddy" <> wrote in message
news:bsklqb$j2s$...
>
> "Frank Weston" <> wrote in message
> news:Usudnb8e_YLcfHCiRVn-...
> > George. You really are an idiot, and you're doing neither yourself nor
> your
> > cause any good by replying to this thread.
>
> I couldn't care less what you buy, but its a good discusion for others who
> actaully want good information.
>
Hey all,

I never posted here before, but I decided after I got word of a George
Preddy in here, I would try to warn you.

George Preddy used to post OUTLANDISH claims about his super mega Amiga
computer in comp.sys.amiga.advocacy as SG ... I mean, he used to say his
15 year old Amiga 1000 was faster than server-level dual CPU intel machines.
Just outrageous.

Well, he is known to us in comp.sys.amiga.advocacy group as a complete
lunatic with no grasp of reality. He also claimed to be a US Air Force
pilot (however, he posted so much fn crap in there, and spent so much time
on it, you wonder how he ever even had a job, let alone a demanding military
career) ...

Anyhow, you may find a Google groups search in comp.sys.amiga.advocacy for
SG as basis for his insanity. Also there was a mock interview with him,
which is very funny but also rings fairly true, here:

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=SG....rr.com&rnum=1

MY advice: ignore the guy. He is insane.

Thanks
RaYzor
>

Edward Seabass <> writes:

>I'm sure you've looked at the dpreview.com review. I've looked at
>the sample pics here:
>http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sigmasd9/page20.asp
>and these are my opinions:

>The first SD9 enlargement clearly shows the shingles on the roof.
>The D60 doesn't.

True. But note the jagged line at the left edge of the grey roof area.
I'll bet that this is really a smooth junction, as the D60 shows.

>In the second enlargement, I can more easily detect the panes in the
>windows in the SD9 image.

Ok. But look at the horizontal ledge that's just below the sill of the
main window in the image. On the D60, it looks like a single thin stone
feature that's slightly tilted with respect to the sensor horizontal. On
the SD9, it looks like two separate horizontal pieces with a gap in
between. It's obvious to me that the SD9 rendition is just wrong.

>The third and fourth are pretty close, but again, the stones in the
>building and the panes in the windows are more easily discernible in
>the SD9 images.

>I can't really read much in either of the fifth enlargement except
>for "CHARTERS LTD."

Looks like the real image detail is about the same, but the Sigma has
more contrast (probably due to greater sharpening).

>The sixth enlargement is kind of a kicker, I think, since the SD9
>image shows the "pickets" (or "tines," maybe) in the red fringe on
>the riverboat. The D60 image is just a blur.

But it shows the "tines" being irregularly spaced, with some apparently
missing. Do you think this is what is really present on the riverboat?
I think this is the same effect the Sigma shows in some other images
that include rulers, where we see only 8 or 9 mm marks per cm. The SD9
has no anti-aliasing filter and a rather small pixel fill factor, so
whether it shows a small feature or not depends on the luck of how the
feature aligns with a pixel centre.

In comparison, the D60 shows a pretty uniform blur. This is the *right*
thing for a camera to do with detail that is too small to be rendered
accurately. At least, that's the right thing according to standard
signal processing theory. For artistic photography, you can choose
one or the other.

>The images are pretty close in the seventh enlargement, but I think
>the SD9 is slightly better since it looks to me like there's a bulb
>in more of those sockets.

Yes, but the bulb may be displaced left or right from the centre of the
socket!

>The eighth and ninth enlargements are pretty close, but the SD9
>images are slightly sharper.
>The D60 is clearly better in the tenth enlargement, since the gold
>color is blown out in the SD9 image.
>The eleventh and twelfth enlargements are close, I'd say.

Yes.

>In the images I've looked at on the web, including George's, the
>detail of some of the SD9 images is remarkable -- the resolution of
>eyelashes, for example. The SD10 supposedly fixes the color problems
>some SD9 images have.

The missing anti-aliasing filter in the SD9 does give images that appear
sharper than Bayer when comparing both at their "native" resolution.
But sometimes the detail is wrong - the riverboat "tines" are an example
of this. The SD10's microlenses also improve the anti-aliasing to some
extent, so the SD10 rendering of the same scene will look more like the
D60, which is good. The SD10 has better sensitivity too, but I don't
recall reading anything about improved colour.

Dave

"Edward Seabass" <> wrote in message
news:...
>
> Dave Martindale wrote:
>
> > Were they sharpened appropriately? The Sigma raw converter includes
> > rather strong sharpening by default (you have to set sharpness to "-1"
> > to turn this off) so most Sigma images you see will be strongly
> > sharpened even if the text says they are straight out of the raw
> > converter.
>
> How do you know this? This is an honest question. I'd like to hear
> your rationale for this or read the source of this information.

They are confusing RAW conversion with post processing. RAW converision is
pre-processing. All cameras sharpen images (some very, very heavily) during
the conversion from RAW CCD/CMOS data to in-camera JPEG/TIF. The SD9/10 are
unique in that they have no in-camera sharpness setting, since all of their
images are RAW only.

Sigma Photo Pro, the SD9/10 RAW conversion software, gives you complete
control over this process (unlike most cameras) and lets you sharpen, or
blur, the RAW data during conversion to JPEG/TIF to any degree you wish.
Think of it as the SD9/10's in-camera sharpness setting.

Caution on the dpreview SD9 results: they were all shot with a firmware and
SPP version that was current when the SD9 was announced. Both were updated
very quickly upon public availability, then again to an even greater degree
recently. Essentially, the whole review is based on beta stuff for all
intents and purposes, and yes, there really is a huge difference.

For example, from page 9...
http://img.dpreview.com/reviews/Sigm...t/IMG01299.jpg

Now reality...
http://www.pbase.com/image/24182797/original.jpg

Phil has been asked to redo the entire review many times based on many
changes to the camera, and many outright errors. Another example, the
resolution tests (the crop series) you sited, the ones where the SD9 heavily
outresolves the Canon 6MP, were taken with the SD9 intentionally moved
farther away, because Phil thought crop factor was a magnifier. Its not.

There are lots of other omissions and mistakes, some are very major, and all
substantially handicap the SD9 (hmmmm, coincidence?). If you'd like to know
them all, just ask.


"Edward Seabass" <> wrote in message
news:...
>
> Frank Weston wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> > Sigma SD9 images in general showed better resolution and depth of color,
and
> > appeared more vibrant to me than either Canon 10D or Nikon D100 images.
> > This could be the camera, or it could be that the level of skill of the
> > photographers who chose the SD9 was on average higher than those who
chose
> > otherwise.
>
> [snip]
>
> I'm sure you've looked at the dpreview.com review. I've looked at
> the sample pics here:
>
> http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sigmasd9/page20.asp
>
> and these are my opinions:
>
> The first SD9 enlargement clearly shows the shingles on the roof.
> The D60 doesn't.
>
> In the second enlargement, I can more easily detect the panes in the
> windows in the SD9 image.
>
> The third and fourth are pretty close, but again, the stones in the
> building and the panes in the windows are more easily discernible in
> the SD9 images.
>
> I can't really read much in either of the fifth enlargement except
> for "CHARTERS LTD."
>
> The sixth enlargement is kind of a kicker, I think, since the SD9
> image shows the "pickets" (or "tines," maybe) in the red fringe on
> the riverboat. The D60 image is just a blur.
>
> The images are pretty close in the seventh enlargement, but I think
> the SD9 is slightly better since it looks to me like there's a bulb
> in more of those sockets.
>
> The eighth and ninth enlargements are pretty close, but the SD9
> images are slightly sharper.
>
> The D60 is clearly better in the tenth enlargement, since the gold
> color is blown out in the SD9 image.
>
> The eleventh and twelfth enlargements are close, I'd say.
>
> In the images I've looked at on the web, including George's, the
> detail of some of the SD9 images is remarkable -- the resolution of
> eyelashes, for example. The SD10 supposedly fixes the color problems
> some SD9 images have.
>
> Confession: I shoot a 3 meg Epson PhotoPC 3100Z, which I like well
> enough. I also have a Nikon FM from circa 1983, a great camera,
> though I haven't used it in a couple of years.
>
> But I am interested in a DSLR. I want to see what is announced in
> February at PMA, I think it's called. Canon has said they're going
> to release 20 new digital cameras this year. I'd like to see Sigma
> announce something, too, maybe an 18 meg sensor or something. And as
> long as I'm wishing, I'd like to see another manufacturer
> (Konica-Minolta?) adopt the Foveon sensor, though I doubt it would
> be Konica-Minolta. I'd also like to be surprised by Nikon, please,
> but they seem pretty conservative and move a bit slowly.
>
>

"Dave Martindale" <> wrote in message
news:bsleuk$m78$...
> Edward Seabass <> writes:

> The missing anti-aliasing filter in the SD9 does give images that appear
> sharper

Not talking about sharpness, but missing optical detail on Canon images.
The best example is the construction netting around the very top of the roof
of the tall building in the background (on the right). This is far enough
away that Phil's intentioinal handicapping of the SD9 by moving it farther
away from the scene has less of an effect...

http://img.dpreview.com/reviews/Sigm...9_IMG01107.jpg
http://img.dpreview.com/reviews/Sigm...W_5303_RT8.jpg

The D60 is blind as bat to the vertical netting detail, it only see the much
fatter sort of horizontal elements. As are all other DSLRs Phil has tested,
btw, including the S2 Pro in "12MP" mode.

> than Bayer when comparing both at their "native" resolution.
> But sometimes the detail is wrong - the riverboat "tines" are an example

The roof tines show the SD9 has at least double the optical resolution.
Much like http://www.outbackphoto.com/artofraw/raw_05/essay.html

> of this. The SD10's microlenses also improve the anti-aliasing to some
> extent, so the SD10 rendering of the same scene will look more like the
> D60, which is good. The SD10 has better sensitivity too, but I don't
> recall reading anything about improved colour.

Color was completely reworked in the second gen Foveon chip, in the SD10.