How hot is Sigma’s new DP2 Quattro camera? [Licks fingertip, mimes touching object, makes “tssss” sound with mouth.] That hot! The crazy-looking new camera not only has a whacked-out body design that looks like it’d be real comfy to hold, it has a crazy new take on Sigma’s already weird Foveon sensor inside.
First, the chip. The Foveon sensor is actually three sensors stacked on top of each other, one each for red, green and blue light. The idea is that you get accurate color data for each pixel instead of averaging out the values of adjacent pixels to work out the colors.
The twist is that the new chip has a 20MP layer on top (the blue layer, where most luminance info also lies – try chopping out the blue channel entirely if you have a noisy photo and you’ll see what I mean), and 4.9MP chips underneath for green and red. This, says Sigma, gives more room for bigger pixels and gives much better low-light performance.
Then we get to the lineup itself. There will be three separate cameras, identical but for the focal length of their fixed lenses. The DP1, DP2 and DP3 will pack 28mm-, 45mm- and 75mm-equivalent lenses, all at ƒ2.8. The sensors are big APS-C chips, and the total pixel count is 39MP.
Are these fixed-lens, crazy-sensor cameras niche? Hell yeah, but what’s wrong with that? In a world where everyone uses a cellphone camera for most of their photos, this is exactly the kind of thing an enthusiastic photographer wants to buy. Speaking of purchasing, the price and launch date have yet to be announced.
Source: DP Review
