On 12/20/05, Bill Pearce <bs.pearce@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Am I the only one that thinks that we will never know the validity of the
> Foveon sensor, due to their inability to involve a real camera manufaturer
> in their product? I can imagine that they had a difficult time getting one
> of the "real" camera companies to even meet with them, but imagine if
> someone like Nikon had offered a camera with this sensor in the beginning,
> and sold enough and had deep enough pockets to be able to fund develpoment
> as Canon has their sensors?
I agree. The product had/has great potential but a bad business
partnership and bad marketing has made it a non-event.
On the business partnership side, very little research would have
revealed that Sigma's main business has been, and probably always will
be, 3rd-party lenses not camera bodies. Now they probably ran into
some issues with the big players already having their own sensors
(like C*n*n) or possibly existing contracts committing them to a
particular manufacturer.
So they end up in an exclusive agreement with a company who's not
known for making SLRs and who aren't particularly interested in
pushing the body since it's not their main product line.
As for marketing, well the whole argument about how the way every
other manufacturer counts megapixels is wrong doesn't work very well.
It's a situation where explaining how it's technologically better
takes too long for the average person. So instead they're saddled with
overcoming the perceived problem of a low resolution sensor (I think
the Sigma bodies topped out at 3mp). Note that I said perceived
problem, it's the same thing as Olympus' "noise problem", it doesn't
matter whether or not there's a problem with noise, what matters is
that enough people believe that there's a problem with noise.
It would be nice to see what they could do if they were working with a
manufacturer who could produce a quality body and push the technology
(such as the resolution).
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