(SR2) First foveonlike camera by early 2012?
There is no doubt Sony is working on a “foveon-like” sensor. Every week we find new patents explaining the technology (Click here to read one patent example). The question now is: when are we going to see the first foveon camera from Sony? We just got an info from a new SonyAlphaRumors source. As usual take rumors from new sources with a grain of salt. That’s why the rumor has the value “SR2” (read the rumor classification explanation at the bottom of the post).
According to the new source there will be a new A770 announced in early 2012 (this is not the translucent A77!). It will use the same 15.2 mp Sigma SD1 foveon sensor. The test shows that it’s 24 mp to 25 mp equivalent (instead of 30 mp or 46 mp) to a conventional bayer sensor.
One more thing, the A770 does not have video recording feature.
List of useful links about the Sigma foveon sensor:
Sigma SD1 product page at BHphoto.
Sigma and Foveon discuss the forthcoming SD1 (Dpreview)
Carl Rytterfalk about the SD1
First SD1 image samples at shinzlogclips
A very interesting new interview at DSLRmagazine.
List of Sigma Foveon cameras at Amazon.
Stay tuned on SonyAlphaRumors because the next few months we will see many new REAL products from Sony. That includes Alpha and E-mount lenses but also new NEX and Alpha cameras. Don’t miss any rumors. Join us on Facebook, Twitter and follow our RSS-feed!
Reminder (SR = Sonyrumor):
SR1=probably fake rumor
SR2=rumor from unkown sources
SR3=50% chance it is correct
SR4=rumor from known sources
SR5=almost certainly correct!
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Mafiosito
3 years ago |Amazing, I’m an optimist so far Sony has made wait but has never in the past desapointed me. I will buy the a77, I will buy the a770 and put right beside my a700. And I’ll be ready for the end of the world 2012
EE
3 years ago |“It will use the same 15.2 mp Sigma SD1 foveon sensor.”
As in, Sony is buying* the sensor from Sigma? The same exact sensor used in the SD1?
Definitely NOT true.
admin
3 years ago |I also have some doubts. But it oculd be that Sigma and Soy are working together…
EE
3 years ago |Sigma would be happy to sell to Sony (or whoever); increasing production of the Foveon would be godsend for Sigma. They need that.
But I don’t see Sony striking this sort of deal. And why stick such a sensor (a technologically superior sensor?) inside an old non-translucent camera body (A7xx)? In reality, I see Sony ditching all non-SLT designs soon. How many is the A500 selling compared to its A55 brother, again?
Honestly, i’d downrank this rumor a notch.
Josef Neuburger
3 years ago |the camera not being translucent would make sense…as the foveon sensor is not able to record video (and might through stronger overheating issues by multiple layers) never be….
Sahaja
3 years ago |IMO the chances of Sony using a Sigma/Foveon sensor make this rumour about SR0 – unless Sony are planning on buying Foveon (the company) from Sigma.
Ryan
3 years ago |Best part of this rumor? Optical View Finder. Finally an upgrade path for A700 users. A new camera with two control dials. A camera for photographers who actually use Manual mode. And an admission that the megapixel race is dumb?
Give me the 12mp sensor from the Nikon D700/D3s and it’s usable iso12500.
Dulaney Ward
3 years ago |Unfortunately, the sensor for the D 700 / D3s is a full-frame sensor.
Olf
3 years ago |Why would Sony patent its own technology and in the same time use the technology of someone else ?
EE
3 years ago |It is a contradiction. But then I reasoned, theoretically: if Sony deemed the Foveon sensor important enough to buy from Sigma in the short term, then they most likely deem it important enough to R&D their own version for the long term.
But even that logic is stretching it, I think.
Cheerioq
3 years ago |Has to be false. Sony, one of the key sensor makers for cameras, would not buy a sensor from a competitor. That would be a huge marketing and business failure. Second, there’s too many problems related to the Foveon design. See for example here: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1018&message=24789770
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The largest benefits (less buffer and storage required) have diminished greatly the past years, not in the least thanks to Moore’s law.
john
3 years ago |Moore’s law ends 2015
excluding developments in nanotech
Cheerioq
3 years ago |I doubt it will before 2018. Even if true, one can wonder if the Sigma Foveon design is still around by then.
SonyA77
3 years ago |Sony are in the business of making sensors, they will not use Sigma.
john
3 years ago |Why not make the rumor really interesting and make it the A950 32MP foveon instead.
Josef Neuburger
3 years ago |because it should sound at least to some point realistic….foveon technology has stronger vignetting issues than normal sensors – a reason why sigma cameras had a crop factor of 1.7 up to now….the sensor would definitely not work in fullframe…..yet….
john
3 years ago |my point is the rumor IS unrealistic
Almond
3 years ago |A770 without video?
This rumor is more fake than my grandmother’s teeth.
Don’t count on any new cameras getting released without video, especially from Sony.
Myst
3 years ago |Sigma does not OWN the foveon design…
The foveon design does not allow high ISO values
Sony patented a sensors that is part foveon part bayer maybe they will use that one, although that one also has minor issues.
mike_2008
3 years ago |Utter rubbish. After all this effort to produce the SLT, and also the decision to drop OVF DSLR at the 7 level why re-introduce an OVF-based system with no video? Makes zero sense.
I can see sensor development moving in different ways in the future, once the limits have been met in horizontal the obvious remaining dimension is vertical (depth). However, simply publishing a patent does not mean that this is imminent.
The future success of sony’s large sensor camera systems depends on two things: global shutter and on-sensor PDAF. These advances would allow true integration between nex and dslt systems.
LEdgars
3 years ago |Rumour about absence of video could be because Sigmas Foveon is and will be without video.
I would rather like camera with prism (mirrors) and 3 sensor based system. Each sensor then could be with 12Mpix only red, or blue, or green sensitive pixels. Overall stacking together it would be low noise, high DR, true RGB 36Mpix image.
ChenAlan
3 years ago |I think to get the proper mix of colors, it should be only a 12 mpx sensor because each is only 12 mpx.
Sure you have an effective 36 million color sensors but only 12 million do red, 12 million do blue, and 12 million to green. Each color pixel on the image would need to draw info from each of the 3 color sensors – thus 12 mpx.
Sky_walker
3 years ago |You know what was my first thought when I seen this rumor? That the first person telling people that the OVF camera rumor is rubbish will be the famous mike_2008, I open the comments and… tadam!
You made my day man!!!
ChenAlan
3 years ago |Hahaha, win XD
Sahaja
3 years ago |On-sensor PDAF would pretty well eliminate the usefulness of SLT cameras and leave them orphaned. If there were a NEX with on-sensor PDAF and an EVF as good or better, other than lens availability, what is the advantage of SLT?
b shaw
3 years ago |@Sahaja
How would you split the beam with on-sensor PDAF without a semi-transparent mirror or a semi-transparent section of a mirror?
Sahaja
3 years ago |@b shaw
With the phase detection on the main sensor you don’t need to split the beam – it uses dedicated masked pairs of pixels. The micro lens of one of each pair is masked to receive light from one side of the lens and the other is masked to receive light from the other – this gives two different images neccesary for phase detection without using a seperate beam splitter.
The Fuji FX300 EXR compact camera has an implementation of this already.
Details: http://www.dpreview.com/news/1008/10080505fujifilmpd.asp
Now there was also that earlier story (posted here on Oct 1) about Fuji manufacturing some sensors for Sony:
http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/fujitsu-to-manufacture-cmos-sensors-for-sony-image-sensors-world/
(There has also been speculation around for years about some kind of hybrid Foveon / Fuji Super CCD chip being developed.)
Who knows. Maybe Sony and Fuji are sharing technology on a new sensor?
ZeevK
3 years ago |I beleive that Sony’s future sensor will be Foveon-like, but they will be mostly targeting the FF segment. Only Sony has the resources to target both the pixel-level issues (HIGH ISO) and large format manufacturing challange at same time. It looks like the 2012 will be Sony’s FF triumph year, following the big splash of their APS-C products during the 2011.
AVESTA
3 years ago |Let’s just go back to CCD’s, I like those better!
Daemonius
3 years ago |High ISO aside, I can agree with that.
Igorek7
3 years ago |Video is the most important topic for Sony in digital imaging. I have serious doubts they would release any digital camera that doesn’t support video (and many fps continuous shooting). In fact, they sacrificed many features in their latest products just to support it.
Many companies are working on the foveon-like sensors beside Sigma: Panasonic, Nikon and FujiFilm (and now Sony?). Only time will tell us if we will be able to see the global migration from the Bayer-type sensor design to a multilayer one.
Sahaja
3 years ago |As you say there many companies working on foveon-like sensors. If there is real progress now being made on those designs, Sony as the largest manufacturer of camera sensors obviously can’t afford to be left behind. Sigma on the other hand must be worried about being overtaken by larger competitors who can throw far more money into R&D than they can.
In those circumstances, it *might* make some sense for Sigma to sell Foveon to a company like Sony before they are overtaken – but that would only happen if Sony felt buying Foveon from Sigma for the IP and experience would put them a real step ahead of others working on Foveon like designs.
b shaw
3 years ago |@Sahaja
I agree with you. Also, Sigma has been privately held by it’s founder, Michihiro Yamaki, for 50+ years. That type of family business has interesting dynamics, and it *could be* that *perhaps* Mr. Yamaki is willing to sell the sensor development part of his business.
I could easily imagine a scenario where Mr. Yamaki is willing to sell Foveon so that his company can focus on lenses and perhaps their small offering of cameras.
If he were willing to sell Foveon, Sony would be a very good prospective buyer. Moreover, Foveon was a fairly recent purchase for Sigma – Nov 08. So, Sigma would return to outsourcing sensor development for it’s cameras
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On a separate note, if a Foveon acquisition was an potential option for Sony, Sony’s own effort to develop multi-layer based sensors would help to devalue Foveon and allow Sony to get a better deal. Wow. If that were the play, I’d have to tip my hat to Sony.
Now that I think about it, I see a lot of upside to the Foveon technology if Sony could add it’s IC/Sensor production expertise to Foveon’s engineering.
That is, Foveon hasn’t been able to improve it’s original sensor design until fairly recently and I’m under the impression that they’ve always struggled with various yield issues. Sony happens to be pretty darn good in IC/Sensor production and could probably address the issues that have previously hampered Foveon. … hmmm….
Sahaja
3 years ago |If Sigma didn’t just sell thier Foveon tech, but also got some percentage of the future profits, it might be even turn out more lucrative for them – and it could look like a much safer bet financially than continuing development on their own.
I’m sure camera sensor manufacturers are in a race to find a way dominate the market for those chips the way Intel has done for personal computer CPUs. To do this someone will have to come up with a superior design others cannot replicate easily. One can easily imagine some Byzantine cross ownership and technology sharing deals between Japanese companies in order to accomplish such a goal. Anyway fun to speculate.
Carl
3 years ago |Sony is the largest manufacturer of DSLR size sensors. They’d never buy one from a third party, especially not a small and unreliable one like Foveon.
Supposedly Minolta was working on a Foveon based camera in the early 00s before switching to the 6MP Sony sensor. Too bad that was never released.
daniel
3 years ago |are they buying the sensor or the sensor technology?
if it’s the later, I could see that being true, otherwise I can’t make sense of this.
kurth
3 years ago |whoa ….this is stretching my credulity
b shaw
3 years ago |Andrea,
You probably want to knock this down to SR1.
admin
3 years ago |yeah I was in trouble if the rumor should be SR1 or SR2. Anyway guys. SR5 rumors are coming soon
Emopunk
3 years ago |C’mon Andrea, post some SR5 about upcoming A-mount lenses. This rumor really looks far from true. Of course they’re not going to do A77/EVF + A770/OVF/Foveon. This is sci-fi!!
HaHD
3 years ago |the only good thing about Foveon is the details. So what?
Color of Sony Sensors are much better than Sigma’s sensors.
To match Sony’s colors, sigma would have a lot of things to work.
So Foveon like, why bother in the near future?
Alfons
3 years ago |A770 sounds like best camera ever!
Crazy
3 years ago |Wow I want
Max
2 years ago |Interesting article, I can’t wait to see what they’ll come out with.