It's been no secret that a new Sigma were about to release a new digital SLR (and the successor to the SD10) and apart from the name and details of its strange Foveon sensor other details were a bit thin on the ground. Now at Photokina, Sigma has released more details of its SD14 and also its new DP1 high-end compact - which was more of a surprise.
Both have the same 14MP Foveon X3 sensor at their heart, but rather than the conventional sensor of other cameras, this is smaller at around 6MP but it has 3 colour overlays at each pixel for the three colours. I won't go into the technical details of this as Jonathan did this in his teaser article, but the end result is that colour and tonal reproduction is a lot more accurate.
Other than the sensor, the SD14 is very similar to other SLRs out there, in terms of the now traditional body design, the ability to shoot in both JPEG and RAW, a pentaprism viewfinder (with 98% coverage at 0.9x magnification) and a 2.5 inch LCD. Despite Sigma being part of the FourThirds lens movement the camera takes Sigma's own SA mount, which has over 40 lenses available, and the sensor has a dust protector to prevent dust from entering and sticking to it. More details are available here, and the camera will be £1099.99
The other realise is the DP1, which takes the SD14's sensor and puts it into a compact body with a design akin to other high-end compacts like the Canon G7 than Sony style compacts. It also has a 2.5 inch LCD and the ability to shoot in JPEG and RAW but the really thing that stands out most about the DP1 is its lens. The 16.6mm lens has a field of view equivalent to 28mm and is set at F4, and these are settings not usually seen on a compact. Finally it has a new image processor, “True” to help it handle the files produced by the 14MP sensor while keeping the image quality up. Details other than these are sketchy, as Sigma hasn't released them yet - but we will keep you updated when we get them.
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