Will Foveon sensors ever return, and does anyone outside Sigma still care?
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In a recent PetaPixel interview with Sigma's CEO, President Kazuto Yamaki, it was revealed that Sigma remains committed to the development of the Foveon sensor. This is both predictable news given Sigma's unwavering loyalty to the technology, but it's also surprising. Sigma's last camera with a Foveon sensor was the sd Quattro, equipped with a 29MP APS-C Foveon X3 sensor. This was launched in 2016, and though it was in production for the remainder of the decade alongside older Sigma cameras also using the Foveon X3, we've seen no new Foveon-equipped camera launched since.
Rumors have circulated during the intervening years that a full-frame Foveon was in development, but this has never materialized. In 2023 it was said that a production sensor might be ready in 2024, though development was difficult. Subsequently in early 2024 Yamaki also stated that "not much progress has been made". Reasons for this include the Foveon sensor being fundamentally different to conventional Bayer sensors, thereby requiring a dedicated manufacturing process. In order to minimize the production complexity, Yamaki stated that "currently, we are trying to realize a three-layer structure using as many standard processes as possible at the design stage".
Fast-forward 12 months to this latest PetaPixel interview and it seems the mythical full-frame Foveon is just as elusive as ever. Sigma is still apparently working on it, and Yamaki says "we will do our best" (regarding its development). However, he is also honest in stating that development is taking much more time than expected, and that technical issues have been encountered with prototypes (Skip to 42:53 in the YouTube interview for the Foveon details).
So after this many years of trying, why is Sigma still chasing its Foveon dream? The core reason is likely that a Foveon sensor promises, in theory, superior image quality versus a conventional Bayer sensor, due to its unique design. Where the surface area of a Bayer sensor is split into pixels that capture red, blue and green light, (25%, 25% and 50% of the sensor area, respectively), a Foveon sensor has a separate layer for each of these three color wavelengths, stacked on top of each other. Consequently, by stacking the red, green and blue pixel layers, the sensor can (theoretically) capture around 3x more light than a Bayer sensor of equivalent dimensions. This then potentially translates to significantly improved color fidelity, dynamic range, and reduced image noise.
Sounds great, but in practice Foveon sensors have proven to be more of a mixed bag. The sd Quattro was praised for its ability to resolve fine detail, with its 29MP sensor said to more comparable to 39MP Bayer sensor in this metric. However, this advantage came at the cost of image noise, which was reportedly higher than that from contemporary cameras with conventional sensors.
The theoretical benefits of Foveon are compelling, and it's easy to see why Sigma, a small player in the camera market, would want to stand out from the likes of Canon, Nikon and Sony by producing a full-frame camera with a fundamentally different (and hopefully superior) image sensor. But could such huge development costs ever be recouped by sales of a camera that would surely only ever appeal to a niche market? Given that Sigma has abandoned Foveon for its fp cameras and the new BF, it seems even less likely that we'll ever see a Foveon return. If development really is continuing, we have to assume it's on a small scale. There's surely no logical business case for ploughing significant financial investment and technical expertise into a sensor that, when judged on past performance, doesn't offer a convincing advantage over Bayer technology.
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