Sigma SD14 Digital Camera Review

Sigma SD14

Digital Camera Review

Sep 29, 2006 - By Patrick Singleton
The Sigma SD14's unique sensor, the Foveon X3, is not the camera's only unique feature, but it calls attention to the camera more surely than anything else. Most sensors – CCDs, CMOSs, and NMOSs chips – put the three color sensors for each pixel side by side. The Foveon stacks them, which should eliminate any problems produced by having a lateral shift between color sensors. Sigma announced only a European price for the SD14, a substantial 1499 euros. For the hefty price, the SD14 shoots at an advertised 14 megapixels, although since the pixels are stacked, the total resolution is interpolated. The camera also has a dust protection feature, and an easily-accessible mirror-lockup control. Other aspects of the SD14, including a 2.5-inch, 150,000-pixel LCD, 5-point auto focus, and 3-frames-per-second burst speed, fall just short of some entry-level DSLRs that cost much less.
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Picture Quality / Size Options
Sigma is unusual in that the SD14 shoots RAW files at three different pixel dimensions: 2640 x 1760, 1776 x 1184, and 1296 x 864. In JPEG, it offers the same resolutions, plus a high, interpolated one at 4608 x 3072.  JPEGs can be recorded in any of the pixel dimensions with Fine, Normal, or Basic quality.
 
Picture Effects Mode
We didn’t see any weird effects on the SD14, which makes sense, given Sigma's emphasis on the camera's RAW files. It is possible to adjust saturation, sharpness, contrast and color space, however.
 
Control Options Page 7 of 10 Connectivity / Extras
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