Sigma SD1 Crams 46 Million Pixels onto Crop-Frame Chip

Sigma’s new flagship SD1 SLR stands out from the flood of camera announcements at the Photokina show. Why? It is a monster, a crop-sensor camera with 46 megapixels crammed onto its imaging chip.

The trick here is that the sensor uses Sigma’s Foveon tech. This stacks red, green and blue-sensitive pixels on top of each other, allowing accurate color-capture at each pixel-site. Compare this with conventional sensors which pull color information from adjoining pixels and averaging it to work out the actual colors. Sigma’s method should give better color accuracy and sharper images.

Because of this stacking, though, Sigma’s pixel-counts are effectively one third of the claimed figure if you count actual dots on the photos. In the past, this has made Sigma’s specs look rather pathetic, with the claimed 15MP of its SD15 coming closer to 5MP. With this new 46MP behemoth Sigma is saying a big “screw you” to everyone else. Even 15MP sensor is great these days.

Elsewhere, the specs are fairly pedestrian. There are just 11 autofocus points and the 3-inch LCD has only 460,000 dots compared the the 900,000 found in any other flagship camera (including compacts). This is a pre-release, so many of the numbers are not yet available. Just what will the maximum ISO be, for example, or the price?

I’m pretty excited about getting my hands on one, though. If this thing has the ISO part licked, then those could be some sweet, sweet images it pumps out.

SD1 product page [Sigma. Warning: Flash]

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