Davide Caniatti

There are more than a few things in common between Foveon photographers and insecure males, but they also share a fundamental question: do sizes matter? A few days ago, I had the opportunity to upgrade: I added the H model to my Sigma SD Quattro. The difference is simple: the H model has an Aps-h sensor with a 1.3 crop factor. The original Quattro features a slightly less than the regular Aps-c sensor, with a crop factor of around 1.

In recent days I had the opportunity to participate in a photographic trip in a wood. The theme was “the place of ancestral fears”, and in the absence of better ideas I decided to experiment with the Sigma SD Quattro without an IR-cut filter, but with a 720nm filter mounted on the lens. The results are, in my opinion, good on a technical level and attributable to the film with which they show remarkable similarities.

Foveon is undoubtedly a fascinating technology. In an era characterized by the invasion of camera AI and the return to film, this technology seems capable of combining the best of digital and analog. It retains the authenticity of analog, while from digital it inherits the low environmental and economic costs of management. But, what is Foveon? Conceived in 1997 with the contribution of the Italian genius of Federico Faggin(former inventor of the modern microprocessor and touchscreen!

“If you shoot RAW you get better photos” this is one of the mantras that the novice photographer hears himself repeated over and over. In themselves, RAWs are not better pictures, because… they are not pictures! They are a series of information from which a photo can be extracted, that final JPEG that we will display on the screen or print. This first point, apparently trivial, brings with it a not insignificant consequence.

Much has been written about Foveon sensors, and a lot will be on this blog too. In this short review I do not want to talk about the (extraordinary!) image quality of this camera, but to illustrate how it looks in the hands. Right from the start, it is almost impossible to place the Sigma Quattro in the traditional categories in which we are used to dividing cameras. We can say that it is mirrorless, as the machine does not have a mirror and therefore an optical viewfinder.