Carl Rytterfalk Fotografi

Mike Chaney is the author of Qimage and Profile Prism. He’s also a long time Canon 5D owner and in March he also became a Sigma SD14 owner. Owning both a 12.4MP bayern camera and a 4.6 three layer camera he has been able to do some in-depth comparison tests. And here is now his final take, the whole review is there as well. A bit technical but still very very interesting.

http://www.ddisoftware.com/sd14-5d/#finaltake

Final thoughs on the Sigma that I agree with:

Pros:

• Unrivaled sharpness/detail at the pixel level
• Less surprises caused by inconsistent resolving power for different colors
• Very accurate color IF you take the time to get a good WB
• Very low noise under most shooting conditions
• Final photos are smaller in size (easier to work with/transfer) yet contain more real data than cameras boasting 2x the final resolution

Cons:

• Slow buffering may impede quick shooters
• AF a little pickier than most: takes more practice to get good focus on the first try
• Battery life not phenomenal [Carl: about 3-400 shots]
• Auto WB sometimes way off, although easily fixed if shooting raw
• Certain colors have a slight hue shift, particularly red and purple: hopefully SPP software can improve this in the future [Carl: This is not the case for Adobe Lightroom 1.1 users]