Sigma SD10

A note from Mike Tomkins, News Editor and sometime Gallery Photographer Extraordinaire: When Dave first received the SD10, I offered to lend a hand with the gallery photographs because I wanted to see how the camera handled and what it could do. The original SD9 was an interesting model, but not one I felt I could consider for myself because I do like long-exposure / night photography and didn't feel I could live with the shutter and ISO limitations. The SD10 aims to solve these, and the allure of the Foveon sensor attracted me.

Over a couple of days, I took some pictures at several locations around the Atlanta area which I think are quite pleasing. I tried where possible to choose subjects that I felt would challenge the SD10 - for example shooting at a fairly high ISO in the low light conditions of the Fuqua Orchid Center at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. The images can speak for themselves, but I found the SD10 a rather well-behaved camera for the most part, the only particular difficulty I had being that of a rather inconsistent white balance performance. More on that later, though - for now, enjoy the gallery!

In my introduction, I noted that I had some difficulty with inconsistent white balance from our near-production level SD10 digital SLR. Below, I've included a comparison to demonstrate what I mean by this (and also, to show that whilst perhaps frustrating, the problem isn't insurmountable and can be corrected fairly well in the excellent Sigma Photo Pro software). My general manner of shooting is to bracket like crazy - meaning that I'm forever taking multiple photos of the same subjects at intervals of only a few seconds apart. Since the SD10 white balance can be adjusted after-the-fact in Photo Pro, I left the camera set to Auto white balance - and on my return to the office, I noticed quite a few instances of photos taken with near-identical settings and framing yielding vastly different white balance adjustments.

For those of you interested in the settings for the original photos, since there's no easy way to fit them into the complex table below, both were taken as high resolution files at a focal length of 105mm in Program AE mode at ISO 800, using auto white balance, multi metering, single AF and Drive modes. Courtesy of the auto exposure bracketing feature on the camera, the -0.7EV file was 1/250 second at F4.5, whilst the 0EV file was 1/200 second at F4. This was the only setting difference on the camera between these frames, which were taken with near-identical framing and lighting within four seconds of each other.

Also, I've included two further photos that show common difficulties photographers come up against, and show off how Photo Pro can easily (in a matter of seconds) correct common problems. Both photos suffer from lens flare even though I use lens hoods religiously - mostly because I was shooting late in the day and with a very bright afternoon sun glaring low in the sky. The picture of the thatched roof at the Atlanta Zoo is the worst case, and I was surprised by how well it cleaned up in Photo Pro. The building photo taken at Underground Atlanta, meanwhile, showed a lesser degree of flare but demonstrated nicely how Foveon's new X3 Fill Light filter can bring a photo back to life that would otherwise end up being discarded. All in all, I think Photo Pro is one of the biggest reasons to consider buying the SD10. I'll be writing a commentary on the program shortly (I'd hoped to do so today, but time overtook me!) - so check our review soon for my more detailed thoughts...