Well, I’ve had a week of (occasionally) playing with the camera and, to be honest, it’s growing on me. It is much easier to use than the previous models, and much much more reliable! No hissy fits with the batteries which, although the indicator in the top LCD quite quickly shows only ½ charge, has lasted me all day on a couple of occasions. And to be truthful, I rather like the output from the Jpeg option!

Color error at ISO 800 using Imatest.

When SPP (Sigma Photo Pro) first came out with the SD9, it was rightly hailed as one of the best RAW converters on the market as far as ability is concerned. The final version with the SD10 had features that, at that time, had not been seen elsewhere. Those features are still there and the user interface is very similar and straightforward. The trouble is what is going on behind the scenes and it really does need some sorting! (Sigma, are you listening?)

One of these images has been output on the auto settings in SPP 3.0

Having said all that, the output is worthwhile, with superb image quality available and the raft of fine adjustments that SPP is renowned for all intact.

There is one area though, that makes the upgrade worthwhile, and that is in the handling of noise. You see, I thought I might try putting the SD14 Images through the older version 2.1 and yes, you can. The older version will handle the files quite admirably. But the processing algorithims are obviously quite different! This is where the SD14 is overcoming the problem of noise in the Foveon sensor.

Here are two versions of the same file, one processed in SPP 2.1 and one processed in SPP 3. Both were set on automatic and both were saved as same size jpgs at quality level 8. (saving at a higher level makes no practical difference for this test)

SDIM0432-spp2.jpg

SDIM0432-spp3.jpg

(I'll have to dig out an old noisy SD9/10 file to see if reprocessing in SPP 3 makes a difference now. More work!)

Watch this space and I'll report back.

(EDIT) Having dug out an old SD9 image file that was taken at ISO200 (It was of a wild Stoat, which is why it survived the delete button!) I can confirm that previous files, when reworked through SPP 3, come out considerably less noisy than they did in SPP 2.1!

This is extremely good news for all SD owners and highlights one of the major reasons for shooting in RAW format, no matter what system you use. (Backward compatibility being the key here). I just hope that SPP 3.1 is not too far away and that it overcomes the processing speed problem!