Digital BW, The Print

For what it is worth I have spent most of my life in the heart of the Silicon Valley in the Semiconductor and Chip Business.

From what I recall the Foveon company was started in the late 90s by some silicon valley legends.   I won’t say this was a hobby company but it was not their first big deal by any means.   The company started out I believe making chips and camera’s unique for portraits.   It used 3 chips one for Red, Green and Blue then combined the images.   This evolved to a single chip that was intend to emulate film (light passing through layers).    As I recall much of the initial interest by Foveon was to license the technology or sell chips to the camera companies.    At the time I thought they were trying to control the sensor market much the way Intel controls the CPU market for PC’s.   That was/is the goal in Silicon valley.     In any event that model never worked.    The only licensee was Sigma.   Somewhere in the past 5 or 6 years Sigma purchased the Foveon company.

At least that is how I recall it.

Regards,
Paul

On Nov 30, 2013, at 10:31 AM, Tony Sleep <TonySleep@...> wrote:

> On 28/11/2013 15:00, jimbo wrote:
> > Ok so to get to it ...why is this set up in the closet..I just don't get
> > why this technology has not been embraced.
> 
> Probably because Sigma have not managed to get their sensors used in any 
> of the major brands like Canon/Nikon. Also the lower pixel count is a 
> misfit with marketing bullets (phony, I know, but the average punter won't 
> want to tackle the complexity of the explanation). And lastly because 
> Foveon has inherently lower sensitivity and susceptibility to noise, 
> thanks to the layered photosite topology (less light gets to the bottom of 
> the well).
> 
> -- 
> Regards
> 
> Tony Sleep
> http://tonysleep.co.uk
> 
> 
>