New Foveon Sensor Patent By Sigma

The big problem that Sigma was facing with its Foveon Sensor technology was noise, the previous generation of Foveon sensor show excellent color output at base ISO but significant amount of visible noise starts at ISO 1600 and image become unusable at ISO 3200.

Now Sigma patent a new type of sensor technology that composed of normal and highlight pixels to capture more light and create less noise at High ISO range.

For more details take a look below (machine translated)

• Patent Publication No. 2013-81154
  • Publication date 2013.5.2
  • Filing date 2011.7.26
  • Applicant Fobeon, Inc.
  • U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/511, 661 No.
• Foveon patent
  • With pixels having different sensitivities imaging device
    • First pixel usually pixel
    • Second pixel highlight pixels
    • Opening is narrow, (saturation is slow) sensitivity is low highlight pixel
  • To correct overexposure by referring to the second pixel of the peripheral pixel overexposure
    • And the average value of the pixels which are not overexposed, the ratio of the pixel overexposure and weighted average

Also see more details about recently announced sigma dp series camera with optimized high performance APS-C sensor – Sigma DP2 Quattro – Price and Press Release