Okay, so the street price of the Sigma SD1 is only US$6895, not the US$9700 MSRP announced earlier in the week. Does this change anything? No. At a D3x price you're getting a lesser LCD, no Live View, a smaller buffer, no 100% viewfinder, slower flash sync, lower-rated shutter, less capable AF, no second slot, and a host of other omissions (e.g. GPS support). You do get a pop-up flash.
Frankly, I don't understand Sigma's handling of this product launch. It's not just the unexpected price (at the original announcement last year, the Sigma execs were hinting that the likely price would be more in the D700 price range, not D3x range). For example, the sample images Sigma has now presented are beyond terrible. Very high in contrast, with highlights often pushing up into lack of detail range, the landscapes look like 1980's amateur slide film exposures, in one I see a slight edge-to-edge lens problem, one is clearly not focused correctly (slight front focus), the Foveon magenta/green hue issue still seems present in a few of the images, and overall Sigma seems to have picked images solely to try to emphasize lack of moire over everything else. Moire isn't an issue I encounter all that much on the D3x, even with the AA filter removed. None of the images make me want to run out and try the SD1. And at US$6895, the bar is raised on what it would take for me to want to run out and try a camera to start with.
I must admit, the first two paragraphs of Sigma's SD1 "philosophy" introduction read like they've been paying attention to my complaints about photography. The problem with Sigma's conclusion, however, is that their "radical technology" amounts to resizing an existing technology, the Foveon sensor. They claim 30mp equivalence. I'm sure that those are the numbers that they get from test charts, but test charts aren't what we take pictures of. The problem with the 30mp number is those sample images. I don't see a single one that looks like it equals what I get out of my D3x, let alone better it. Heck, most of the Sigma images don't look better than I get with my D5100. So, the published sample images are not the way to sell an expensive DSLR.
Then there's the issue of Live View. When Foveon originally launched their sensor technology, one of the key selling elements was how video-ready it was. It did VGA video using binning for low noise at 30 fps and full frame at 5 fps. The original Foveon demonstration I saw was actually a tethered use, which was part of the original Foveon SDK. It seems that Sigma, after nine years of using the Foveon technology, still doesn't know how to produce Live View in a camera implementation, and you'd think that would be an important feature when trying to obtain critical focus on a very high resolution camera. I know I use it a lot on my D3x when nailing focus is important.
Still, the elephant-in-the-room issue for Sigma is actually no longer the price, the image quality, or even the features of the camera. The issue is the backlash that the price generated. If you're of the mind that even bad news is better than no news at all, then Sigma is far better off than before: it got a ton of bad press on the Internet this week, and as this article indicates, it is ongoing. So, hey, if you didn't know that Sigma made cameras, you do now. Woo hoo! But I'd say that the price issue is far closer to a PR crisis than a PR opportunity. Like every business crisis, it needs to be responded to, directly and quickly. Waiting to see what change in PR the first sales might bring would be a mistake, IMHO.
You may remember that a similar problem happened when the D3x was announced. Everyone expected it to be the same or slightly higher price as the D3. The "x" tax of 60% seemed excessive to most users, and it caused highly negative PR for Nikon for some time. The good news for Nikon was twofold: first, Canon's similar camera was the same price, and the D3x produced visibly better results. So they got away with it. Consider, however, what might have happened if Nikon had priced the D3x at US$5499. The D3 was already causing a Canon-to-Nikon migration as pros flocked to the better D3, a lower priced D3x would have made that migration into a near riot.
Things aren't quite the same for Sigma, though. The SD1 isn't equivalent to the high-end Canons and Nikons in body, features, or most areas of performance. Sigma is counting solely on the sensor to justify the price. They've posted images that don't make that case, IMHO. So unless there's some magical surprise in the SD1 that no one yet knows about, the actual shipment of SD1s probably won't dull the negative PR buildup that's occurring right now.
I never quite understood why Sigma got into the body business in the first place. Sigma was started in 1961 as a company to produce accessories for major camera lines. From 1961 to 1976 it only produced lenses. In 1976 it took a stab at a camera, which didn't last long. They then went another six years before they introduced another camera, the SLR-style SA-1. Then another six year break before the Zoom-Super compact cameras. To give them credit, they've persisted in trying to get a competent, competitive camera to the market for some time now. But in every case, it was too little camera too late. Something is wrong with this picture. If I had started producing cameras when I left college and was still trying to break through as a serious player today…well, that wouldn't happen, I don't have that much patience. I would have decided that I didn't have what it takes to be competitive in the camera market a long time ago, or I would have fixed whatever the problem was holding me back from succeeding. Some analysts think Sigma's overall DSLR sales have yet to hit six figures in units. Best case, it's in the low six figures, and that's after nine years of trying, a time when tens of millions of DSLRs have been sold.
That illustrates the real risk to Sigma. They risk another perception of failure. Each time you over promise and under deliver, the hurdle you have to jump next time to be successful gets higher. Until eventually it's an unclearable barrier. Some people were already dismissing Sigma as a camera maker. The pricing just announced gives them more reason to do so.
Thing is, Sigma makes a lot of very good and creative lenses, especially ones that fill gaps in the big makers lineups. They get that pretty much right, though the consistency of their quality control isn't as high as it should be. The NEX, m4/3, and NX mounts give them room to grow. The camera thing is looking more and more like an ego play, not a mainstream part of their business that will make them more successful.
As I noted, there are industry experts that believe that Sigma has shipped fewer SLR/DSLR units in their entire nine-year history than Nikon made D3's in two years. Now we find that Sigma's also got a Nikon patent suit on their hands that risks their primary product line. Their manufacturing plant is in the Fukushima prefecture and right at the center of Japan's quake-stricken area. It's rough times in the Sigma world at the moment. And this all comes not all that long after the US$7.3 million alleged embezzlement by a Sigma executive in the US (a whopper of a story all by itself, including the day in which the accused's wife and mistress combined to post bail, or the fact that the accused apparently quit by leaving a resignation letter in his company car, which he left in the Sigma USA parking lot).
So, I for one would like Sigma back to its core business and get things 100% right there. More lenses please, with better quality control. Settle with Nikon and get the round of lenses announced in February into user hands. Work on creating an affordable high quality 400mm solution, then duplicate it at 500mm (what ever happened to the 500mm f/7.2?).
Update: a few people miss the point on my comments on the sample images. Yes, I know they were taken with prototype cameras and processed with prototype software. But if your only real selling point for a product is image quality, you don't post sub-par image samples, even from prototypes. Sigma isn't the only company that's been guilty of this. Most of the camera companies, including Nikon, have been guilty of posting inferior image samples prior to release of a camera. In Sigma's case, such a mistake absolutely generates comment because there's a perception (whether supported by fact or not) that they've taken a US$999 camera (SD-15), added a new sensor and upped the price ~US$6000. In other words, every is looking to the image quality samples to see if the US$6000 is justified. Even before I posted my comments here I was getting emails from people who were trying to figure out why those samples justified the price. Simply put, Sigma needs to put out image samples that support the price, not erode it. Nikon did something back with the D3 intro that Sigma now needs to do. If you remember, Nikon inserted a large poster into every photo magazine of an ISO 6400 photo of a motorcycle rider taken at twilight. That photo was an eye-opener (at least compared to most image samples we get from camera companies). No one thought a 12mp ISO 6400 photo could look that good at that size. But it also was an expensive and time-consuming session, with careful post production, done by one of the best in the business.
Further update: the COO of Sigma tweeted what appears a reaction to the Internet commentary: "Sorry. We tried our best, but could not implement the price range that we had targeted" and "I know the responses from our loyal customers. SD1 price is solely due to my lack of capability, but the camera is really great." This doesn't reveal anything other than Sigma is aware of the reaction of both current and potential users of their products. The apology is nice, but still no explanation, which is more important. I have a theory about this. At the gross risk of oversimplification, Sigma's costs for both the Foveon technology and the creation of the new sensor came out to X. Sigma's production capabilities are Y units. You can divide X/Y to get a payback number. Sigma isn't really capable of increasing Y (amongst other reasons, the quake), thus if X gets out of hand the only variable that can move to recapture costs is the price of the camera. Couple this with something like a lower yield or a higher fab cost than planned, and X gets harder to recover. Sometimes in product development, the numbers in the spreadsheets hit walls. You can lower the recovery cost of R&D per unit by producing more units, but what happens if you can't produce more units? Something seems to have hit a wall in Sigma's spreadsheets.