Sigma has made an unexpected announcement: a new L mount FF Bayer mirrorless (and EVFless) camera.
Sigma announces ultra-compact 'fp' L-mount camera, teases full-frame Foveon sensorI paid special attention to this:
"The camera has an ISO range of 100-25600, expandable to 6-102400. It has a fully electronic shutter and supports Eye AF and HDR. It can capture 14-bit DNG files and is fully compatible with Sigma's Photo Pro software. Its burst rate is an impressive 18 fps, though that's for only 12 shots."I have a feeling that this ISO6 (and probably at a lower degree, the other ISOs in the ISO12-ISO50 range) can be quite interesting, much more than the fake "LOW ISO" found in most cameras. Let's put things together:
- ISO6 is 4 stops away from ISO100, too much to produce it by faking an ISO100 into ISO6 using metadata; highlights and even midlights would simply get blown away. So this ISO6 must be something REAL
- The shutter is fully electronic which means there can be no physical vibration, being this the natural shutter operation of the camera
- Finally, and contrarily to Sigma's usual slowness, it is aimed at being able to capture at a rate of 18fps, which means important readout and buffering capabilities
Putting all that together, I think this ISO6 is an averaging of 16 consecutive ISO100 shots with 1/16th the exposure time. Continuous vibration-free shooting means nearly having a real ISO6 (maybe moving light sources get a bit discontinued at times). What's this ISO6 useful for?
- Of course for long exposure photography (ISO6 means 16 times longer exposure time than ISO100)
- But also a Dynamic range enhancement of 2 entire stops for tripod applications (every x4 in captures means doubling SNR and hence gaining 1 stop of DR), which if you can afford the exposure time will basically mean nearly HDR RAW files
The procedure can be done with any camera, but probably with shutter vibrations and more importantly: not in a single output RAW file (I'm assuming the ISO6 setting will work on RAW here, but I see no reason why it shouldn't).
Regards