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After a Vacation with the SD14

Whatever the motivations, the Sigma SD14 is a paragon of simplicity. In a very short time you feel comfortable with the limited controls. The possible exception is the combo on and drive mode dial on the top left. It is easy enough to use, but it is so different from competing cameras that it takes a while to get used to. There are no scene modes to choose and no programs to analyze scenes; you end up doing many things the old-fashioned way - tweaking them yourself. The simplicity is a nice feature in vacation shooting, but you are almost forced to engage your mind in shooting, which is certainly not a bad thing. Auto-Focus is not the fastest, but it is a great improvement over the earlier SD models. Fortunately the new 5-point AF seems to be very accurate.

Exposure control is decent, but it is nowhere as sophisticated as current models from competitors. However, by shooting in RAW and processing in Sigma Photo Pro you can almost always recover from any errors in exposure or judgment. There is tremendous flexibility in exposure adjustments with the RAW images. The auto setting is also very good and is usually enough to create decent TIF or JPG images from the RAW files.

As we said in our review, the Sigma SD14 is a huge refinement of everything Sigma SD that came before it. It is solidly built, well balanced, and easy to handle, with features that are much more contemporary and competitive than the SD10. These include a viewfinder based on a real pentaprism with 98% accuracy in the view. The viewfinder is definitely one of the most significant improvements in the SD14, and we thoroughly enjoyed using it.

It's a good thing the optical viewfinder is decent, since the 130,000 pixel 2.5" LCD is exceptionally crude. After working with the gorgeous hi-res 3" LCD on the Nikon D300 and Sony A700 it is hard to find anything good to say about the Sigma LCD. Fortunately you can see if you captured an image, and the capture is likely RAW so seeing it on the LCD doesn't matter too much. If you like to edit on the LCD screen it won't really be an option on the SD14.

Getting away from nit picking, I confess I really had a lot of fun with the SD14 on vacation. There were times when I could have gotten better shots with a Nikon D300 or Canon 40D, but I also did more "thinking" shots than usual because the SD14 demanded it for best results. Vacation is not a place where you normally shoot action sports so the slow display and write speeds were not a real issue. The 6-frame buffer was also enough for any sequences that were shot.

When the SD10 was in our hands for a few weeks it was just too annoying to learn to use and love. The SD14 is a lot easier to live with - if you accept its shortcomings and you are willing to work with it to reveal the strengths of the Foveon sensor. Some will be perfectly happy using the SD14, and others will complain bitterly about its shortcomings and quickly move on.

The lock-up problems we experienced early in our review never happened again once we switched to compatible CF cards. Going from many hard lockups to none has convinced us that those who are having lockup issues with the SD14 need to do some CF swapping to see if that may be their issue. The SD14 drove us nuts until the CF card swap; after the swap it behaved extremely well and actually became a fun camera to use. It's true that CF compatibility is better on most other cameras, but flash memory is cheap enough that if you're willing to invest in an SD14 adding a compatible CF card is easy enough.

What did using the Sigma SD14 on vacation teach us? It wasn't anything new, but we were again reminded that the camera matters a lot less than the skill of the person using the camera. Bells and whistles are great, but they are just tools and not a substitute for learning to take good images. We don't often work in RAW unless it is a critical image or the JPG is just too distant from our mental image to get to a usable final image. Working completely in RAW with the SD14 was another reminder of how much can be accomplished in RAW with just a little effort.

The Sigma SD14 is not for everyone, but it is definitely a useful tool for deliberate shooting and for those who want to exploit the "unique look" of Foveon images. We won't get into the argument of whether the Foveon color is more accurate, because we're not sure. When the Foveon is good it can be very good, but just as often the color misses the real scene and creates its own world of color. More often than not you can still capture the mental color you saw in processing the RAW files, but it is really a lot more fun to exploit the unique color world of the Foveon sensor.

Yes, you can shoot a vacation with a Sigma SD14, and you might even have some fun doing it. There are faster and more capable DSLR cameras, but if you have the time nothing else is quite like the Foveon sensor. It also helps if you are exploring the half-Dutch half-French island of St. Maarten, or if you are visiting the nearby trendy French island of St. Barts or enjoying the raw beauty of Saba or Anguilla.

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