The Foveon X3® direct image sensor featured in the Sigma SD14 digital SLR can capture all primary RGB colors at each and every pixels arranged in three layers, insuring the capture of full and complete color. Using three silicon-embedded layers of pixel sensors, stacked to take advantage of silicon's ability to absorb red, green, and blue light at different respective depths, it efficiently reproduces color more accurately, and offers sharper resolution, pixel for pixel, than any conventional image sensor. Until now, all other image sensors have featured a just single layer of pixels and each pixel captures only one color of light, which has been filtered through a single color filter. Since conventional image sensors of Bayer pattern filter mosaic capture only one-third of the color, complicated computation is required to interpolate the color they miss. Interpolation leads to color errors, color artifacts and a loss of image detail. Low pass filters must then be used to reduce color artifacts. The use of low pass filters adversely affects sharpness and resolution of the final image captured.
* Foveon X3 is the registered trademark of Foveon.