Sigma UK Press Release

The Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain this year awarded the longest running and most prestigious award, the Progress Medal, to three directors of Foveon Inc. in recognition of their innovation, research and development of the highly regarded X3 direct image sensor.

The medals were awarded to Dr. Carver Mead, Founder of Foveon, Mr. Richard Merrill, Foveon’s Technical Director and Mr. Richard Lyon, Foveon’s Chief Scientist. The Progress Medal is awarded to persons or companies in recognition of research and development which has resulted in an important advance in the scientific or technological development of photography or imaging worldwide.

President of the Royal Photographic Society, Roger Reynolds Hon FRPS, said “the decision to award the Progress Medal to Foveon was due to the unique technology used in their sensor design which is considered to be one of the most significant steps forward in digital photography”.

The Sigma Corporation has utilized this superior technology, using X3 sensors in their range of SD digital cameras. The Sigma SD10 demonstrates the utmost quality achievable from this unique image sensor technology. Similar to the layers of chemical emulsion used in color film, Foveon X3 image sensors have three layers of pixels. The layers of pixels are embedded in silicon to take advantage of the fact that red, green, and blue light penetrate silicon to different depths – forming the first and only image sensor that captures full color at every point in the captured image.