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| One of our key criticisms of the Sigma SD9 and SD10 was that neither captured JPEG files. The SD14 ($1,600, estimated street, body only), Sigma's first new DSLR in three years, captures either JPEGs or RAW files, although there's no RAW + JPEG mode. Learn more from our Hands On Review. |
Kazuto Yamaki, COO of Sigma Corporation, has today published a letter on the Sigma website explaining that the anticipated and expected December 2006 availability date for the Sigma SD14 DSLR (see our Hands On Review ) has been pushed back until Spring 2007, due to an undisclosed known issue with the camera's performance.
Sigma's announcement of a delay to correct an issue before shipping comes on the heels of the Leica M8 shipping to consumers with an unresolved oversensitity in the IR spectrum, which necessitated additional after-purchase filters to correct the problem.
Here is the entire statement from Kazuto Yamaki, Sigma's Chief Operating Officer.
Postponement of the Sigma SD14 launch date.
Dear Customers,
I appreciate your strong and kind support for our products.
At Photokina 2006, we introduced our next generation digital SLR camera, the Sigma SD14. At the time, we made it clear that we would begin shipping production cameras late November 2006. Soon thereafter, we revised our release plan from late November to the middle of December.
Of course we continued our development work on the SD14 in preparation for production and shipping. During this process, we found one issue that occurred occasionally and only under certain circumstances. Initially, we felt that this could be solved with a programming or processing solution. However, after careful investigation and many attempts at a solution, we have come to the conclusion that we need to make a hardware change to fix this issue completely.
All of us at Sigma regret very much that this will result in a delay in the availability of the SD14 until late February or early March 2007. Retail sales should start in mid-March.
We deeply and sincerely apologize to all of our current and future Sigma users for this delay. We are confident that the SD14 will be an important product for photographers. The results we have produced thus far have been outstanding. However, we feel that we would not be serving our community of present and prospective photographers well by delivering a camera with a known issue. We ask for your understanding. For our part, we will do our best to fix this problem and begin delivery of the SD14 as soon as possible.
The amount of interest shown in our digital imaging products at photokina 2006 and thereafter was very encouraging. Please note that the delay of the SD14 will not have a significant impact on the development work on other cameras or lenses. This work continues and we will announce delivery plans as they become firm.
At this time, I would like to once again express my gratitude to all of our Sigma customers for their support. Thank you very much for your understanding and we appreciate your patience in waiting for the SD14. We are confident it will be worth the wait.
Best regards,
Kazuto Yamaki
Chief Operating Officer
Sigma Corporation
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