foveonx3

Foveon: The Clever Image Sensor That Has Failed to Catch On

Back in the early 2000s, Sigma -- a company usually known in the photography community as a lens manufacturer -- released a new type of camera sensor named the Foveon X3. This sensor technology was first patented in 1999 by a company called Foveon, Inc. (later acquired in 2008 by Sigma) and featured an innovative color perception technology: a 3-layer stack of photosensitive diodes.