A
asabet
Guest
I have similar wants. In fact, the ability to control DOF (ie - have the option to use a shallow DOF) using a small camera with manual controls has driven me to shooting film. In the past few months, I've picked up an Olympus OM-2N w/ OM 40/2 and a CV Bessa R3A with an M-Hexanon 50/2. My pocket camera these days is an Olympus Stylus Epic! Meanwhile, a relatively large and heavy Canon 5D gathers dust on my bookshelf. I'm not sold enough yet on the rangefinder approach to spend the $$ on a digital rangefinder. Instead, I continue to use what I have and hope for a relatively small and affordable digital body with autofocus and a wide-normal lens with a large enough aperture to narrow the DOF when desired.For me, size is crucial — not pocketability, but really how less camera impacts the shooting experience for me and my subjects.
Today, Sean and others have the option of super-shallow depth of field with their M8's for when that type of creamy blur is appropriate to their vision. I'd like that option too, but in a cheaper, tiny manually controllable autofocus digital with however fast a lens is scientifically viable (the oft-dreamed-of digital Hexar).
The DP1 is interesting in that it really drives home how significant a determining factor the lens aperture is on photographic possibilities. By aperture, I'm referring not to the f-number but to the actual dimensions of the entrance pupil. The fact that the DP1 and GRD II have similar diagonal angles of view and relatively similar physical aperture size (4.15mm pupil diameter for the Sigma and 2.46mm for the Ricoh) pits them directly against one another in FOV, DOF control, and even signal/noise constraints. Differences in pixel and sensor size will generally affect things like DR and diffusion limits, and the unique qualities of the Foveon sensor are yet another matter to consider, but the physical aperture itself means quite a bit. I'm hoping for an autofocus digital camera with a normal or slightly wide FOV lens, an entrance pupil with a diameter of at least 7.5mm (preferably greater than 10mm), and a size no larger than an G9.