The GetDPI Photography Forum

Great to see you here. Join our insightful photographic forum today and start tapping into a huge wealth of photographic knowledge. Completing our simple registration process will allow you to gain access to exclusive content, add your own topics and posts, share your work and connect with other members through your own private inbox! And don’t forget to say hi!

Sigma DP2 Merrill shots

jminor

New member
Last fall I sold all my digital cameras & lenses with the single exception of the Ricoh GRD. *I'd hit the wall so to speak and felt my photography was going nowhere. *This spring the GRD snapped its last. *As the year went by I started seeing photographs, not in a gallery but out in the world. *I'd be driving along and look out at the passing landscape and "boom" a perfectly framed picture met my eye. *This started to happen more often. *A distant treeline with looming storm clouds, a half dead tree, a pattern of shadows on the lawn, ships in the harbor. *Photographs were everywhere! *So it's time to get back to it. *I love landscapes, and enjoy finding new things to photograph in old familiar places as well as exploring new locations. *I've had the nagging suspicion that I'd only be truly happy shooting landscapes with a large format camera. *After reading this article on the Large Format Photography site,

A closer look at a large format photo

That's exactly what I'd like to be able to do. *I enjoy looking at crops of my landscapes and finding things I hadn't noticed when I took the picture. *What a pleasant surprise to find this is possible a non conventional compact DP 2 Merrill. *I realize there is a big difference between the Merrill's output and a 4 x 5 sheet of film. But this small digital camera may be close enough for me. *After viewing Quentin Bargate's *(and others) photos and reading Mr. Reichmann's review I was sold. *And To get the most of what a practiced hand can produce with this camera I will take the advice of Mike Johnston of The Online Photograper fame, and work with this one camera, one lens, combo for a year to see what can be done with the DP 2 Merrill.
John
Man, you folks are killing me here. I should have stayed away until I had the funds to buy the camera, but its too late now. That's why I'm trying to make a trade offering my new iPad!!! The excellent quality of these photos are driving me crazy, and I need to get my hands on this camera and start shooting,,,,
John.
 

scho

Well-known member
Nothing too exciting from todays's outing in the park with the DPMs.

DP2M
A Cornell outdoor education class - tree climbing.

FULL SIZE

DP2M
A shot for checking foliage definition in the trees - see full size.

FULL SIZE

DP1M
Trying to nail down tricky DP1M white balance. Auto tends towards magenta and "overcast" is a bit greenish so this is white balance using a ColorChecker target in the tiff exported to LR.

FULL SIZE
 

Quentin_Bargate

Well-known member
Sure, Thorkil, :D I may get one in due course.

Now printed out the panorama at 179.9cm x 61.6cm (approx 24 x 70 inches). Looks pretty good! It is destined for framing and hanging on the wall of my office in London.
 

Thorkil

Well-known member
Man, you folks are killing me here. I should have stayed away until I had the funds to buy the camera, but its too late now. That's why I'm trying to make a trade offering my new iPad!!! The excellent quality of these photos are driving me crazy, and I need to get my hands on this camera and start shooting,,,,
John.
Yes, John, its a very dangerous thread this one(but after all, it could be more expensive!), specially if one just have to have both a 1M and a 2M, and perhaps the non-belt-pocket-pocket camera GRD too(don't know why you sold this one, but I guess you were down in a sort of self-cleaning mental I-will-never-ever-touch-a-camera-no-more process). My D800E is now for sale, but its hard to know whether it should be the 1M or 2M or both, but Carl and soon Quentin will do the enlighten of the mental-break-down issue there.
Meanwhile we just have to sit down well-self-controlled back in our armchairs :)
Thorkil
(but, but it might seem that the 2M is a winner, I had hoped that I could avoid learning stitching, but it seems not. And C1 can do it too).
Quentin, stitching from hand-held pictures is a no-go, or what??
But John if you are qoing to stick to only one camera and you also consider the GXR, I would go for the DP2M.
 

jminor

New member
Yes, John, its a very dangerous thread this one(but after all, it could be more expensive!), specially if one just have to have both a 1M and a 2M, and perhaps the non-belt-pocket-pocket camera GRD too(don't know why you sold this one, but I guess you were down in a sort of self-cleaning mental I-will-never-ever-touch-a-camera-no-more process). My D800E is now for sale, but its hard to know whether it should be the 1M or 2M or both, but Carl and soon Quentin will do the enlighten of the mental-break-down issue there.
Meanwhile we just have to sit down well-self-controlled back in our armchairs :)
Thorkil
(but, but it might seem that the 2M is a winner, I had hoped that I could avoid learning stitching, but it seems not. And C1 can do it too).
Quentin, stitching from hand-held pictures is a no-go, or what??
But John if you are qoing to stick to only one camera and you also consider the GXR, I would go for the DP2M.
Hello Thorkil, yes I will get the DP2 Merrill, either in my trade offer or outright purchase. But any purchase will probably have to wait a few months, that's why I made the trade offer, I JUST CAN'T WAIT :D
 

Michiel Schierbeek

Well-known member
Nice Carl, the colors look a whole lot better as many samples on the net. So no AWB!
Somehow I automaticly never use AWB anyhow.

I could have been shooting a DP1M for a week, a little more patience it is for now :deadhorse:
 

scho

Well-known member
Nice Carl, the colors look a whole lot better as many samples on the net. So no AWB!
Somehow I automaticly never use AWB anyhow.

I could have been shooting a DP1M for a week, a little more patience it is for now :deadhorse:
Plenty of detail in that last full size shot. A little purple cast and/or fringing in the trees topleft, but not alarming.
Michiel,

Yes, I was used to AWB being OK on recent cameras, but not this one. I now use either "sunlight" or "overcast" outdoors and re-check later for manual adjustment. There is a color eyedropper in SPP for correcting color casts or the usual WB correction in LR (on the Tiff file). I frequently need to correct color fringing in LR (usually purple) on high contrast edges.
 

Quentin_Bargate

Well-known member
Carl, looks good except I can see some faint horizontal banding in the sky in the last shot. Otherwise close to the DP2.

Quentin
 
Top