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Sigma DP1 arrives! Photos + comments

4season

Well-known member
My new DP1 arrived from Adorama on Friday! It shipped with firmware 1.0.2, which I updated to 1.0.4, and I downloaded the latest version of Sigma Photo Pro for Mac OS X (3.2) and have it running under Leopard on both PowerPC and Intel hardware.

The camera's received it's share of bad press, but some of the sample photos that I had seen looked dramatically better than anything I had seen from a small camera before, so I was still intrigued. I've only shot around 100 photos so far, but yes, really really sharp, with minimal noise and no significant barrel distortion, blue fringing or fuzziness in the corners. The view at 100% looks great.

The camera's handling could be better, but it's definitely usable as-is. I replaced the factory neck strap with a simple hand strap, and if possible, might like a horizontal case with magnetic flap, and equipped with a clip and/or belt loop.

A live histogram would be nice, or at least the option to display one automatically during auto-review, but for now, this must be selected manually in playback, and are there are no optional blinking clipping indicators.

The zoom controls can remapped to quite a few other uses including white balance, image quality, and ISO. Strangely, there's no option to use these for exposure compensation.

Some fuss was made over the lens cap, but if we must have one, the DP1s works well: It snaps very securely into place and only requires that the cap be roughly horizontal, and it's easy to do this by feel.

It seems like Sigma took some pains with the focus controls, right down to providing both an AE/AF lock button AND dedicated focus wheel, and they work well. In manual focus mode, I think they should indicate which button gives a magnified view, else do it automatically like the Digilux 2. Or you can just work from memory, since there aren't too many buttons to begin with. Which is just as well since the embossed button markings are black-on-black.

Cable release, where's the cable release? I wonder if I can use the Ricoh's USB cable release? No mention of anything in the manual. Otherwise, there's the self-timer, but it's not as handy.

Sigma Photo Pro 3.2 for Mac OS X:
Like everyone else, I hope that Sigma opens the DP1's raw file format to 3rd parties, but in the meantime, SPP seems to work well enough, it's visually attractive, and whether you are converting a single image or a large batch, it's easy to use. For now, I am processing most raw images with the "X3F" setting, which seems to do a straight file conversion without image processing, and saving as 16-bit TIFF, which I can then drop into Aperture. Aside from (much) larger file sizes, TIFF works very well as a "raw" format.

One bonus feature in SPP 3.2 is it's "X3 Fill Light" feature (sample before-and-after pix, below) which appears to work like LightZone's "relight" feature.

So far, I'm pretty impressed.

7:30 AM:

2:00 PM:

7:30 PM:

Same as above, minus X3 Fill Light or any other manipulation:
 

MisiekBunnik

New member
A nice report on your DP1!

a short comment:
If I remember well (i do not use the autoreview myself), if you had the review to the layout with the histogram, will it not remember that as your review layout in auto review also?
 

4season

Well-known member
A nice report on your DP1!

a short comment:
If I remember well (i do not use the autoreview myself), if you had the review to the layout with the histogram, will it not remember that as your review layout in auto review also?
Thank you! I'm really enjoying it.

Strangely enough, the DP1 does not remember the layout in auto-review (maybe a future firmware?)
 
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