{"id":3659,"date":"2011-07-31T10:38:35","date_gmt":"2011-07-31T17:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/?p=3659"},"modified":"2011-07-31T10:38:35","modified_gmt":"2011-07-31T17:38:35","slug":"sigma-dp1s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/?p=3659","title":{"rendered":"Sigma Dp1s"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend offered to lend me his Sigma Dp1s so that I might sip from the sweet Foveon Kool Aid. \u00a0OK those weren’t his words or likely his intent, thanks Duncan.\u00a0 Let me be clear though this camera has some major shortcomings that can’t be ignored.\u00a0 It’s slow, the sort of slow where I could\u00a0load a roll of film faster than it can write a file to a card.\u00a0 The rear LCD appears to exist to show your settings and to confirm that yes you did capture something.\u00a0\u00a0 The metering also did some serious highlight clipping even when I had -1 exposure compensation, of course I had no way of knowing this until I got the files into my computer (see previous sentence).\u00a0 For all other complaints please refer to the rest of the Internet.\u00a0 Now for the positive side and where the argument for the purpose of this camera begins.\u00a0 It produces nice sharp noise free files with accurate colours.\u00a0 It has a 16mm f4.0\u00a0lens on an APSC sized sensor which is unique and while on the slow side it performs very well.\u00a0 The close focus distance is quite long at 30cm so that\u00a0does limit some of the creative possibilities.\u00a0 I guess for me the unanswered question now is how large an image can be rendered from these files.\u00a0 As is well documented the sensor captures 3 colours at different layers but the file dimensions are 2640×1760 however you slice it.\u00a0 Aside from the issues of speed I actually like the simplicity of the camera and it’s compactness.\u00a0 I was able to configure the otherwise useless (wide\/tele) buttons to control ISO, why does a camera with a fixed focal length have these controls?\u00a0 This arrangement ends up in practice being the best of any camera I have ever used, wide decreases ISO, tele increases ISO, simple and immediate making ISO the third variable much like my DSLR.\u00a0 I easily moved between ISO 50 to 400 and even found ISO 800 to be largely noise free.\u00a0 So while I will reserve any final verdict until I have seen an image printed, it appears that the only thing standing in this cameras way from being a good photographic tool is it’s glacial speed, and exposure system.\u00a0 Whether these\u00a0issues are adequately addressed with the latest version the Dp1x I can’t say\u00a0but any improvement in speed would be welcome.<\/p>\n\n\t\t