Initial impressions Sigma dp2m

[GaryLH]

I just got the camera last night. It has the latest firmware update already.
Made the following changes already to the default values
- turned off all the sounds
- set auto iso from 100-400
- color space is adobe
- raw+jpg at highest quality
- priority af (means while acquire focus don't worry about LCD)
- af limit
- af/mf mode instead of plain af

Set display to optical finder mode and slapped my 40 bright view finder on it... There is a green focus confirm led next to right of hot shoe.. Works pretty well.

Af speed about where Fuji x100 was w/ version 1 fw. LCD ok, but decide to c if I can get better battery life w/ it setup using ovf style.

Largest raw is around 55mb. Jpg is running around 8.4mb. That is a lot of stuff going to sd card :eek

7 frame buffer w/ count down. U can shoot while fames being written to sd card. Using Sandisk extreme pro (95mbs) 16gb card, raw+jpg holds around 235. Takes a good 5-7 seconds per frame. Not playback until everything is sent to sd card.

Amazing amount of detail and info...In the converted from raw to tiff file.

Gary

 

[GaryLH]

Sigma photo SW

Sigma photo SW

I have iMac w/ 8 gb of memory and dual core i5 3.6ghz.

The SW has not crashed on me yet and was not slow until u did a save to tiff 16, then it was a bit slower than normal, but still not to bad.

Downloaded the latest from sigma website. No cd or DVD in package from sigma.

Gary

Ps. Here is link to sigma site where u can find their photo editor. I am mainly using it to convert to raw and import ack into Aperture to do the real work.
http://www.sigma-dp.com/download/photopro.html

 

[GaryLH]

The converted tiff16 file is 85mb🙁

Gary

 

[bugmenot]

Good technical info and impressions. Now ... how amazing are the photographs? 🙂

 

[GaryLH]

Original out of camera jpg

 

[GaryLH]

Raw converted to tiff 16

Run thru my normal aperture enhancement script. The amount of detail shows up much better in the 85mb file then it does here in the 1024 limit files.

 

[GaryLH]

Tiff 16 converted to b&w

 

[GaryLH]

Center crop from converted tiff 16

 

[GaryLH]

The crop of the crop 🙂

 

[GaryLH]

This camera will never replace my Fuji xp1 given its limitations, but for situations where i can take my time, I don't think anything outside of a medium or large format cameras can beat the iq I am seeing.

Gary

 

[lam]

Great info Gary, please feel free to keep posting more insights!! This cam is on my list for the future..

 

[GaryLH]

Thanks bugmento and lam

Gary

 

[GaryLH]

Lens looks like it hits optimal at f4 and f5.6, but f2.8 is already pretty good. The picture above was shot at f4.

Manual focus feels pretty good. No auto-mag that I can figure out to set when u turn the focus ring on lens. Need to use ok key to go to magnification.

Dof bar info changes on the distance scale as u change f stop. W/ the limited iso capability and shallow dof of the 30f2.8 lens, I would not use this for street shooting where u are zone focused and shooting from hip.. U need to e at f16.. Got to have some bright sunny day to get fast enough shutter speed since there is no stabilization.

Gary

 

[kbg32]

Gary, the last file doesn't look very sharp to me. The crop of the crop. Possibly the f4 aperture.

 

[GaryLH]

Gary, the last file doesn't look very sharp to me. The crop of the crop. Possibly the f4 aperture.

It could be me🙄 this is hand held at 1/60 f4 iso 250. I exported the crop as a jpg and tiff from aperture library to double check, since Flickr is only using jpg instead of my tiff original.

It is not quite as sharp as the other, but it looks a tad sharper than the Flickr version...

The exported jpg is 557kb and an exported tiff ended up 4.2 mb. The tiff is showing more detail then the jpg.

I am not as steady as I used to be. The 1/focal length rules doesn't work for me any longer. My minimum these days is really 1/125th 🙁

Gary

 

[noimmunity]

Congratulations, Gary!

Detail is amazing. What are your feelings about the color?

I saw a reconditioned one at discount on amazon.fr and just had to.

Could be a damaging year with all those XF lenses coming, too :angel:

 

[GaryLH]

Congratulations, Gary!

Detail is amazing. What are your feelings about the color?

I saw a reconditioned one at discount on amazon.fr and just had to.

Could be a damaging year with all those XF lenses coming, too :angel:

Thanks. The color looks real good to me. I know what u mean. My wallet is starting to hurt already 🙁

Preorder on the 21 and xe1 kit this year. 2013 i want the 23 and 28...

GAS got the better of me on this dp2m 😛

Gary

 

[GaryLH]

More updates

More updates

Noisiest af mechanism of any of my cameras. With all the sounds turned off, that is all u hear. The actual shutter is almost dead quiet.

AF does better w/ vertical lines. Sometimes works w/ horizontal ones but more often then not it will start hunting.

Interesting that where ever u last left off in terms of manual focus distance, if u switch to af for a while and then switch back to mf mode, it remembers where u left off.

Af limit just removes the check for distances shorter than 1m. Can be toggle active or off via the up arrow (used for all focus options). So far cannot tell if this has helped or not..

Gary

 

[noimmunity]

Thanks. The color looks real good to me. I know what u mean. My wallet is starting to hurt already 🙁

Preorder on the 21 and xe1 kit this year. 2013 i want the 23 and 28...

GAS got the better of me on this dp2m 😛

Gary

I hear you about GAS. The DP2M wasn't even on the radar for me.

My plans for the X system were originally set around the 14, 27 and 56, in addition to the 35 I already have. So far had exercised enormous restraint sticking to that one 35 (and M lenses) while waiting for the others. But with a DP2M coming, there might be a serious reallocation of resources as I think about a set of Lee filters, a really nice tripod, big cards, an external OVF, and maybe even a DP1M...

 

[GaryLH]

ISO 100 f5.6 shots

ISO 100 f5.6 shots

Here is set of 4 pictures. The first is full frame iso 100 @f5.6 tiff converted from raw, run thru my normal aperture default script. The other three are crops from that shot...

Btw the original tiff looks better than the Flickr web posted jpgs.

Also from my iso testing, 100 and 200 are best as expected. 400 next best but by 800, it drops off much more compared to 400. 1600 marginal acceptable due to color smearing. Converted to BW u can definitely c the noise.

Gary

Bottom middle

Top of wall

Side crop