Available Light

In available light performance, the sensor is about a stop behind the one on my 5D, although the sensor’s imaging characteristics deteriorate in a different way from any other digital camera’s I’ve used. The noise pattern is tighter and very pleasant to look at; there’s no clumping or blobbing to be seen. On the other hand, past ISO 400, a very low-frequency color blotching starts to appear; it’s not pretty and can be tricky to deal with, especially when trying to recover an underexposed frame. For these purposes, consider going black-and-white: the DP1 produces some of the most natural and beautiful B/W tones I’ve seen from any digital camera.

Joanna B&W

Joanna in B/W. This is almost the first frame I took with the DP-1. The conversion to black and white is directly from Sigma Photo Pro. I love the way the camera and converter got the tones — and it somehow came very naturally, without having to do any extensive tweaking. Even though I’d never used SPP before, it took me perhaps five minutes to get this result.

At ISO 100-200, image quality is impeccable and, for all practical purposes, constant. At ISO 400, image quality holds up excellently as long as you’re careful not to underexpose — if you’re under a stop and have to push it, some artifacts will start to emerge, much like the 5D at ISO800. The camera’s highest built-in sensitivity, ISO 800, is just fine — a tight, grain-like noise pattern emerges, but downsampled to screen size or printed, the pictures look impeccable. If you underexpose a stop and push the RAW file a notch, you will get a perfectly serviceable ISO 1600, although you may have to start thinking of how to deal with the low-frequency color noise that raises its head. Finally, shooting at ISO 800 but two stops under is clearly a stop too far — at ISO 3200 equivalent, the shadows get cut off harshly, and horizontal pattern noise shows up in the low midtones.

yum-meat

“Yum, meat!” I took this one at ISO400, near the limits of hand-holdability in a difficult mixed-lighting environment.

iso400 noise

At actual pixels it looks like this — a very fine, tight noise pattern, with no discernible loss of detail. This isn’t quite as clean as the EOS-5D at ISO400; it’s similar to it at ISO800, only the noise pattern is more pleasant.

However, a low-light camera the DP1 isn’t. The f/4.0 aperture of the lens is a significant limitation, and there’s no image stabilization. It’s pretty easy to reach ISO800, 1/30, and f/4.0 in normal indoor lighting, and pushing beyond that requires a certain amount of trickery — exceptionally steady hands, a support, flash, or pushing the sensor. Many small-sensor compacts can manage these light levels with less trouble; the Canon G9 for example does a decent ISO200 and serviceable ISO400, has a lens that’s a stop brighter, and has optical image stabilization that adds another stop or two’s worth of hand-holdability on top of that. Natural-light hand-held photography is not this camera’s primary mission. If only Sigma had built it around a lens that’s a bit narrower but a stop brighter!

art lunch

“Art Lunch.” Pushing the limits: this one is at ISO800, with a fair bit of “Sigma fill light” and a touch of AE compensation added. I’d say this is pretty close to ISO1600 equivalent. In black and white, it isn’t bad at all.

iso800 plus noise

In color and at actual pixels, it’s still tolerable, but only just. Notice the low-frequencey color blotching — the shifts from magenta to yellow and back. Note, again, that this is pushed ISO 800, and I really wouldn’t want to push it much further. Not in color anyway.

Republished by permission from original author Petteri Sulonen from his website.

Eclectic Choices Content by Bruce Kraus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://eclecticchoices.wordpress.com/about/.

Let’s Pixel-Peep

Lakes of ink, and possibly some blood, have been spilled over the topic of exactly how many “Bayer” megapixels a “Foveon” megapixel counts for. I really don’t want to wade into these waters (although I do dip in a toe below). Still, I did shoot some semi-controlled tests against my EOS-5D, so here are a few crops for whatever they’re worth. I did most of my comparisons by downsampling the EOS-5D pictures to the same pixel dimensions as the ones from the DP1; they were shot at a slightly different tripod position because the Canon lens was a 24 mm while the Sigma is 28 mm equivalent.

Why the EF 24/2.8? Well, for one thing, I don’t have a 28 mm prime for my Canon, and comparing the superb 16.6/4.0 on the DP1 to the short end of a standard zoom on the Canon would have been unfair. For another thing, the 24/2.8 is optically a somewhat similar design to the Sigma — unlike the 28/2.8, it’s a moderately complex, very well-corrected design, with little fancy things like a floating group to maintain consistency across different focus distances. In fact, of my normal-or-wider lenses, only the 50/2.5 Macro produces a sharper frame corner-to-corner.

canon-center-f11

sigma-center-f4

Canon 24/2.8 on EOS-5D vs Sigma DP1, round two, center of the frame. When it comes to detail, the two are pretty much indistinguishable. Interestingly, neither camera handles the fabric spine of the book next to Amphigorey Also perfectly. The Canon suffers from some color moiré — the bluish and grayish-blue mottles — whereas the Sigma has luminance moiré (the horizontal banding along it).

To my eye, when it comes to resolution, the downsampled EOS-5D images are indistinguishable from the native DP1 pictures. When comparing the other way — converting the DP1 pictures to “Large” size (13.6 MP), then downsampling these to the EOS-5D’s native pixel dimensions, it’s pretty clear to me that the 5D frames hold noticeably more detail. For example, the double line around the Amphigorey Also title is clearly distinguishable in the Canon frame, but not on the DP1 frame. In practice, this will only make a difference at pretty large print sizes — we’re talking A3 and up. I really don’t want any e-mail on this particular topic; here are the pictures, draw your own conclusions.

canon-center-fullrez

sigma-center-fullrez

Resolution compared at the Canon’s native resolution: the DP1 photo has been upsampled in Sigma Photo Pro to “Large” (13.6 MP) size, then downsampled to the Canon’s pixel dimensions. Look again at the blue spine: the weave looks coarser on the Sigma than the Canon. If it weren’t for the moiré, this would actually give a better idea of the texture than the alternative — blurring away everything below Nyquist. With random textures such as vegetation or sand, this is a definite plus, but with repeating ones, we still see the occasional touch of moiré.

As to imaging artifacts, the DP1 produces almost none. The only one worth mentioning that I saw, either in my test shots or my real-life ones, is a touch of luminance moiré here and there on high-frequency repeating patterns, such as in the crops above. None of my DP1 real-life photos had enough moiré to make any difference in practice; I had to look hard for it, and would not have found it had I not known where to look. In this respect, the Foveon X3 sensor does live up to its reputation — the pictures are beautifully detailed and very natural-looking right down to the pixel level. Put another way, when messing with them in Photoshop, I often inadvertently zoomed in a notch too much simply because at 100% they looked like I ought to be able to.

Another of the Foveon sensor’s strengths is the way it handles highlights. This is the first digital camera I’ve used in bright sunlight without having any problems at all. Even the default tone curve renders them rather nicely, and the highlight control on Sigma Photo Pro let me recover even more of them. The difference is dramatic, especially compared to other compact digitals.

Partying for Jesus

Evangelical Christians bringing the Good News to Helsinki’s hung-over crowd on May 1. Direct sunlight, white dress, man in black suit also in the scene normally means bad trouble. The DP1 took this type of scene in its stride — I never lost the highlights on a correctly exposed scene. This is a major advantage when shooting in this type of light!

Republished by permission from original author Petteri Sulonen from his website.

Eclectic Choices Content by Bruce Kraus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://eclecticchoices.wordpress.com/about/.

This Is What I Call A Lens!

The Sigma DP1’s reason for being is image quality. It is, after all, among the most expensive compact digitals on the market today, and its feature set is limited. Its main selling point is that it puts a dSLR-quality image in a compact camera.

It delivers. The DP1 is capable of producing image quality that’s not merely class-leading, but in a class of its own. No other compact camera comes close, and it puts up a good fight with the full-frame sensor on the aging but still pretty damn good Canon EOS-5D I use for my main camera.

The lens on the DP1 is, without question, one of the very best I’ve ever come across. It performs impeccably at all apertures and focus distances. In fact, unless the picture was taken at a very close focus distance that would show the depth of field, I would not be able to tell at which aperture a photo was taken without very careful examination of comparison shots taken at the same time of the same subject at different apertures. The corners are dead sharp and there is virtually no distortion. The only lens-related artifact I could find was a touch of lateral CA — and that only in the background of “hyperfocal” pictures where the focus was set to around 3 meters. Aperture for aperture, the Sigma lens handily beats the excellent Canon 24/2.8 I used for my semi-controlled comparison shots. Sigma’s long experience at designing optics shows — things really don’t get any better as lenses go.

On a lens with these specifications, bokeh really doesn’t matter much — you’ll have to shoot very close up to throw the background significantly out of focus. It would be unreasonable to expect that to be a high design priority for this lens. Still, the DP1’s lens isn’t half bad in this respect either — I’d rate its bokeh as about equal to my Canon 35/2.0’s.

Republished by permission from original author Petteri Sulonen from his website.

Eclectic Choices Content by Bruce Kraus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://eclecticchoices.wordpress.com/about/.

Physical design and build

The initial impression given by the DP1 is a good one. Fit and finish are very good, with no slop, squeaks, or creaks, although the materials aren’t quite as heavy-gauge as in certain other top-drawer compacts. The switches and dials have a solid, positive feel to them, as does the two-position shutter release. The LCD is adequate, but not exceptional. Like most such LCD’s, it’s not easily usable in bright sunlight: for that, a much stronger backlight or a transreflective backing would be needed. The pop-up flash is a nice touch: normally it stays neatly tucked out of the way in the camera body, and a slider switch releases it when needed. All in all, the DP1 looks and feels pretty much like what you ought to expect — a well put-together, solid camera with a purposeful look to it, and some rather clever design touches.

The DP1 is designed to allow full manual control. It has no scene modes; the shooting modes are switched from a control wheel, and they’re the basic P-A-S-M ones found on most cameras ever since automatic exposure was invented. It has a dedicated manual-focus wheel with a quite a lot of throw and a clear distance scale, positioned right at the thumb. There is also an AE lock button that can be reprogammed for AF lock. The rest of the control interface is pretty similar to most other compacts — a four-way arrow key pattern, zoom keys (for digital zooming and image review), a delete button, an LCD mode control button, and a review mode button.

Accessories

Sigma manufactures a range of accessories for the DP1. They range from the cute but not really useful to the almost indispensable.

The diminutive EF-140 DG dedicated flash falls squarely into the former category — it doesn’t tilt or swivel and is too small to pack enough punch for bouncing even if it did, so all it does is add a bit of wallop to the necessarily limited onboard flash’s performance, and make it possible to do flash photography with the hood attached (the onboard flash is too close to the lens to “see” over it).

At the other end of the scale lies the hood adapter. It works excellently to protect against glare and shield the lens from accidental knocks or fingerprints. It does add a fair bit of bulk to the camera, and it’s not possible to use a lens cap with it on (why? It would be easy to design a square lens cap to fit on it), but it makes the camera much, much more “fieldable” — for street work, I wouldn’t leave the house without it.

The VF-11 accessory viewfinder is somewhere between the two. It’s absolutely wonderful that Sigma provides one: it solves the sunlight-visibility problem of the LCD marvelously, and shooting from the eye is stabler and, to me, more natural than shooting at arm’s length. Unfortunately, as viewfinders go, the VF-11 doesn’t quite cut the mustard. It’s small, bright, clear, big, crisp, and nice to look through (similar in these respects to the “pretty good, really” viewfinder on my Leica CL), but it’s not much good for framing. It has enough barrel distortion to make it look like a semi-fisheye, while the framelines are ruler-straight, and the field of view delimited by the lines is closer to a 35 mm equivalent than a 28 mm equivalent. That means that it’s hard to get verticals lined up properly in it, and harder still to frame precisely. It’s a great deal more pleasant to look through than the tiny optical-tunnel viewfinders on most compact cameras that even have them, but for framing the scene it doesn’t really do much better.

I’ve heard good things about the Voigtländer accessory viewfinders which are about the same price (although somewhat bigger), so those might be worth a look.

Republished by permission from original author Petteri Sulonen from his website.

Eclectic Choices Content by Bruce Kraus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://eclecticchoices.wordpress.com/about/.

Sigma DP1 with Accessories

Article re-posted by permission from original author (Petteri Sulonen) under a Creative Commons Attributions Licence .

For several years now, I’ve been clamoring for a camera that Mike Johnston has dubbed the “DMD” — Decisive Moment Digital. This would be something with a top-quality fixed focal-length lens, a large (read: 4/3 or bigger) sensor, and full manual control. Finally, in early 2008, Sigma launched the DP1: “a full-spec compact digital camera with all the power of DSLR,” as its manual says. I was able to borrow one for a week to see how it lives up to its promise.

There’s a special category of compact film cameras that doesn’t really have an equivalent in digital gear. The Olympus XA and mju:, Canon Canonet, Konica Hexar, Ricoh GR, and Rollei AF-M 35 and their spiritual siblings combine superb optics and full photographic control with rugged and compact build, trading off zoom flexibility and, for some but not all of them, affordability. Digital compacts have taken the “something for everything” way — they’re either super-compact, shirt-pocket, full-auto snapshot cameras, or more or less bulky extreme-superzoom dSLR-likes. Until the Sigma DP1, about the only camera to break this mold was the Ricoh GR and its follower, the GR II. Unfortunately, they are still saddled with the small, somewhat noisy and limited dynamic-range sensors other compacts also use, which means that trading off the zoom didn’t really buy all that much added image quality or even lens brightness.

The Sigma DP1 in street-shooting configuration, with the (optional) hood and VF-11 viewfinder attached. On the whole, it handles well set up this way. The lens is very effectively shielded from stray light as well as knocks and smudges, and I find it more natural to take pictures through the viewfinder than off the LCD. It doesn’t fit into a pocket as nicely, though, and there’s no way to use a lens cap.

The Sigma DP1 represents a direction in digital camera design that I desperately want to succeed. It doesn’t attempt to be something for everyone; rather, it is designed for a more narrow mission, and is designed to perform that as well as possible. It combines extremely compact size with a superb 28 mm equivalent, f/4.0 lens, and an APS-C sized, 4.7 million pixel location Foveon X3 sensor. Its hardware focus wheel indicates that is designed to be easily used in manual-focus mode. Sigma also makes an accessory viewfinder that fits in the flash hotshoe, which means that it can be used at the eye, like a traditional film camera, rather than by framing from the LCD at arm’s length, like most compacts. If someone made cameras to order, the DP1 would be very close to how I’d spec one for myself.

This article is not a comprehensive review of the Sigma DP1. The camera has a quite a few features that I don’t even mention. Instead, these are “field notes” about the camera’s suitability for a particular type of photographer, and particular kind of photography — myself, and the kind of pictures I take. Therefore, please takes these thoughts for what they are, and, as always, draw your own conclusions.

Physical design and build

The initial impression given by the DP1 is a good one. Fit and finish are very good, with no slop, squeaks, or creaks, although the materials aren’t quite as heavy-gauge as in certain other top-drawer compacts. The switches and dials have a solid, positive feel to them, as does the two-position shutter release. The LCD is adequate, but not exceptional. Like most such LCD’s, it’s not easily usable in bright sunlight: for that, a much stronger backlight or a transreflective backing would be needed. The pop-up flash is a nice touch: normally it stays neatly tucked out of the way in the camera body, and a slider switch releases it when needed. All in all, the DP1 looks and feels pretty much like what you ought to expect — a well put-together, solid camera with a purposeful look to it, and some rather clever design touches.

The DP1 is designed to allow full manual control. It has no scene modes; the shooting modes are switched from a control wheel, and they’re the basic P-A-S-M ones found on most cameras ever since automatic exposure was invented. It has a dedicated manual-focus wheel with a quite a lot of throw and a clear distance scale, positioned right at the thumb. There is also an AE lock button that can be reprogammed for AF lock. The rest of the control interface is pretty similar to most other compacts — a four-way arrow key pattern, zoom keys (for digital zooming and image review), a delete button, an LCD mode control button, and a review mode button.

Accessories

Sigma manufactures a range of accessories for the DP1. They range from the cute but not really useful to the almost indispensable.

The diminutive EF-140 DG dedicated flash falls squarely into the former category — it doesn’t tilt or swivel and is too small to pack enough punch for bouncing even if it did, so all it does is add a bit of wallop to the necessarily limited onboard flash’s performance, and make it possible to do flash photography with the hood attached (the onboard flash is too close to the lens to “see” over it).

At the other end of the scale lies the hood adapter. It works excellently to protect against glare and shield the lens from accidental knocks or fingerprints. It does add a fair bit of bulk to the camera, and it’s not possible to use a lens cap with it on (why? It would be easy to design a square lens cap to fit on it), but it makes the camera much, much more “fieldable” — for street work, I wouldn’t leave the house without it.

The VF-11 accessory viewfinder is somewhere between the two. It’s absolutely wonderful that Sigma provides one: it solves the sunlight-visibility problem of the LCD marvelously, and shooting from the eye is stabler and, to me, more natural than shooting at arm’s length. Unfortunately, as viewfinders go, the VF-11 doesn’t quite cut the mustard. It’s small, bright, clear, big, crisp, and nice to look through (similar in these respects to the “pretty good, really” viewfinder on my Leica CL), but it’s not much good for framing. It has enough barrel distortion to make it look like a semi-fisheye, while the framelines are ruler-straight, and the field of view delimited by the lines is closer to a 35 mm equivalent than a 28 mm equivalent. That means that it’s hard to get verticals lined up properly in it, and harder still to frame precisely. It’s a great deal more pleasant to look through than the tiny optical-tunnel viewfinders on most compact cameras that even have them, but for framing the scene it doesn’t really do much better.

I’ve heard good things about the Voigtländer accessory viewfinders which are about the same price (although somewhat bigger), so those might be worth a look.

This Is What I Call A Lens!

The Sigma DP1’s reason for being is image quality. It is, after all, among the most expensive compact digitals on the market today, and its feature set is limited. Its main selling point is that it puts a dSLR-quality image in a compact camera.

It delivers. The DP1 is capable of producing image quality that’s not merely class-leading, but in a class of its own. No other compact camera comes close, and it puts up a good fight with the full-frame sensor on the aging but still pretty damn good Canon EOS-5D I use for my main camera.

The lens on the DP1 is, without question, one of the very best I’ve ever come across. It performs impeccably at all apertures and focus distances. In fact, unless the picture was taken at a very close focus distance that would show the depth of field, I would not be able to tell at which aperture a photo was taken without very careful examination of comparison shots taken at the same time of the same subject at different apertures. The corners are dead sharp and there is virtually no distortion. The only lens-related artifact I could find was a touch of lateral CA — and that only in the background of “hyperfocal” pictures where the focus was set to around 3 meters. Aperture for aperture, the Sigma lens handily beats the excellent Canon 24/2.8 I used for my semi-controlled comparison shots. Sigma’s long experience at designing optics shows — things really don’t get any better as lenses go.

On a lens with these specifications, bokeh really doesn’t matter much — you’ll have to shoot very close up to throw the background significantly out of focus. It would be unreasonable to expect that to be a high design priority for this lens. Still, the DP1’s lens isn’t half bad in this respect either — I’d rate its bokeh as about equal to my Canon 35/2.0’s.

Let’s Pixel-Peep

Lakes of ink, and possibly some blood, have been spilled over the topic of exactly how many “Bayer” megapixels a “Foveon” megapixel counts for. I really don’t want to wade into these waters (although I do dip in a toe below). Still, I did shoot some semi-controlled tests against my EOS-5D, so here are a few crops for whatever they’re worth. I did most of my comparisons by downsampling the EOS-5D pictures to the same pixel dimensions as the ones from the DP1; they were shot at a slightly different tripod position because the Canon lens was a 24 mm while the Sigma is 28 mm equivalent.

Why the EF 24/2.8? Well, for one thing, I don’t have a 28 mm prime for my Canon, and comparing the superb 16.6/4.0 on the DP1 to the short end of a standard zoom on the Canon would have been unfair. For another thing, the 24/2.8 is optically a somewhat similar design to the Sigma — unlike the 28/2.8, it’s a moderately complex, very well-corrected design, with little fancy things like a floating group to maintain consistency across different focus distances. In fact, of my normal-or-wider lenses, only the 50/2.5 Macro produces a sharper frame corner-to-corner.

canon-center-f11

sigma-center-f4

Canon 24/2.8 on EOS-5D vs Sigma DP1, round two, center of the frame. When it comes to detail, the two are pretty much indistinguishable. Interestingly, neither camera handles the fabric spine of the book next to Amphigorey Also perfectly. The Canon suffers from some color moiré — the bluish and grayish-blue mottles — whereas the Sigma has luminance moiré (the horizontal banding along it).

To my eye, when it comes to resolution, the downsampled EOS-5D images are indistinguishable from the native DP1 pictures. When comparing the other way — converting the DP1 pictures to “Large” size (13.6 MP), then downsampling these to the EOS-5D’s native pixel dimensions, it’s pretty clear to me that the 5D frames hold noticeably more detail. For example, the double line around the Amphigorey Also title is clearly distinguishable in the Canon frame, but not on the DP1 frame. In practice, this will only make a difference at pretty large print sizes — we’re talking A3 and up. I really don’t want any e-mail on this particular topic; here are the pictures, draw your own conclusions.

canon-center-fullrez

sigma-center-fullrez

Resolution compared at the Canon’s native resolution: the DP1 photo has been upsampled in Sigma Photo Pro to “Large” (13.6 MP) size, then downsampled to the Canon’s pixel dimensions. Look again at the blue spine: the weave looks coarser on the Sigma than the Canon. If it weren’t for the moiré, this would actually give a better idea of the texture than the alternative — blurring away everything below Nyquist. With random textures such as vegetation or sand, this is a definite plus, but with repeating ones, we still see the occasional touch of moiré.

As to imaging artifacts, the DP1 produces almost none. The only one worth mentioning that I saw, either in my test shots or my real-life ones, is a touch of luminance moiré here and there on high-frequency repeating patterns, such as in the crops above. None of my DP1 real-life photos had enough moiré to make any difference in practice; I had to look hard for it, and would not have found it had I not known where to look. In this respect, the Foveon X3 sensor does live up to its reputation — the pictures are beautifully detailed and very natural-looking right down to the pixel level. Put another way, when messing with them in Photoshop, I often inadvertently zoomed in a notch too much simply because at 100% they looked like I ought to be able to.

Another of the Foveon sensor’s strengths is the way it handles highlights. This is the first digital camera I’ve used in bright sunlight without having any problems at all. Even the default tone curve renders them rather nicely, and the highlight control on Sigma Photo Pro let me recover even more of them. The difference is dramatic, especially compared to other compact digitals.

Partying for Jesus

Evangelical Christians bringing the Good News to Helsinki’s hung-over crowd on May 1. Direct sunlight, white dress, man in black suit also in the scene normally means bad trouble. The DP1 took this type of scene in its stride — I never lost the highlights on a correctly exposed scene. This is a major advantage when shooting in this type of light!

Available Light

In available light performance, the sensor is about a stop behind the one on my 5D, although the sensor’s imaging characteristics deteriorate in a different way from any other digital camera’s I’ve used. The noise pattern is tighter and very pleasant to look at; there’s no clumping or blobbing to be seen. On the other hand, past ISO 400, a very low-frequency color blotching starts to appear; it’s not pretty and can be tricky to deal with, especially when trying to recover an underexposed frame. For these purposes, consider going black-and-white: the DP1 produces some of the most natural and beautiful B/W tones I’ve seen from any digital camera.

Joanna B&W

Joanna in B/W. This is almost the first frame I took with the DP-1. The conversion to black and white is directly from Sigma Photo Pro. I love the way the camera and converter got the tones — and it somehow came very naturally, without having to do any extensive tweaking. Even though I’d never used SPP before, it took me perhaps five minutes to get this result.

At ISO 100-200, image quality is impeccable and, for all practical purposes, constant. At ISO 400, image quality holds up excellently as long as you’re careful not to underexpose — if you’re under a stop and have to push it, some artifacts will start to emerge, much like the 5D at ISO800. The camera’s highest built-in sensitivity, ISO 800, is just fine — a tight, grain-like noise pattern emerges, but downsampled to screen size or printed, the pictures look impeccable. If you underexpose a stop and push the RAW file a notch, you will get a perfectly serviceable ISO 1600, although you may have to start thinking of how to deal with the low-frequency color noise that raises its head. Finally, shooting at ISO 800 but two stops under is clearly a stop too far — at ISO 3200 equivalent, the shadows get cut off harshly, and horizontal pattern noise shows up in the low midtones.

yum-meat

“Yum, meat!” I took this one at ISO400, near the limits of hand-holdability in a difficult mixed-lighting environment.

iso400 noise

At actual pixels it looks like this — a very fine, tight noise pattern, with no discernible loss of detail. This isn’t quite as clean as the EOS-5D at ISO400; it’s similar to it at ISO800, only the noise pattern is more pleasant.

However, a low-light camera the DP1 isn’t. The f/4.0 aperture of the lens is a significant limitation, and there’s no image stabilization. It’s pretty easy to reach ISO800, 1/30, and f/4.0 in normal indoor lighting, and pushing beyond that requires a certain amount of trickery — exceptionally steady hands, a support, flash, or pushing the sensor. Many small-sensor compacts can manage these light levels with less trouble; the Canon G9 for example does a decent ISO200 and serviceable ISO400, has a lens that’s a stop brighter, and has optical image stabilization that adds another stop or two’s worth of hand-holdability on top of that. Natural-light hand-held photography is not this camera’s primary mission. If only Sigma had built it around a lens that’s a bit narrower but a stop brighter!

art lunch

“Art Lunch.” Pushing the limits: this one is at ISO800, with a fair bit of “Sigma fill light” and a touch of AE compensation added. I’d say this is pretty close to ISO1600 equivalent. In black and white, it isn’t bad at all.

iso800 plus noise

In color and at actual pixels, it’s still tolerable, but only just. Notice the low-frequencey color blotching — the shifts from magenta to yellow and back. Note, again, that this is pushed ISO 800, and I really wouldn’t want to push it much further. Not in color anyway.

To be continued…

Eclectic Choices Content by Bruce Kraus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://eclecticchoices.wordpress.com/about/.

This was as much fun as watching an eclipse. While the sun set, the blooms opened up in a matter of an hour or so. We’ve had this San Pedro cactus (Trichocereus Pachanoi) for many years and this was the first time it has ever bloomed! The flowers were about 6-9 inches in diameter and smelled sweet and fragrant.  Though I’ve never personally ingested San Pedro, here’s an interesting link relating to the uses of this cactus in Andean and coastal Peru. Make sure to click on these and check out the detail my Sigma DP1 has rendered!

As a photographer, I look forward to the final release of Lightroom 3. I wonder what Apple has in mind in response to Adobe’s public beta release of Lightroom 3. If Apple Aperture 3 does not support Foveon XF3 raw files and/or the application does not support linear DNG – it will be a dead-end for me. What good is Apertures’s slick interface if it does not support a broader range of cameras?

At present, the SilkyPix Developer Pro beta application actually processes the X3F raw files from my Sigma DP1 camera better than Lightroom. Additionally, I have always liked the awesome output of Capture One Pro but I doubt there will be any support for Sigma cameras in version 5.

Den här tiden på året är det roligt att ta bilder. Ljuset och naturens färger gör bilderna färg- och konstrastrika. Det gillar jag! Under veckan som gick var jag på en intern myndighetskonferens på Lidingö och lyckades smita ut några tillfällen för att ta några bilder och dessutom irriterade jag mina medarbetare genom att försöka ta några porträttbilder (och som jag inte vågar visa upp).  Portättfoto är något som jag verkligen vill lära mig att göra bättre.

Närheten till vattnet vid konferensanläggningen Skogshem och Wijk ger andra möjligheter än vad jag är van vid på Uppsalaslätten. Morgondimman var tjock men lättade strax före sessionerna skulle starta igen på morgonen.

Kvällspromenad. Panorama. Det röda området vid solen är en teknisk defekt hos min kamera (Sigma DP1) som jag försökt dämpa i Photoshop. På den nya versionen av kameran som kommer ut nu i höst är detta åtgärdat.

Morgondimma över Lidingö. Telepanorama. En del Photoshop i denna bild.

Morgon i småbåtshamnen. Panorama om fem stående bilder (frihand). Autopano Pro 2 har stitchat ihop bilderna.

Kvällspromenad

Kvällspromenad

Svanholmen. Det framgår att den inte är en så speciellt stor ö att ha sin sommarstuga på...

Fler bilder finns här.

Like the contrast of the sunlight and the clouds

wave of clouds coming in..

MElbURN sun is going down, going down, going down,,

Nice walk, procrastination is always fun ; )

A taxi ran the red and almost ran me over as well.

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Use this image if you like it!

It’s licensed with a Creative Commons – Attribution Noncommersial No derivate works license.

Fran is in town for awhile

Went for a walk with Fran, look at the sky!

some clothing for K's

new sho3s too!!!

V. occupied lately, assignments times four, going to uni is not so different to be banged, gang banged, if you can’t do anything about it? just try to enjoy it. I guess it’s life, too.

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Nem nagy meglepetés, de több helyen is kifutott státuszba került a Sigma DP2 kistesója külföldön is. Elég lassan fogytak el a készletek, vajon mi lesz a DP2-vel így a jelenlegi vetélytársak melett…és a folytatás? Várjuk.

A német Computerbild.de (Google fordítás) közli azt a vad pletykát, hogy a Sigma hamarosan meg fogja jelentetni a kívül-belül átdolgozott Sigma DP1s nevű készülékét. Ugyan a Sigma már kihozta a DP2-t is, ezért elég szokatlan dolog lenne ez a visszalépés a típus elnevezésben. Talán a Sigma így próbál lépést tartani a Leicával, a hamarosan megjelenő Leica X1 biztos megijesztette és kihoznak egy olcsó alternatívát.

Photographed by Guwashi999

Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan 2008/08/12

– License

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It’s licensed with a Creative Commons – Attribution Noncommersial No derivate works license.

View large @ Flickr

Use this image if you like it!

It’s licensed with a Creative Commons – Attribution Noncommersial No derivate works license.

View large @ Flickr

Use this image if you like it!

It’s licensed with a Creative Commons – Attribution Noncommersial No derivate works license.