- Location
- Fremantle, Western Australia
- Name
- Andrew
-
Cameraderie, a friendly photography forum, join now for free!
Sigma Mattias Burling Reviews the Sigma DP 2
- Thread starter Aushiker
- Start date
dougpayne
Top Veteran
- Location
- Sebastopol, CA
- Name
- C.D. Payne
The Merrills are better. The first generation burns out every highlight they can find. Been there, done that.
Archiver
Top Veteran
- Location
- Melbourne, Australia
Funny, but I'm finding quite the opposite. The DP2M consistently meters hot and blows highlights faster than Divine Brown blew Hugh Grant. The original DP2 has a much softer highlight rolloff and lots of detail can be recovered from the highlights. The only way I've found to get the DP2M to more manageable levels is to expose just on the edge of blowing the highlights and then bring up the mids and shadows in post.
- Location
- Milwaukee, WI USA
- Name
- Luke
You will soon need to decide which is worse.....the slow working of the Sigma camera....or the slow working of the Sigma software. But when you and the camera get it right with that Foveon sensor.....you'll forget about all that other stuff.
tilman
All-Pro
- Location
- Portland, OR
Welcome to the weird & wonderful world of Sigma DP cameras... I used the original DP1s and DP2 - and I think I learned a lot using them...
I did get frustrated at some point and didn't upgrade to the Merrills nor the Quattros at the time. I didn't particularly like the increase in size nor the DP2's changed FOV (from 41mm to 45mm
)Since last year I own a DP2 Merrill and this year I bought a DP3 Merrill - so there we are
I still enjoy the minimalistic user interface of the cameras, I'm still blown away by the image quality, and I'm a little more forgiving with the Sigma Software...
(I would recommend though to download an older generation of SPP...
SPP 6.7.1 might be the fastest version, photos from the Merrill that I tested came out with pretty crunchy, crushed black levels... The same files in SPP 5.5.3 (the last SPP pre Quattro release) looked fine.
You can find older versions here (it's not an official Sigma website - but some resources a user compiled)
Archive - Sigma Photo Pro
Welcome to the weird & wonderful world of Sigma DP cameras... I used the original DP1s and DP2 - and I think I learned a lot using them...
I did get frustrated at some point and didn't upgrade to the Merrills nor the Quattros at the time. I didn't particularly like the increase in size nor the DP2's changed FOV (from 41mm to 45mm
Since last year I own a DP2 Merrill and this year I bought a DP3 Merrill - so there we are
I still enjoy the minimalistic user interface of the cameras, I'm still blown away by the image quality, and I'm a little more forgiving with the Sigma Software...
(I would recommend though to download an older generation of SPP...
SPP 6.7.1 might be the fastest version, photos from the Merrill that I tested came out with pretty crunchy, crushed black levels... The same files in SPP 5.5.3 (the last SPP pre Quattro release) looked fine.
You can find older versions here (it's not an official Sigma website - but some resources a user compiled)
Archive - Sigma Photo Pro
Thank you, Tilman.
The camera is more or less new, and it came with SPP 4 on a disk in the box, perhaps I'm better off using that version? I thought the latest version might offer channel selection in monochrome and I saw a thread on here suggesting that high ISO performance is improved in mono if you get the right mix of the sensor layers? Lol, I think I have a lot to learn.
I charged it up last night and had a brief play/set it up.
I hadn't realised base iso is only 50! As an MFT user with their base level of 200, that's certainly different.
I've set it to raw capture only. There's no wifi, so jpegs aren't much use anyway, and the jpeg engine is reportedly poor?
Its funny reading reviews from 2009 and finding complaints that the DP's lacked a lot of features even then. 10 years down the track......
I do kind of wish it was a Merrill, purely for increased resolution, but let's see how we go.
The shop had a big landscape print (16:9) that they said was from the Dp2, and it did look very "filmic".
Hopefully the files "blow me away" like many others have found. The shop also have a DP1 on consignment. Who knows, I may end up with two! Lol.
The 2S will come to work with me today.
I'll update this thread, or start a new one, when I've used it a bit.
Regards from Melbourne.
tilman
All-Pro
- Location
- Portland, OR
I 'think' you can get a similar result by setting SPP to Monochrome and swinging the color wheel in SPP to blue.
You can install both versions of SPP side by side and just do a test if you get better results in one or the other...
You either love them or hate them. And sometimes both at the same time
Definitely an unusual camera. (And definitely not an all-rounder. It couldn't be my "only" camera, but used at the right times and with the right mindset it can be good fun
)but used at the right times and with the right mindset it can be good fun
That's how I'm viewing it. Basically as a film camera, for select shots and planned moments once I know what it's good at.
