Sigma DP1 review

It's pocket sized with excellent image quality up to ISO 800.
That's fine, but there's another reason why am I so very happy with this small gem:
The images shine with a very particular, unique brilliance. Maybe this property is due to the Foveon sensor's way of capturing brightness and color information in the relation 1:1. It's really great.
Note: The DP1's JPEGs are terrible, especially for ISO 200 and higher. So always shoot RAW and you'll get wonderful results also for ISO 800.

A couple of days later, I can now share my experience out of a very rare comparison of the DP1 with a Nikon D700 with Zeiss Distagon 2/28 and a Leica M8 with Summicron-M 2/27 Asph.

I simply took RAW-pictures of a newspaper with these three cameras. Nikon and Leica were developed in Capture One 4.8 (with any noise reduction switched off), Sigma in Sigma Photo Pro 3. Result: The Nikon/Zeiss-combination and the Leica are quite similar to each other, with good detail rendition and so on, but when I compared it to the DP1-result, it was evident, that the Nikon- and Leica-results suffer from Bayer interpolation, spoiling detail rendition, whereas the DP1-result is free of any interpolation artefacts! The DP1-results looks crisper, with more detail. It looks more "true" than the other two pics! The DP1 has got a lower pixel count, but makes use of each and every pixel. In contrast, Bayer patterned digicams suffer from loss of details by interpolation and distribute less information on more pixels. Or in other words: The Bayer pattern needs essentially more pixels to show the same amount of details as the Foveon pattern.

Chapeau à Sigma. I am looking forward to the DP2 and the SD15.

Problems:

Almost none - it's a nice tool for the essence of photography, so give the gem some time and enjoy the beauty of its output.

But what about the "almosts" that I expereinced a couple of days later? The sensor's red channel is somewhat problematic. It is easily driven to its limits when it is exposed to objects lit by bright sunlight - when you rely on the in-camera metering. I was quite successful in working around this issue by switching the camera to manual mode and underexpose in critical situations. This, however, means, that taking photos with this camera really needs reflection and adjustment before the shutter button is pressed down. And in some situations, even this work-around will not work: e.g. taking photos with candle lights. These spot lights will make the red channel clip, whatever exposure you have chosen. I haven't tried it yet, but, maybe, setting the camera to higher ISOs and shortening exposure time might reduce the problem a little bit. But then you'll have to compromise IQ.

The M8 and the D700 don't know these problems at all.