forpetessake
Veteran Member
First, the good news, the sensor resolution is outstanding. Somebody interested in large prints will find this camera producing a lot of minute details, arguably better than any camera with a bayer sensor with the same pixel count.
Sigma
Though for most people, who don't print large and prefer looking at the pictures on the computer screen or a large screen TV, the difference in resolution doesn't translate in sharper pictures. Pictures from lower resolution bayer sensor cameras look pretty much as sharp and detailed on the screen.
Fujifilm
Unfortunately,apart from resolution there is nothing really good about the Sigma DP2Q. When you see it's weird design (apparently designed by Homer Simpson
)
Homer Simpson design
you may think that it's not only ugly, but quite uncomfortable too. And you would be correct. Camera is quite inconvenient to hold, lacking in basic ergonomics. For some reason, they also put the manual focus button right where your thumb rests, so accidentally pushing it and getting out of focus pictures becomes pretty common.
The focus is quite slow and unreliable. Camera refuses to focus in low light, and even in good light it would sometimes choose to focus on something different than where the central focus square points.
Missed focus, the central focus area is on the red rose, but the actual focus is behind it.
Taking into account a terrible LCD screen, completely washed out on a sunny day and you don't even notice all your pictures are out of focus until you look at them on a computer screen.
Everything is very slow about this camera: the focus is slow, the writing on the card takes like 5 seconds. So anything that moves isn't suitable for photographing.
Battery life is poor. I took the camera for a 30 min walk, taking about 120 jpeg+raw pictures and the battery indicator showed it had about 1/3 left. That is about 2-3 times worse than a typical compact camera.
The colors coming from camera are quite poor as well in my estimation. The greens are often too dirty-grayish looking, loosing color and turning gray in the shadows.
'dirty' looking greens on a good sunny day when the greens were actually bright and vivid
The red color is lacking definition and can be easily blown out, so you need to significantly underexpose if you are taking pictures of red flowers, or it will be a mess.
red flowers
Finally, there is some noise already at the base ISO, though it won't be normally visible on the screen viewing. The noise becomes noticeable already at ISO 200. And the ISO 400 is borderline usable, depending on the subject. ISO 800 and higher are completely unusable in my estimation.
Bottom line, it's still a one trick pony: it's a great resolution camera and pretty sub par in every other respect.
Sigma
Though for most people, who don't print large and prefer looking at the pictures on the computer screen or a large screen TV, the difference in resolution doesn't translate in sharper pictures. Pictures from lower resolution bayer sensor cameras look pretty much as sharp and detailed on the screen.
Fujifilm
Unfortunately,apart from resolution there is nothing really good about the Sigma DP2Q. When you see it's weird design (apparently designed by Homer Simpson
)
Homer Simpson design
you may think that it's not only ugly, but quite uncomfortable too. And you would be correct. Camera is quite inconvenient to hold, lacking in basic ergonomics. For some reason, they also put the manual focus button right where your thumb rests, so accidentally pushing it and getting out of focus pictures becomes pretty common.
The focus is quite slow and unreliable. Camera refuses to focus in low light, and even in good light it would sometimes choose to focus on something different than where the central focus square points.
Missed focus, the central focus area is on the red rose, but the actual focus is behind it.
Taking into account a terrible LCD screen, completely washed out on a sunny day and you don't even notice all your pictures are out of focus until you look at them on a computer screen.
Everything is very slow about this camera: the focus is slow, the writing on the card takes like 5 seconds. So anything that moves isn't suitable for photographing.
Battery life is poor. I took the camera for a 30 min walk, taking about 120 jpeg+raw pictures and the battery indicator showed it had about 1/3 left. That is about 2-3 times worse than a typical compact camera.
The colors coming from camera are quite poor as well in my estimation. The greens are often too dirty-grayish looking, loosing color and turning gray in the shadows.
'dirty' looking greens on a good sunny day when the greens were actually bright and vivid
The red color is lacking definition and can be easily blown out, so you need to significantly underexpose if you are taking pictures of red flowers, or it will be a mess.
red flowers
Finally, there is some noise already at the base ISO, though it won't be normally visible on the screen viewing. The noise becomes noticeable already at ISO 200. And the ISO 400 is borderline usable, depending on the subject. ISO 800 and higher are completely unusable in my estimation.
Bottom line, it's still a one trick pony: it's a great resolution camera and pretty sub par in every other respect.
