Incredible camera for a limited set of situations

This camera has been receiving a lot of negative reviews, from people who I believe expect the wrong thing for this product. It is not at all like every other camera, and it does most thing worse than the standard compact. It is unforgiving in low light and against shaky hands. It is relatively slow and battery consuming, and its images will fill up your memory card quite quickly. But it lets you create images that are very difficult to achieve with the standard compact camera, or even most advanced DSLRs, under the right conditions. It you buy it understanding these preconditions, you are likely to end up very happy with your purchase.

Shape and aesthetics

I love it for its strange but functional shape. It is broad so that you grip it with your hands well apart, allowing for small movements of the hands to translate into very little angular shake in the camera. Wonderful. Large for a pocket, small in a bag. I love the aesthetics that are so driven by function rather than convention, unlike almost every other camera out there. Like cars, a lot of products today seem to converge on a very similar general shape, and that is an uninteresting development. Got to love a product that makes a statement, especially from a functional perspective. This camera is built to deliver quality images under specific circumstances, and the shape communicates and supports this purpose.

Use

It is great to use. It forces me to slow down and consider the image I am about to capture. It is a bit slow, and the files are large, so I take fewer and better pictures. That makes post processing and backup much easier.

Some post processing done here, WB, crop, straighten and even lens correction.

That is it for now. A lot is said else where, I might add more later on.

You're perfectly correct;

its like using a right size spanner rather than a swiss knife.

It doesn't look like its a general consent

Short and to the point, good review
--
Barry Byrd
http://www.pbase.com/barryb
http://www.pbase.com/sigmadslr

'Liking it ain't required'
Gary Hale
1952-2008

I think that the excellent images, full of crisp detail and the almost total absence of chromatic aberration is not merit of the lens, or not only, but also and particulary of the coupled firmware that processes the image of that specific lens.

Zooming in liveview (useful for precise manual focus), you see many flaws, especially strong chromatic aberration, out of the central area of ​​the frame.

This let me think that it will unlikely be that Sigma will make a zoom version of these dp cameras, and even less likely a small mirrorless body with interchangeable lens, in my opinion this would lead to very disappointing results.

Claudio Costerni