DP-1: A negative view

[Amin Sabet]

Rubbish is too kind.

I believe that referring to anyone's well meaning and carefully thought out comments as "rubbish" is in fact more than rude enough. Unfortunate that you find it "too kind."

--
http://www.aminfoto.com

 

[Ed_S]

Rubbish is too kind.

I believe that referring to anyone's well meaning and carefully
thought out comments as "rubbish" is in fact more than rude enough.
Unfortunate that you find it "too kind."

--
http://www.aminfoto.com

All,

Lighten up, if I may gently offer.

MUCH harsher language has been used in "friendly" exchanges both con and pro Sigma. A kinder, gentler forum would be nice, but I think one step toward that is not to take things too personally.

Kind regards,
--
Ed_S
http://www.pbase.com/ecsquires

 

[webshark3]

While I view the GR and the DP1 as a sort of appples to oranges comparison, I must admit. I had to chose between the GR series and the DP1, so I guess they did compete.

I am also curious to see how they compare in low light, and it looks like you'll be the guy to show us.

I spent much time in the Ricoh forum, and if it wasn't for it's members I never would have considered a GR or GR2. In the end, it moved from off my list, to the #2 spot.

In the end though, I'm a sucker for a APS-C compact.

I noticed a lot of dissent in the Ricoh forums after the GX100 was released. "Why would I buy a GR when the GX100 is 3x zoom and faster!?"

And the defensive responses "It's the lens!" (The GRs do have a great lens)

If Sigma does release a few more DPs (3x zoom, etc) I'm sure we'll see a lot of defensiveness over model numbers here too.

--

I have successfully built a Full Frame DSLR with 50mm F1.4 lens that is less than 1 inch thick!

On a completely separate note, does anyone know how to dislodge something from a industrial trash compactor?

 

[webshark3]

I just said A0 since Sigma did (proudly) display images at that size.

Do you know the largest image Ricoh has put on display from a GR (II)? (Not trying to insult, I honestly don't know)

--

I have successfully built a Full Frame DSLR with 50mm F1.4 lens that is less than 1 inch thick!

On a completely separate note, does anyone know how to dislodge something from a industrial trash compactor?

 

[ShutterFlutter]

I'm just itching to get my hands on it to evaluate to my own taste. The fact that it isn't available anywhere yet is somewhat frustrating to me because we're just dealing reports from the privileged few.

I too expect very few things to work right and be happy. I'm certain my settings will be:
lcd off
manual prefocus to 1 - 2 meters
F4

for majority of the time I will shoot this way. For these settings I expect to get no shutter lag and if I do have a shutter lag I will not be happy. The writing times bother me a tiny bit but again it will have to pass the muster during street shooting. I expect to get much better quality than from other p&s cameras, somewhat characteristic Foveon look that I want to fully exploit. As with my normal shooting I expect 90 percent of my work to be in black and white and therefore am not very concerned about Foveon colors in high iso under artificial lighting (some say it isn't an issue with DP1 anymore and if so I'll take it as a bonus.)

 

[Amin Sabet]

All,

Lighten up, if I may gently offer.

MUCH harsher language has been used in "friendly" exchanges both con
and pro Sigma. A kinder, gentler forum would be nice, but I think one
step toward that is not to take things too personally.

I believe that proper conduct in here is the same as proper conduct in person. If I met you in a conference at my university and called your ideas "rubbish," people around us would be shocked. The fact that you and I have seen even worse behavior in these forums doesn't make it any better. So yes, you may tell "All" to lighten up (though I rarely find myself addressed as "All"), but I believe that you are missing the point. A step towards a better forum is to simply be civil.

 

[Amin Sabet]

While I view the GR and the DP1 as a sort of appples to oranges
comparison, I must admit. I had to chose between the GR series and
the DP1, so I guess they did compete.

I am also curious to see how they compare in low light, and it looks
like you'll be the guy to show us.

I'm pretty sure I'll be one of several. Sean Reid is sure to do a comparison, and Pavel Kudrys also discussed a comparison. Then there are places like DPReview, DC Resource, Imaging Resource, etc, though they are less likely to directly compare the two.

I noticed a lot of dissent in the Ricoh forums after the GX100 was
released. "Why would I buy a GR when the GX100 is 3x zoom and
faster!?"

Yes, there is some of that.

If Sigma does release a few more DPs (3x zoom, etc) I'm sure we'll
see a lot of defensiveness over model numbers here too.

More than likely. It really is unfortunate. I try to be positive about all these cameras. It's just nice to see these companies taking risks and pushing the envelope to bring us better tools.

--
http://www.aminfoto.com

 

[Magnus78699]

"There is one control wheel at the top rear of the camera. It turns very easily with no detents and very little resistance. It seems to be dedicated to manual focus only. How often one needs to set focus manually in a camera like this? And since the wheel turns almost by itself, it cannot be used to preset a 3-5m ?hyperfocal? distance and then forgetting about it."

Is this true? I'd like to be able to pre-focus the camera at a fixed distance. This makes it seem hard to do.

 

[chekist]

This sounds good. I have Fuji for portraits and as far as I can tell comparing to 5D and D300, S5 is still the best in that realm. At the same time for landscapes it is really a mixed blessing. On one hand you can do miracles with dynamic range in that camera and colors are great; but if you are shooting a lot of greens it becomes just a wall of green, worse than D200.

After looking at a lot of images it seems like Sigma does a great job in that respect. I think this is an artifact of Bayer sensor extrapolation -- amount of detail is more than Sigma you can actually zoom in more, but at no point it feels like there is enough detail. With Sigma this is the first thing that I notice. I am not sure if color is better or not...
--
Eugene
http://www.stanford.edu/~chekist/Photography

 

[richard stone]

Rubbish is too kind.

I believe that referring to anyone's well meaning and carefully
thought out comments as "rubbish" is in fact more than rude enough.
Unfortunate that you find it "too kind."

--
http://www.aminfoto.com

In the history of the Bayer-Foveon discussion it has often been claimed that the way to make Bayer images look just as good as Foveon images is to downsize the Bayer image. You were not the first to have this idea, and although I note you do not claim to be the first, you consider the idea well thought out, so you may believe you were the first.

Foveon sensors generally have better image quality than roughly equivalent Bayers, for mostly known reasons, but Foveon sensors tend to be held not to perform as well at high ISO as Bayers. It is a trade-off, one could say. The solution to the apparent poor performance of Foveon sensors may be by either software or a change in the chip, and massive noise reduction and the creation of cartoon colors, but it may also involve a wholesale change of perception.

I seconded an opinion from a prior post on the basis that people do not actually ever downsize the images. Instead, all I can see is that this approach to Bayer quality enhancement is used to argue, I think wrongly, that Bayer images can be just as good as the Foveon ones just by downsizing them. First, it is wrong because people do not actually do it, they just talk about doing it. Second, I don't think downsizing is really going to finally solve or resolve the issue, because it is not just about the number of pixels.

The Bayers also almost all use a AA filter which will cause overlap no matter what size the pixels on the sensor. In addition, the interpolation itself creates a certainlevel of error. So it won't be as good as the Foveon. And there is more to the Foveon IQ than just resolution.

Your more recent comment was that one solution is to reduce the size of the prints. So how big do you print that 12MP/3 image? 5x7? 8x10 max? No one does that. After painful and repeated bouts of sharpening they print until the resolution just obviously runs out.

Do you actually downsize your prints to make them appear sharp? I don't have your statement in that regard, but you express your proposal as a theoretical one, so I doubt it. Even if you did, I don't think it would be that helpful, but of course, smaller prints seem sharper.

Rubbish is, I think, the right word. I apologize if you were personally offended, because I did not mean what I said to be a personal attack.

Richard

--
My small gallery: http://www.pbase.com/richard44/inbox

 

[Amin Sabet]

Rubbish is, I think, the right word.

Do you go around calling people's ideas rubbish to their face, or is it just the comfort of the web that brings out this behavior in you? Either way, I don't bother responding to points raised by people who behave this way, in person or online.

 

[dmaclau]

Amin I think you've hit it right. Upon making the switch to digital I searched hard for a compact camera with a wide lens and also a larger chip and of course found neither really. The DP-1 offers both with the expectation of good low light performance, if the lens is as good as it appears it's a hat trick.

I kind of suspect that the following for this camera won't turn out to bring Nikon or Canon into the market but I hope it does. I'm concerned that Sigma is rumored to be close to releasing a DP-2 and a DP-3 as this could have a chilling effect on DP-1 sales.

This past week or so has been my first exposure to forums. I am of the opinion that one could whine about all of the imagined shortcomings of this camera...wish the lens were wider/longer, wish the lens were faster, wish the unit had deeper/shallower DOF and then also join the Nikon forum and whine ad nausem that the D2X doesn't fit into a shirt pocket, or doesn't have live view LCD screen or....

 

[The Panda]

Sorry if you took offense to my usage of the word. I wasn't attacking you at all. For the past 2 weeks I have been hearing downsize this downsize that. And the measure that everyone is worried about is quality at the biggest size.

I have read so many threads about 'oh 4.67MP chip isn't enough' well this how how you prove to them that it is enough. You bring the X3F images up to the level playing field of the higher native resolution cameras.

You are right downsizing is one way of measuring quality. But in this case it isn't necessary, because to be honest a X3F at 4.67MP and a GRD (or whatever camera) at the same res is going to be very very very close in terms of quality.

This is the MOST important (imho) advantage of the Foveon. It is what sold me to the cameras.

Too be honest all this talk about downsizing images is rubbish.

There is no need to use inflammatory language or be insulting.
Downsizing, upsizing, and printing at the same size are all different
ways to get at the same issue, which is comparing on an equal playing
field. None of these methods is perfect. Even the gold standard,
printing, is dependent on the quality of the scaling used to achieve
the final print resolution. Downsizing a GRD image to 4.7MP is
perfectly reasonable, because a 14MP Foveon X3 image is no better
than an upsized version of the native 4.7MP image. If a GRD II file
downsized to 4.7MP looks as good as a DP1 image at 4.7MP, and I'm not
saying that it will, then it logically follows that the GRD II image
will upscale just as well. There's no magic new detail that appears
when you choose to upscale a Foveon image.

--
http://www.aminfoto.com

--
-Chris Pandoliano
http://www.pandaism.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thepanda/

 

[brittonx]

"There is one control wheel at the top rear of the camera. It turns
very easily with no detents and very little resistance. It seems to
be dedicated to manual focus only. How often one needs to set focus
manually in a camera like this? And since the wheel turns almost by
itself, it cannot be used to preset a 3-5m ?hyperfocal? distance and
then forgetting about it."

Is this true? I'd like to be able to pre-focus the camera at a fixed
distance. This makes it seem hard to do.

If you haven't already done so, you should go and read at http://www.rytterfalk.com . Carl says that the MF is so good and fun that he is using it most of the time.
--Britton
My photos page: http://brittonx.smugmug.com/
Blog: http://brittonx.blogspot.com/

 

[The Panda]

Man I feel the same way. Even after Carl's video I wonder how it'll be to get pin tack sharp.

I'm excited about it though this is the one thing I have really really wanted in a camera this size.

"There is one control wheel at the top rear of the camera. It turns
very easily with no detents and very little resistance. It seems to
be dedicated to manual focus only. How often one needs to set focus
manually in a camera like this? And since the wheel turns almost by
itself, it cannot be used to preset a 3-5m ?hyperfocal? distance and
then forgetting about it."

Is this true? I'd like to be able to pre-focus the camera at a fixed
distance. This makes it seem hard to do.

--
-Chris Pandoliano
http://www.pandaism.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thepanda/

 

[Amin Sabet]

Sorry if you took offense to my usage of the word. I wasn't attacking
you at all. For the past 2 weeks I have been hearing downsize this
downsize that. And the measure that everyone is worried about is
quality at the biggest size.

I understand how that could get to you. The thing that impresses me the most about the DP1 samples I have seen so far is how good they look at any size. Even resized to 900 x 600 pixels on screen, they look better than images I have generally gotten from small sensor cameras. It's a combination of dynamic range, color, contrast, and bokeh mainly. I too like to pixel peep and look at detail/noise in large prints, but that is less important to me since most of my prints are small-moderate in size.

--
http://www.aminfoto.com

 

[chekist]

Jesus! You sigma people (or some of you) are true fanatics. And
Nikon/Canon wars are looked down at...

All compact cameras are operated with one hand -- right one.
Considering the small size it is usually uncomfortable to operate
compacts with 2 hands. This is what thread is referring to.

Some people seem to think you can operate a camera easily with one
hand only. I have not found this generally to be so, and not just
with the DP-1 but with any small camera I have used.

Can you really operate a camera entirely with the same hand you hold
it in? This limits the controls you can access and also makes it
possible to lose grip on the camera. And frankly, although it can be
done to some extent I do not value it highly as a primary design
constraint of a camera because the fact remains that I have two
hands, and what would the other be doing anyway while I am taking a
picture? It seems strange to get overwrought on this point.

With the DP-1 as with any camera, I find it easy to hold with the
left and operate with the right. In a pinch I can operate some
controls with the right hand while also holding the camera, but again
for stability I prefer using both.

Operate is different from entirely operate. No one claims that you should be to access every option with one finger, but how about press shutter? OK, so we have a starting point. On all my SLRs and the ones that I used to have I can change aperture with the same hand that I am holding camera. This is what this reviewer is referring to. Those include D70s, D80, D200, D40, S5, E300, E500, E410. But not DP1?

Ask yourself a question: "will there ever be a negative review about
Sigma that I will accept?"

I am happy to select valid points raised that really are issues. For
instance, on the DP-1 I would have liked to see a more direct way to
change metering. Yet it's not these kinds of points that repetitive
posters raise, but instead far more subjective things that they find
objectionable and insist everyone else shoudl as well, brooking no
dissent that would say some poeple mght htink otherwise.

Others should ask themselves why it is only the opinions of Sigma
owners that should change.

Who said that Sigma owners should change their opinions? But this guy did actually look at 2 DP1's which is more than I can assume about almost all his detractors. He is talking about bad high ISO, this is a valid point for instance. He says that it is very slow focusing and taking picture, this is a valid point. But he is being attacked on silly things just to attack him.

After reading this forum (I also like idea
of DP1) I do not believe there will be. I read some guys review who
took pictures with on his own flash-card in Vegas and said that high
ISO is very substandard. He was attacked about breaking Sigma policy
of taking pictures on your own CF.

And also about the fact that he was using a pre-production camera to
make a final judgement, and that he was basing his whole judgement on
camera performance only on his underexposed in-camera JPG images
without considering the already available higher quality ISO 800
images from RAW.

This was not a preproduction version, or at least it should have not been. This version was displayed 1 month before they go for sale. Too late for prototype, production should have already be running full steam. And also they made it available to dpreview.com already, but for some reason the only image at ISO 400 that dpreview took was of that strange glass ceiling that cannot show noise. Since when JPG quality is irrelevant?

When 28mm equivalent specs
appeared I raised some doubts that this is the most useful single
lens, as a response I got an answer: "Yes I do not use 16mm lens all
the time, but I like the challenge." What?? I am looking for a camera
that works with me not against me.

My philosophy is you take what you can get and enjoy what you can,
and to realize when the universe cannot change to accommodate you. I
know a zoom lens or faster lens would have been large enough to not
make the camera as appealing for many people, so I accept what is
there and am thankful that at least one wish, for a good wide lens,
has been met (Ok, two what with the full-size sensor). As a way of
meeting the camera half-way I intend to try some TC's on the camera
as well,which increases the bulk but at least is an optional increase
of my own choosing to obtain longer focal lengths, and not one forced
on my by the camera maker.

OK we have different philosophy: I left a communist country so that I do not to need to be unconditionally happy about weird decisions that flow my way. Why should I assume that this is the only possible decision that could be made? Normal lenses are usually the easiest to make and the smallest ones. 16mm is not. I guess unlike you, I would have to pay $800 for this camera, so I cannot be happy about having this camera until I decide to get it. And so happens that where I live I have many alternatives of what to do with $800. So I am saddened (just saddened, not preparing a noose) by the fact that it did not turn out to be such an easy choice, rather than being happy that general secretary in his infinite wisdom decided to alleviate my burden of deciding when to use ISO1600.

--
---> Kendall
http://InsideAperture.com
http://www.pbase.com/kgelner
http://www.pbase.com/sigmadslr/user_home

--
Eugene
http://www.stanford.edu/~chekist/Photography

 

[Amin Sabet]

I just said A0 since Sigma did (proudly) display images at that size.

Do you know the largest image Ricoh has put on display from a GR
(II)? (Not trying to insult, I honestly don't know)

I have no idea. I know some Ricoh owners who have proudly displayed their images larger than that; but I don't know what Ricoh, as a company, has displayed. I also have not personally seen the DP1 A0 prints, and I have gotten mixed reports from those who have. Personally, I care very little which camera produces the best A0 prints. I've seen enough samples to believe that the DP1 will produce fantastic prints at the sizes I use. Furthermore, this business of downsampling or upsampling to match sizes for comparison is only of utility in comparing detail/noise, whereas there are a number of strengths to DP1 image quality that go beyond such considerations.

--
http://www.aminfoto.com

 

[The Panda]

Amen

Too be honest what really convinced me into Foveon was Carl's video showing his trip to Norway using Lightroom. He did a 100%crop view of this macro and I was blown away by the detail.

Later when I got my SD14 I took a photo of some cherry tomatoes and was mind boggled by the detail I got back. The little hairs on the stem were very sharp.

I don't normally print bigger than 4x6 but being about to print 8x10 and have the option to go larger is really something that I like both quality and money-wise.

I just said A0 since Sigma did (proudly) display images at that size.

Do you know the largest image Ricoh has put on display from a GR
(II)? (Not trying to insult, I honestly don't know)

I have no idea. I know some Ricoh owners who have proudly displayed
their images larger than that; but I don't know what Ricoh, as a
company, has displayed. I also have not personally seen the DP1 A0
prints, and I have gotten mixed reports from those who have.
Personally, I care very little which camera produces the best A0
prints. I've seen enough samples to believe that the DP1 will
produce fantastic prints at the sizes I use. Furthermore, this
business of downsampling or upsampling to match sizes for comparison
is only of utility in comparing detail/noise, whereas there are a
number of strengths to DP1 image quality that go beyond such
considerations.

--
http://www.aminfoto.com

--
-Chris Pandoliano
http://www.pandaism.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thepanda/

 

[Amin Sabet]

Let me start by saying that I realize that there is more to image quality - and more specifically to the image quality strengths of the DP1 - than detail and noise. However, detail and noise are in fact important for image quality and are the basis for the current discussion.

The two end products of our photography are prints and on-screen display. To me, both of these are important. I print at a variety of sizes and also show my images to others onscreen. It is a fact that images from digital cameras are generally require resizing in either case (printing or onscreen display), though often many of us are unaware of the resizing being done for printing. Until I started printing large, I never considered it at all. However, depending on the size of the output, out images are either being upsampled or downsampled for final output. It has been my experience and that of many others that when two cameras are compared, one with a low megapixel output and high detail/noise at the pixel level (100% view), and one with a high megapixel output and low detail/noise at the pixel level, that the differences in detail/noise is diminished (and rarely reversed) in comparisons at the same output size. I'll give an example. I have compared the output of a Ricoh GX100 (10MP) to the output of a Fuji F30 (6MP). At 100% magnification on screen, the Fuji detail to noise ratio at high ISO is plainly better than anything I can drag out of the GX100 RAW files with or without NR. However, when I print both files at the same output size, the GX100 file has almost as much, though not quite as much, detail/noise. The difference diminishes. This is true whether I print small (both files being downsampled) or large (both being upsampled). The GX100/F30 comparison is one of many such comparisons. Others have had similar findings for the Canon 5D vs 1D Mk II, Nikon D3 vs Canon 1Ds Mk III, and many others. The reason this issue comes up so much in the Sigma forum is obviously because the Sigma cameras output at a small image size with class-leading sharpness at the pixel level.

People tend to view printing as the gold standard" for this sort of comparison, but in theory printing is not much different than upsampling the images to a different extent until they match at some large image size on screen or downsampling them differentially to match at a lower size. The problem with printing files for comparisons is that it takes more effort, time, and money to print and then scan at high quality for others to see online. Some people go this route, as was the case of an excellent SD14 vs Kodak 14nx comparison done by David Millier and Erik Muehlberger of this forum. That approach is excellent indeed. However, I do think it is possible to do a comparison without printing and scanning. One just has to consider carefully where testing methods can skew the results. I'd like to consider both approaches, upsizing to a matched file size, and downsizing to a matched file size.

Continued in next post...