Introduction
This purchase was an acquisition of luck, honestly. Had not been in the local camera store for a while and happened to notice this little Sigma DP2 sitting in one of the cabinets.
I’ve always bee interested in experimenting with the Foveon sensor setup from Sigma, but was never willing to pay the full retail price.
Is the hype about the sensor and lens justified? Is the batter life as bad as the claims state?
Journey with me on the exploration of this Sigma DP2 and it’s “14mp” sensor to find out!
Disclaimer – sample images represent was is possible to get from this specific camera and lenses used. The images may be straight from camera JPG and or RAW files may have been processed in Lightroom to get them to the vision I wanted.
Tech Stuff
Body
Picking up this body, it is a small and light camera. reminds you of something along the lines of the Ricoh GR styled bodies. There are raised dots on the front and the back to assist in gripping the camera which is perfectly doable one handed.
Power switch is on the center, top of the camera, a button that sits to the left of the mode dial.
Now, a unique feature of the camera is that when in manual focus mode, the distance is controlled by a spinning dial at the rear of the camera. We’ll get into more details on that in the focusing section of the review.
Lots of buttons on the back and they are all on the right side of the rear LCD. The buttons do not have colored lettering on them, so can make it difficult to see what they do quickly.
Dials. There are only 2 dials on the camera, a top mode dial and one on the back by your thumb for adjusting the focus manually.
Buttons. There are a lot of buttons.
They are positioned well on the back and I did not accidentally hit any of them while shooting images.
Control scheme of the camera is different than anything else I’ve used and will take most people some time to get used to it.
There are up and down buttons at the top right of the camera and those are used to adjust the aperture setting in aperture priority mode. Then, adjusting exposure compensation is done by using the left and right d-pad buttons.
To move one of the 9 focus points, you have to press down first on he d-pad and then you can use the other d-pad buttons to change focus point.
To get to the most commonly changed options quickly, you can use the “QS” button. After pressing QS, you can use the d-pad buttons to adjust the corresponding settings. There are 2 QS menus, so pressing the QS button once gives you menu 1, press again and you’ll get QS menu 2.
The front of the camera has no buttons at all.
Shutter Release – The shutter release is super light to focus and you can definitely feel the point at which you hit the barrier to trip the shutter. Not a lot of pressure is required to get the shutter to trip.
Rear LCD – Honestly, it is not that bad. Does have some reflection in bright sunlight, so that can be a challenge at times. Also wish that it articulated in some fashion – but it is fixed.
Flash
This little camera does have a built in flash. It is activated by a switch on the back and pops up from the left side of the camera. Not very powerful but could be used for fill flash as needed.
Viewfinder
There is no built in viewfinder, but you can use an optical one on the hot shoe with 40mm frame lines if you wish.
Weather Sealing
Honestly not sure about the weather sealing on this camera, it probably has none…but I do not intend on bringing this into a downpour. I doubt a light rain would affect it, but please make your own decisions on how you treat your gear.
Lens
A 24.2mm f/2.8 lens sits in front of a Foveon APS-C 5mp sensor. A roughly 41mm field of view is provided.
Sharpness from the lens – I have no qualms with at all. I used it wide open at f/1.8 and stopped down to f/8 and sharpness of the images in both JPG and RAW was nothing short of stellar.
When first powering on, the lens does telescope out and it takes a second or so to get into shooting position and it is noisy.
Performance
Overall System Performance
It takes a bit for the lens to pop out and be ready to shoot. That can be a little annoying if you are hoping to power the camera on and get some quick snaps. Not this cameras strength. Better to leave the camera on…but even then, AF acquisition is not super fast either. If you need to fire off quick shots, I recommend that you shoot in manual focus mode and zone focus.
Working in the menus, once you get used to where everything is, goes on without a hitch. I don’t ever remember needing to wait on the camera to register my menu choices.
I’m using a 32mb SD card and it does take it a few seconds to format. Read and write speeds are just fine though.
Autofocus
Here is on place I can see a lot of frustration from those used to shooting with modern auto focus cameras. The auto focus, while i found to be accurate, is extremely slow, even in good lighting. I shot over 300 images and I think I image was out of focus. The camera is good at letting you know if it does not have focus lock. The focus point turns red and blinks when it has trouble; turns green and stays solid when it has a positive lock.
AF Point Selector
To move the AF point, you have to press down on the d-pad first and then use the other d-pad buttons to change to one of 9 available points. I’m not a fan of this, as I’d rather have the buttons all be direct for AF point change – but the buttons are used for other purposes. Up is used for changing the focus mode, left and right for exposure comp.
It works, but it is different.
Continuous
Given the pokey state of the single point AF, I did not even entertain trying this.
Manual Focus
An interesting implementation here. Change to manual focus and there is a dial on the back by your thumb that you spin to change the manual focus position. The dial has indicators on it that show the approximate distance the camera would focus at.
This would be great for hitting zone focusing rather quickly or going straight to infinity as needed.
Battery and Battery Life
Luckily, this camera came with 2 batteries. CIPA ratings state that this camera should get 250 images per charge. I’m not getting that, I’m getting about half that. It could be that the batteries I have are old – but other reviewers stated that the Foveon sensor is very power hungry and they are not getting the CIPA rated 250 image either.
Thankfully, though – the batteries are very small and extras are not expensive. I can imagine that going out and shooting for a whole day and I would need more than the 2 batteries I have. I’d say for an all day outing, I’d probably opt for having another 3 batteries for a total of 5.
Stabilization (IBIS/AS)
This camera does not have any stabilization Keep an eye on the shutter speeds when the light gets low.
Ergonomics
For me, the size of a camera is important. There is a point of diminishing returns on size. You can only go so small before the controls are hard to reach and the camera is difficult to hold.
Feel in The Hand
If a camera is too small it is hard to get to the buttons that are on the camera body. This camera feels very good to me for what it is. There is no grip per say but the raised dots on the front and the back are good enough to have a positive grip.
I can get to the buttons and dials pretty easily.
My bottom 2 fingers do fall off and under the bottom plate.
Image Quality
Sigma claims that the sensor is 14mp, but that claim comes from the fact that there are 3 color filter arrays in front of the sensor and the camera records each layer and then merges them together, for a roughly 14mp image – even though the output and size of the JPG file is still 5mp – so you get, depending on the subject between 2-5mb file sizes. RAW files are around 15-20mb in size, depending on subject.
With that out of the way, lets talk about the files from this unique camera offering.
WOW!
The first thing I said when I downloaded the images off the camera and viewed on the computer screen. I couldn’t believe just how sharp, 3 dimensional and interesting the colors are.
The colors tend to migrate toward the green so I get a very Kodachrome 25 vibe from the color JPG profiles.
Output wise, this is one of my favorite image qualities I’ve seen. Kudos to Sigma for this.
Now – as the saying goes, there is no free lunch…so what is the catch? ISO performance.
ISO 50 through 400 is just fine…some noise can be seen at ISO 800 and really starts to degrade at ISO 1600 and 3200. Those ISO are only available in RAW mode.
Auto ISO only allows for ISO 100 and 200, so don’t expect the full spectrum of values in that mode. Not sure why ISO 50 is not part of that – but ISO 100 IQ is perfectly fine if we are being honest.
You do have a superb lens and at f/2.8, you’ll have opportunity to stick with the lower ISO values for some time. f/2.8 is perfectly usable as well, so don’t fear shooting at that aperture!
JPG files are very malleable and can handle some decent processing, although clipped highlights are something to watch out for – not a lot of latitude to pull those back in post. I also noticed that pushing the images 1 to 1.5 stops brighter in exposure does not exaggerate the noise levels a lot. Very interesting!
Lightroom had no issues with the RAW files and are even more malleable than the JPG – again the same issue applies for clipped highlights in the RAW as the JPG.
Given the output of the camera, a lot can be forgiven in other areas where it is deficient, so long as you have adequate work arounds or you just understand the limitations of the technology and focus systems and use it accordingly.
Final Thoughts
If you are looking
Final Verdict = Highly Recommended! – WITH A LOT OF “BUTS”.
- The “buts” or the things that may be deal breakers:
- Power consumption – chews through batteries like no other camera I’ve ever used
- Slow AF – AF is slow and pokey, but accurate
- Non-Standard control scheme
- The “anti-buts”
- IMAGE QUALITY – if you are looking for a small camera with an almost magical rendering and image quality – this is one to look at
Some additional images for your viewing pleasure!
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