Just a quick update on the exciting Sigma DP1 (see my previous posts here and here). It is now very real, quite a few people have already purchased it and the Sigma forum at DPreview.com is a gold mine of reviews and sample images!

Günter Borgemeister is a longtime Sigma SLR user and has some fantastic stitched panos on his Pbase website. He now also owns the DP1 and he has posted some full size stitched panoramas in this gallery:

http://www.pbase.com/ghoerdt/dp1

All shot with the Sigma DP1. To view them full-size scroll down and click ‘original’ at the links with ‘other sizes:’

Have a look at the full-size “Überlingen Münster” shot from inside a church and notice how SLR like the image is. Very clean, no noise, sharp, clean colours etc. It looks very very impressive and I can’t wait to try the DP1 myself!

A digital rangefinder…a digital compact camera with SLR quality…it’s actually coming! (although it’s not quite a rangefinder). Remember my post about a digital compact worth owning? Well as far as I am concerned there still is no digital compact worth owning but…the Sigma DP1 is almost here after a truckload of delays!

The Sigma DP1 now looks like this without the viewfinder (picture from dpreview.com) and really is pocket-sized:

It will quite possibly be a bit of a revolution in digital imaging! A pocket size camera with a Sigma SD14 Foveon sensor giving you SLR quality images is no small feat!

It’s absolutely perfect as a backup camera and a camera for discreet street photography and situations where it’s not practical to bring your DSLR + 5 kilos worth of lenses, gear, tripods etc.

DPreview.com has heaps more info:

Price of the DP1 confirmed at 550 UK pounds

Sigma DP1 beta picture gallery

Sigma announces Spring 2008 release date for DP1

The official Sigma DP1 website: http://www.sigma-dp1.com/

A Flickr gallery showing you photos of the DP1 – notice how small it actually is.

Someday soon Canon will announce a successor to the 5D and of course I’ll buy that, it’ll hopefully have the 14-bit 21 megapixel sensor from the the 1dsMkIII – but this Sigma camera is the one I’m really excited about!
I want one of these before my next photo trip!

For some time I have wanted to buy an extra camera. Only problem is: it doesn’t exist. At least not yet. I drag my “precious”, my Canon EOS 5D (usually with 17-40mm L lens and 24-105mm L lens) almost everywhere and I love it, it is a truly phenomenal camera. But it’s big. It’s heavy. And it’s certainly not discreet. For street photography it also calls far too much attention to itself and people become very aware of you and your camera. In short: a compact digital rangefinder camera (with optical viewfinder!) as backup camera and for street photography would be a very welcome addition.

Again. Trouble is…it doesn’t bloody exist! I want a high quality rangefinder style digital compact with optical viewfinder, fullframe (or 1.6 crop sensor), fixed lens at perhaps 24 or 21mm and no bloody frills at all – except it should be very high quality and of course save RAW images. No company in the world makes a camera that comes close to this. No digital camera that is, there were plenty of high quality compact rangefinders available when film was still all the rage.

Well, Leica makes a digital version of the M8, but that’s still a bit too big and heavy (not to mention expensive!) to be an option as a backup compact camera. Wouldn’t mind owning it though

As for the current offering of digital compacts. I don’t want 10 megazillion super noisy pixels in a mega small sensor, I don’t want super zooms going from 28-300mm, I don’t want 3.5 inch lcd screen with no optical viewfinder, I don’t need video options, I don’t want face detection, automatic red eye reduction and awful noise reduction…actually I don’t want any of the stupid features they install in compact digital cams presently! What happened to making quality cameras instead of adding features that don’t work and nobody wants? Seems to me the market for digital compacts is moving backwards.

Sigma may just come to the rescue though. The Sigma DP-1 camera could very well be everything that the serious photographer has looked for in a backup camera and not found yet. Sigma promises a “full spec compact digital camera with all the power of a dslr”. 14 megapixel compact with the same Foveon sensor the Sigma SD-14 dslr has. Optical viewfinder. Sigma apparently is still working on it, it was announced last September and still isn’t out – with no word of when it is coming out. It may very well prove to be worth the wait! In the meantime here’s a picture of it. Doesn’t look like much? Precisely. That’s the point. This is not for the standard consumer market. It’s for photographers!