Sigma DP2 up for pre-order, retailing for $649
By Paul Miller 
posted March 28th 2009 4:02PM
posted March 28th 2009 4:02PM
[Via DigitalCameraInfo]
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posted March 28th 2009 4:02PM
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Avoid Panas, just forget that this company with mentality of bycicles, electric irons and bulbs exists in photography. They can not make good cameras. Such happen, that because this is Japan which monopolised camera market and not neighbour China, India or Russia, Panas makes cameras instead of cleaning cow sh#t on their farms. You will quickly find a lot of compromises in each detail in this chip @#$%. Have you forgotten damn LX1 and LX2 ? Two world noisiest cameras, with just 12MB(!!!!) or RAM and 6 sec RAW recording time, washed colors LCD at any angle?
But if you are asking about LX3 vs DP2 then, well, LX3 is right now OK for you. It's of course better then nothing. DP1&2 is not for everyone (I will not buy it too, unlesss it will be for free. Unfortunately Sigma also can not make cameras, it's not their prime business, they make lenses. Or may be we also have to remember here cow sh#t).
Yes and no.
It has a larger sensor, and from what we've seen of the DP1, images at low ISOs are excellent. _But_ high ISO images aren't as good as those coming from Nikon, Canon, Pentax, etc. DSLRs. It's also very slow to use.
The LX3 is another camera aimed at the same market (photographers who want a high-quality, manual-control compact). It has a much faster wide, a zoom range that covers the traditional street-photographer focal lengths, and much faster operational speed. But, you're going to have to use discretion with pictures over ISO 400 - how much higher depends on how much you crop, your tolerance for noise/NR, and final display size.
The LX3 is a better camera to use (faster lens, faster write/AF/shooting speed) and has a faster lens, but it trades off high ISO image quality to get there.
No idea, but I have an LX3 ... and it's pretty amazing. They chose to not compromise there as well, so it doesn't have a huge zoom range and they capped the megapixel range -- plus it allegedly has a slightly larger sensor.
Good stuff.
While I like primes when shooting with my DSLR, I've done that for trips (Ricoh GRD) before and I strongly dislike not having a zoom in those situations (where I can't switch lenses).
I'm thinking of getting one of these in addition to my current compact zoom camera, which has good automatic features and the zoom range that I *sometimes* need. I might buy a Micro 4/3rd camera someday, but in that case it would certainly not replace the Sigma, but replace my current camera as an all-round camera with a zoom lens on it. In fact, if I attached a prime lens to the Micro 4/3rd, then I'd almost need another one, since it's easier to just pick up the prime lens camera from the bag than to switch lenses :)
So, for me, the DP2 sounds like a great companion to any all-round camera, whether that is a small sensor zoom, a Micro 4/3rd or a DSLR.
expensive.. but looks nice
Why aren't other compacts capable of utilizing larger sensors? Does the compactness of the body present an engineering challenge beyond the ability of Nikon, Pentax, Canon, et al, to do what Sigma has done.. less cost? Is it necessary to have such tradeoffs as fixed lens in order to shoehorn in the bigger sensor? What, for that matter, would be so wrong with the inclusion of digital zoom as an option the DP2? It would compromise nothing when not in use. No?
I'm pretty technically unschooled in photography (obviously). I'm looking for a compact digital cameral to use as my single personal camera for a wide range of activity. I'd like to spend no more than 350USD. Image quality is of most importance to me. For that alone, I could live with a fully manual, NO fanfare, black bodied camera. I'm frustrated that so much of the compact 'niche' (97.2 percent?) seems most responsive to the tastes and needs of sixteen year old kids and soccer moms. Disaffection with the image quality of compacts seems to be almost universal across the board of reviews. Canon seems, so far as I can tell, to get the least negative comment, to put it one way.
Is the market so indifferent to image quality that developers are induced to waste their skills on 'bells and whistles"? Food mode? Smile recognition? Blink recognition? For god's sake, you're not potentially wasting film anymore. Who cares? One review I came upon suggested that the best image quality to be had in a non professional compact camera was a two year old 6MP Fujicolor model. I've seen this type of explanation now a few times. Mere pixel counts are the defacto indicator of quality for the average consumer, but the sensor's physical dimension has not kept pace with the scaling. Why not? A larger sensor cannot be cost prohibitive to these companies. Is it really a matter of 1 percent of buyers even caring?