My review of DPReview's review...
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| Subject | My review of DPReview's review... [SIMILAR] |
| Posted by | Petteri Sulonen [PROFILE] |
| Date/Time | 03:04:47, 20 May 2008 (GMT) |
...or at least a few comments on it. First off, I was tickled to see that some of the observations in my review [ http://www.prime-junta.net/pont/Reviews/040_Sigma_DP1/_Sigma_DP1.html ] got some hard data to back them up. In particular, I was impressed by the way the DP1 holds its highlights, and true 'nuff, Lars clocks the RAW files at an amazing 11+ stops of usable DR. That's a whole lotta DR. It seems Lars had less trouble with color than I did -- he complains of a lack of saturation, whereas my problem was that they tended to turn up pink all the time. I also enjoyed the color resolution chart explorations. From those, it struck me that the only combination the CFA cameras genuinely struggled with was red/blue, whereas the DP1 cleared that nicely -- although not perfectly: there is a slight purple halo around the edges, which I take it is due to scattering as light passes through silicon. This may indicate that you can't decrease pixel pitch on the X3F sensor much more. Overall, I found the review well up to DPReviews usual high standards, with the comments and observations backed up by hard, measured, and displayed data. However, there were a few things this approach missed IMO. For example, the reviewer clearly wasn't comfortable shooting in manual-focus. This necessarily limits the usefulness of the camera in low light, as the AF does give up early, and makes daylight shooting a great deal more fiddly as well. I found the DP1 to shoot very well in manual mode, and the available-light performance extended just to "normal indoor lighting" -- which is where most compacts hit a wall as well. IOW, I don't think the DP1 is significantly worse than other compacts for available-light hand-held shooting; it's just not significantly better either. Second, while IMO the biggest limitation of the DP1 is the shot-to-shot time (and that *is* a very significant problem when doing situational shooting; as I said in my review, if this was fixed, I'd buy one without hesitation), it's a bit too harsh to say that the camera is only good for daylight landscapes and similar. Again, it works fast and fluidly in manual mode... for the first frame. And finally, a detail: I never noticed any flare spots in the pictures I took with it. This may be because I used the lens hood all the time. Also, the spots shown in the review aren't particularly bad IMO -- my Leica CL does worse, for example. All in all, a solid technical review; however, I think it might have benefited if the reviewer had also explored the camera's strengths a bit -- figuring out how it is best used; what works and what doesn't, rather than (apparently) using it like most compacts are used, as AF point-and-shoots. /Petteri -- http://www.prime-junta.net/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/primejunta/ | |
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