Sigma DP1 14MP Digital Camera - Preorders AvailableGadget Dork

Sigma DP1 14MP Digital Camera Available Soon!

 

Everyone’s a photographer these days, aren’t they. It’s hard to imagine a time not so long ago when so many of us didn’t have a camera literally attached to our hips.

 

But the advent of the smartphone, we now have the ability to take a picture almost anywhere, at any time we want. But does that mean we should?

 

In the world of professional photography, there are still some folks who pride themselves on taking their photos seriously, and taking price in how they come out. For these people, there are cameras such as the Sigma DP1 14MP camera that will hit fine retailers very soon.

 

Now let’s do a little review, thanks to the very knowledgeable people at trustedreviews.com for what they had to say about this new camera.

 

There’s one compact camera that has caught the imagination of photographers over the last couple of years. It’s rare for a compact to stir up much anticipation, but the Sigma DP1 has done just that. It’s been a long time coming, being first announced at Photokina 2006 as a development model.

 

The main reason for the fuss is its sensor: the controversial Foveon X3 sensor capable of 14MP resolution, and the first APS-C sized sensor in a compact digicam.

 

As you may expect with digital cameras, the sensor is a very large part of how images are taken and delivered to our eye, as trustedreviews.com points out.

The sensor, last seen in the Sigma SD14 DSLR, has aroused criticism due to the way the image is captured by three layers of photocells buried within differing depths of the silicon substrate. One of silicon’s properties is the way it absorbs red, green and blue light at different depths and Foveon uses that property to build the pixels within three strata of the chip.

 

Traditional CCD or CMOS sensors have the photocells on top of the chip, and use a Bayer RGB filter to separate the different colours. This has led critics of the Foveon chip to claim it’s a lower resolution sensor of 4.7M as that is the final image size you end up with.

 

On one side of the argument, the sensor does have 14MP (4.7MP over each three layers) but the flip side of the argument is that the final image is only made up of 4.7MP in total of those images. I’ll leave the argument to be fought out in the forums, but in terms of image quality and so forth the image produced is 4.7MP, and that’s what we’ll take as our starting point for assessment.

Sigma has developed a new processor, the Three-layer Responsive Ultimate Engine or TRUE, which is designed specifically to deal with the files from the sensor and also handle JPEG conversion, a feature lacking on the early Sigma DSLR range which were RAW-only until last year’s SD14.

 

OK, now we know a little bit about some of the more technical things. But not everybody is interested in knowing how something ticks. There are, believe it or not, many people who simply want to buy a new camera and take wonderful images with it.

 

So who is this camera for? Will it be a great match for you, or is it a professional only type of camera? You’ll be happy to know that no matter what your skill level, this camera can be all for you.

This is a camera definitely aimed at the enthusiast. There’s a lack of scene modes, with only PASM control, along with a movie mode.

 

It has a pop up flash, as well as a hot shoe which accepts a dedicated flash unit. The hot shoe also accepts an optical viewfinder, as the camera lacks a built in viewfinder due to the large 2.5in LCD screen, dominating the back of the camera.

 

The option of the viewfinder is good, but I’d prefer one built in to the body of the camera itself, though this would necessitate either a smaller LCD screen or a larger camera, so we have to accept some design compromise.

 

It’s nice to know that people of all skill levels can enjoy and take great photos with a nice piece of equipment. Sometimes it feels awkward being new in a hobby and trying to learn about it when you are in the company of experts.

 

With a greenhorn friendly camera like the Sigma DP1 though, you can rest assured that you are in good company as you shoot your world.

 

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via gadgetdork.org