This one is saved as “double size” = 18.5MP res. Click to open each picture in full size. (or more)
I went to this very place with my Danish friends recently (SUG meeting) but felt the urge to go back and see if sunset would give some better pictures. To be honest, last time I was mostly shooting video with the DP1 and had no real time to think about stills. :D Anyways these are two new shots taken with the DP1 handheld and with ND Grad 121P filter. Plus one more at my flickr account.
Using a filter holder + Cokin filters you can play with black and white the good old way. First I tried with filter and then I tried the photoshop / lightroom way - I used the predefined color filter option that is available in photoshop in order to make a fair comparison. Click for “the big picture”. The black and white “real” images are made by using the monochrome wb option inside SPP. And yes, it could have been a more intresting scene but it works. You get similair result directly from camera if you select in-camera black and white jpeg mode. see this image.
When I bought my mini cokin A (amature) holder then I bought some filters at the same time. All ND’s were sold so I had to buy some colorful ones instead. One was called tobacco or coffee grad - can’t remember what word they used. Both works. :) And I have done several black and whites with it on and it works great. One cool thing is also that when you put camera into black and white mode (jpeg) and use a filter such as this you get really nice nice results directly out of the camera. Feels cool too when you aim as you see the result directly on the LCD.
Direct output from camera using filter and black and white mode: (ISO800)
My little sister Anna Ingvarsson went away to shoot nature and lent my DP1. She came back a day later with lots of really nice shots - I’m only going to show you one because that’s the only one I dealt with (making it black and white). I think it’s beautiful! What do you think?
I sometime visit a local school to spend time with local youngsters - most of the time I bring my DP1 and a snap a few. Always at ISO800 (badly needed). Colors looks ok but black and white is just so much better! These have had some vignetting added in Photoshop - so it’s not the lens fault. :D - And no, I wouldn’t use the flash as it would feel wrong. Btw, these are made black and white using the monochrome mode in Sigma Photo Pro.
[edit - Sigma today announced the new version for PC and Mac here as well as first DP1 update]
I’ve been lucky enough to get my hands on a beta of the next SPP 2.x and for those of you being irritated of green corners I can now tell you that green corners are now only a bad memory! :D I could only test the PC version but it ran extremely quick under vm-ware, actually much faster than my Mac version of SPP3.1. I did try some SD14 files and especially reds are now better. But this article will concentrate on DP1 images.
I thought that my photos from Elmia foto video 2008 could be used for this preview and at the same time you can see what I do in SPP and maybe learn something about processing. In every image there is important data inside. Exposure, ISO, White balance as well as processing. All kinds of situations ranging from high iso mixed light to long exposures in tricky situations. And as an extra bonus - studio shots! Continue to read this article.
EDIT, now with sound! Original post 12/3 2008
Sigma will come out with a easy to use solution within SPP itself or by firmware, until then we can do it our self’s in Photoshop (or other software such as Gimp).
Stopped the car and brought my little buddy out in the winter night. It’s cold he said and asked me to make it quick - I thought to myself - ISO800 could work. He looked at me with his big black eye - scared that I would go all the way to 15s but I smiled and said I would make it painless. 8s later I took him into the warm car and we drove home.
I love the control over the picture that the DP1 gives me. I’m the King and the DP1 my slave. Just as I want it to be. :) Now, last morning I woke up with snow outside - I live in Sweden and normally this is normal - but years have become warmer and snow a rare sight. I took some shots more or less to test how nice bokeh the DP1 have - walking the dog.
Btw, as someone said at the forum already - turning off quick preview makes the DP1 faster between shots. And I also tested a normal SD card that came with another camera - it’s SOOOO SLOW! It really takes ages. So please. Use fastest card you can find, it’s a huge difference!
Timed save times RAW (light blinking):
SanDisk Extreme III 4GB: 2.5s
Canon SD SDC 32MB: 10s
Time before you can take another shot (single mode): 3.8s and quick preview off.
(As soon as it start to save to your card, you can take another shot) but you can’t change exposure etc during the “save” time so fast card is very important for the overall feel. If you try the camera make sure you have a fast SD.
[updated] It’s time for the first RAW pack! I think it’s an interesting selection of handheld shots (mirror image on tripod) that shows the ability of the Sigma DP1 in different environments. Make sure you have the Sigma Photo Pro 3.1 (mac) or Sigma Photo Pro 2.4 (PC) installed. The new DP1 raw format is different from the SD14’s. Photos taken in all different ISO speeds and different light. Good for SPP training. :)There is a video out where I play with these shots as well as others. Go to video.
Download 111mb dp1rawpack.zip!
Just saw that I didn’t have a shot of the dp1 in any of my articles. Here’s one. :)
I’m currently trying to upload to youtube - resolution will be much worse but faster to load and divided into two parts. This movie is 500×375px, 128MB small and 16 minutes long. Download it for local playback using VLC or other flash player.
People has been asking about mixed light shots so I took some of kids playing. This room had fluorescent light and daylight coming in from widows at roof level. So more daylight than fluorescent - (= Good mixed light)
Both ISO400 first 1/25s second 1/40, both has been slightly altered in PS. 
ISO800
I decided to see how good the battery was and how much juice I could squeeze out before dead - It’s not a perfect test but a real world sort of version. I manual focused more or less 99% of the time - I did try some AF shots but decided that manual focus was a bit more cool. I’m sure that AF + no LCD would give you lots and lots of more shots.
I turned off the camera very often. I’m not sure if that’s draining or some, but I guess that there is a good sleep mode that could have worked instead. Of course I looked and showed everyone around me so lots of peeking done.
Result? I have a total files of 182. Among those is 26 movies, 3 audio recordings and 151 RAW files. No Jpegs. Sorry, have a hard time getting used to the ability to shot JPEG’s since my early days with the SD9/SD10.. :) And camera is fast with RAW so there is no reason not to use it.
Movie clips direcly from the DP1:
Now to some of the images: All hand held. Click for full size.
ISO200
ISO800 (redeveloped)
ISO100
ISO100
ISO400
ISO100 + EF-140 DP1 flash. TTL-mode.
ISO100 (shaky - should have used higher)
ISO200
ISO100
ISO400
It’s been lots of buz lately about the much anticipated Sigma DP1 - the every mans Leica that finally is ready to ship (or very close to) and I, as maybe the most happy guy on earth right now I HAVE ONE! :D And of course I will have to write a little something about it - from an SD14 users point of view.
ISo200
Build quality is very good, front and back made out of metal and nothing is flimsy. Very sturdy feeling. Should be at almost 300g. Almost too much when it comes to the MSAP wheel. The other wheel is the one for manual focusing and it’s very easy to turn without any clicks - easy to fast manual focus and this feature was one that I was afraid of being bad - is very good and very very useful. I use it 100% of the time. (at least at day one. ;)
Lens is superb. Bokeh is wonderful. F4 works very very well much thanks to the great sharpness wide open. Remember that common lenses such as 10-20 and 12-24 is the same or slower and much bigger! Do I dare say that this little DP1 16.5mm lens is sharper? I think it is. More or less all my shots this first cloudy day has been taken at F4.
ISO500
Speed was another thing that scared me some. In order to make it less painful I bought the fastest SD card I could find, the SD Extreme III from SanDisk and I have no idea if it helps but I have yet to miss a shot because of save times. It’s a bit faster than my SD14 I think but with smaller buffer. About half I guess. There is two ways of taking shots. One in continues mode - about three shots in less than a second (RAW mode) - and a “normal” shot mode that will give you about two-three seconds between shots. - this is no SLR and will not be used as one either.
Flipping thru images, zoom in to see 100% etc is very fast and interestingly enough much faster and better implemented than in my SD14. Feels instant.
ISO200
The external flash is extremely cool looking. I had it to one of my night club sessions and people wowed it many times. I had to lend my little camera to many people. Never did that with my SD14. :) - one good thing here is that you can turn the focus wheel to 1m and leave it there. It’s pretty easy to learn how far away 1m is and keep it that way. :)
LCD is 230 000 dots and OK. It’s not the brightest in the business but works great. Better than the LCD on my SD14. Colors looks accurate and gives me a good feeling for sharpness etc. It’s also possible to see histogram etc as you would expect. In dark enviroment the “live” flow becomes very grainy - look cool but isn’t very useful to judge sharpness from at those times knowing how far one meter is, is good. :)
Battery life is yet to be known. First impression is that it’s similar to my SD14, maybe a bit less.
Final word from day one - I like it - it’s going to be where I go. :D and now some images. Experimental ISO3200 and others.
ISO3200
ISO3200
ISO200
ISO100
ISO1200
Turn volume down! Sounds like old radio with broken speakers. And, beware, you might need to know your RD in order to really follow - anyways. It’s a simple workflow. :)
I’m taking this seriously! I realized that the more I learn about high ISO BW - the more I love the feeling of what comes out. These are all more or less taken at 16mm (28mm) - so this is what the DP1 would produce more or less. And the Dp1 has a sharper lens - it will produce nothing less than magnificent black and whites for sure!
All of these are developed using Raw Developer and the profile Monochrome XDR. PS has pleyed a minor role with burn tool and vignetting on some shots.
Been working with a photographer in HK with an very interesting photo book. The book contains photos taken mainly with tmax iso3200 film and I wanted to know how far the SD14 could go, especially with the “film alike” three layer technology that we’re blessed with.
So I set my camera at -1 exposure (-2 and -3 depending on wanted ISO) at ISO1600 and started to enjoy my new faster shutter speeds and everything you see here is handheld and most of the would be impossible with anything slower (camera shake). Speed varies between 1/15 to 1/100 and most of them are shot wide open. I used P mode.
Result? Noise characteristics and dynamic range feels very similar to black and white film. I have bought a Sigma SA-300 film camera and will in the near future take same shots in order to really see how well they compare. :)
Click each picture for full size.
Note: Most of these has absolutely no sharpening and noise reduction turned off. Especially extremely high ISO 6400 - 12800 has some noise reduction applied from Raw Developer. Continue reading ‘High ISO experiment. 3200 - 12800 BW’
I got lots of questions / full size sample requests about the first black and white portrait so I decided to make it available not as RAW this time but resized to match 14mp. All noise reduction is completely turned off (possible using Raw Developer) which gives extra detail and realistic, film like qualities. - I also saved info in the darker portion of the image.
No additional sharpening, level, curves etc. I did clone out part of a wall though and added vignetting. :) - This sample should be perfect for anyone having a printer and that would like to know what a SD14 4.6mp image will look like a bit bigger. There is stair stepping in this image and with qimage or other software it would probably look a bit better.
Click for the final 4600 x 3057 (14mp) image.
EDIT: I posted a comparison over at dpreview’s Sigma forum.
RAW + Raw Developer setting: download.
ArkadiaFoto in Partille / Göteborg invited me to help them shot some models. I wanted to see and test the studio so I went there this very evening and tried light and some of my lenses. So here’s some of the resulting pictures. All images availible as almost full size download. I ended up using one profoto softboxed 1200w light slightly behind me to the right.
Lenses used: 30mm, 70-200, 120-300 and 10-20.
Camera: SD14 - ISO set to 100 by mistake. Should of course have been ISO50.
Sigma 30mm - RD note: Monochrome XDR
Sigma 10-20mm
Sigma 120-300mm RD note - colors slightly damped.
Sigma 70-200mm
Sigma 30mm again. Too much fun.
Note: All images has been altered slightly in PS with vignetting and some has seen a touch of Alien skin Exposure. The man on these images belong to Arkadiamodels.com
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