Photo Friday

I bought myself a totally random gift with some Christmas money (which is apparently still a thing in our house). 

I got a Sigma DP2 Quattro mostly because it’s profoundly weird and flawed. It refused to take good photos in low light (below, say, ISO 800 and even at 400 it’s dodgy). Its white balance is bizarre at best. It takes forever to write to its memory card and its autofocus is more a general suggestion than a precise instrument. I get about 50 shots from a battery. On top of that, it looks like a early-1990s mobile phone and is difficult to use without pushing a random button.

On the other hand, the camera has a FOVEON SENSOR (which I’m guessing is related to the Greek word for FEAR). This sensor is low contrast, but incredibly sensitive to color and light. There are those who feel like it is very close to film (which is the audiophile equivalent of saying a DAC sounds like vinyl or a solid-state amplifier sounds like tubes). Others praise the colors it produces and how it captures shading and tone. 

Most admit that taking photos with a Sigma camera forces you to slow down. Since a battery only offers 40 or 50 shots, each shot takes about 20 seconds to write to the memory card, and the camera is bizarrely designed, it requires a bit of thought before using it and despite being digital, it will not offer immediate rewards, especially if you have to process the photos using the primitive Sigma Photo Pro application (which is necessary for Sigma’s proprietary X3F . It is effectively the opposite of my Ricoh GRIII which is the quintessential point and shoot.

As an aside: it turns out that slowing done on a walk in the park when it’s -3° F isn’t as therapeutic as I had envisioned. That said, there will be warmer days and I’m looking forward to my leisurely strolls through the village in Cyprus and Greece. 

I’ve only had the camera for a few days and I’m still trying to figure out how to take good photos with it, but I’m having fun. My plan is to get some monochrome images from the Sigma before my photography habit (cough, discipline) succumbs to the new semester.