I got my DP1 last thursday from AC-Foto in Germany for 777 €. I ordered it about 4 weeks ago.
Some information about me: my main interest is landscape-photography, but only as a hobby not as a profession (I’m an automotive engineer). I have about 20 years experience with nature-photography and normally use a Canon 5 D and a Lumix LX-2. My girlfriend has a Fuji F30. So I can compare the DP1 to these cameras. After three days of use my first imperessions are:
The camera is quite small, nearly as small as the LX-2. The design is aesthetically not as pleasing as that of the LX-2 (or of the Ricoh GRD), but the feeling, ergonomics and haptics are quite good. Everything feels solid, even the extended lens.
The AF is quite slow, much slower than that of the LX-2, F30 or 5D. But besides the lack of speed it is quite usable, it is precise and has no problems even in dim light.
If you go to MF the camera is very fast. The picture is taken immediately after pressing the button. MF is good, but I’m missing the DOF-Information of the LX-2, which is sometimes quite helpful.
The lens of the DP1 is excellent with very good sharpness from corner to corner even at F4.
Best performance is from F4 to F8, at F11 it gets significantly worse (due to diffraction). At F4 there is a slight but noticeabel light fall-off at the corners which gets better at higher aperture-values.
The performance of the Foveon imager is very good. At his native resolution of 4,7 MP the pictures look much better than these of the LX-2 or F30. If you interpolate either up or down (for example up to 7 MP or down to 2 MP with some USM after each interpolation ) the difference between LX-2, F30 and DP1 is much smaller. The difference is noticeable, but a lot less impressive compared with the native resolution. The dynamic range of the foveon imager is very good, much better than that of the LX-2 or F30, and nearly as good as that of the 5D. Altogether the IQ of the DP1 is definitely not as good as that of the 5D, but I have never expected the DP1 to be better than the 5D.
The optical viewfinder is of good quality with a bright undistorted view and is quite small. The camera fits in very small bags even with the OVF attached. The main drawback of the OVF is that it is not very easy to see the lines if you wear glasses.
I did some tests with a 46 mm Heliopan polarizer (normal size, not slimline) and no vignetting occurred. The same with the Cokin A-Holder. This means, that I can use graduated neutral density filter and a polarizer for landscape-photography with the DP1 without any problems.
What else am I missing: The LCD-Display is not as good as the displays on the LX-2 or F30. It is much slower and coarser, especially in low-light situations. The maximum exposure time is 15 s, which is sometimes to short for me. I would prefer at least one minute. I would also prefer simultaneously written RAW+JPEG, which is not possible with the DP1 at the moment. This would make a first examination and sorting with adobe bridge much easier.
The Sigma RAW-conversion-software (PC version) is good, but I’m missing some functions: If I use the auto-function on a batch of pictures everything has to be auto. You can for example not set the satuarion to +1 for all pictures and let everything else be converted automatically. Therefore the only option is to convert picture by picture or do a batch conversion with saturation set to 0 and make a batch correction afterwards in photoshop.
To sum up: I like the camera very much and it will substitute my LX-2 as a light-wight and small supplement to my 5D. I will take the DP1 on a trip to iceland in August. Afterwards I can probably show you some nice landscape-pictures taken with the DP-1.
been bugging them for awhile.
