Dumbo, Brooklyn (digital – Sigma DP1)

I spent a few hours each day, Saturday and Sunday, at the New York Photo Festival. I’ll have a number of things to say about the festival later, but first I’d like to comment on a new camera I’m trying out. It’s the Sigma DP1, a point and shoot camera with a full size Foveon sensor–the first camera this small to have such a large sensor.

I’m a little unsure how to characterize the pictures this camera produces. They are unlike any I’ve encountered before. Extremely rich, wide tonal range, and very sharp. But different in ways I can’t yet put my finger on. The picture above was taken in Dumbo, Brooklyn on my way to the festival under a dead gray sky, a situation my Ricoh GR digital is hard pressed to handle. The skies would tend to wash out, or the foreground would lose color clarity, or clear definition between colors. Here, the sky holds weight, colors are true, and neutrals remain neutral.

The DP1 only produces images 2640 x 1760 pixels, which is small compared to the many digital cameras that pack a lot of pixels onto miniature chips. But these are RAW images, and certainly enough size for 8×10 prints, and possibly larger if the resolution is carefully interpolated up. Moreover, the Foveon sensor is a whole other animal, but you can look up what more tech oriented people have to say about it.

What we have here is a rather rarefied camera for serious photographers who want a pocket camera that will produce DSLR quality–or near DSLR–and who want a wide lens, don’t care about zooms, and are more interested in image quality than megapixels. Could be the perfect blog, carry everywhere, camera for me.