Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

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sebboh
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p.14 #1 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

Kibsgaard wrote:
mpmendenhall wrote:
Kibsgaard wrote:
If you are looking at the first 5 pictures am I right in this quick and certainly not "scientific" interpretation:

The Merrill could do it a bit better ?

Whichever camera was in the hands of a more skilled photographer would do a lot better.

......This we all know

The Merrill would probably be ahead on extra-fine detail, so long as lighting allowed for ISO <= ~400.

........This was what I was after, thank you.

The Merrill would lose badly in low light / high ISO shots, along with cases where fast operation / autofocus / etc. is needed to capture spur-of-the-moment action. After the first few dozen shots, the Merill's battery will be dead and it will certainly not be doing better.

....Yes we will have to live with this

I'd say these two cameras each have their own separate, largely non-overlapping strengths and weaknesses, so "better" will very much depend on the specifics of the situation.

.....I know therefore I wrote as I did, but we have seen some very fine portraits here - better than average, and also street photos better than average, and in my opinion better than the photos from the link from the other camera

Thanks

um, i don't think anyone really expects the rx100 to outperform the dp2m at low iso. the rx100 is just a smaller, cheaper, more versatile camera. the dp2m is obviously a better imager (just on specs alone) in optimal shooting conditions. the rx100 can be used more easily in a lot more situations while still providing very good image quality. i don't really view them as competing cameras at all. completely different markets.

Oct 13, 2012 at 07:29 AM

Tariq Gibran
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p.14 #2 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

I think the more interesting comparison would be between the Sony RX1 and one of the DPM's at base ISO. For one third the price, I'm betting the Merrill would come out pretty darn well as a specialty tool, perhaps even besting the rX1.

Oct 13, 2012 at 11:38 AM

Tariq Gibran
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p.14 #3 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

Same image, heavily processed to exaggerate color and exposure:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

There are two main things going on here: first, an overall shift from magenta to green tones going from the center to the edges; second, a non-uniform mottling/splotching/banding of the color tint. I don't think either effect is severe enough to be annoying in "normal" pictures; nonetheless, it's something to be aware of (and maybe try to correct for) in shots where you care about accurately reproducing very fine color gradients.

What were the processing settings you used for this torture test of the gray card out of curiosity?

Oct 13, 2012 at 12:01 PM

Kibsgaard
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p.14 #4 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

sebboh wrote:
Kibsgaard wrote:
mpmendenhall wrote:
Kibsgaard wrote:
If you are looking at the first 5 pictures am I right in this quick and certainly not "scientific" interpretation:

The Merrill could do it a bit better ?

Whichever camera was in the hands of a more skilled photographer would do a lot better.

......This we all know

The Merrill would probably be ahead on extra-fine detail, so long as lighting allowed for ISO <= ~400.

........This was what I was after, thank you.

The Merrill would lose badly in low light / high ISO shots, along with cases where fast operation / autofocus / etc. is needed to capture spur-of-the-moment action. After the first few dozen shots, the Merill's battery will be dead and it will certainly not be doing better.

....Yes we will have to live with this

I'd say these two cameras each have their own separate, largely non-overlapping strengths and weaknesses, so "better" will very much depend on the specifics of the situation.

.....I know therefore I wrote as I did, but we have seen some very fine portraits here - better than average, and also street photos better than average, and in my opinion better than the photos from the link from the other camera

Thanks

um, i don't think anyone really expects the rx100 to outperform the dp2m at low iso.

...........I am not sure so many are aware of the qualities of the Merrill

the rx100 is just a smaller, cheaper, more versatile camera. the dp2m is obviously a better imager (just on specs alone) in optimal shooting conditions. the rx100 can be used more easily in a lot more situations while still providing very good image quality. i don't really view them as competing cameras at all. completely different markets.

...........Neither do I... of course

Oct 13, 2012 at 12:04 PM

Kibsgaard
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p.14 #5 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

Tariq Gibran wrote:
I think the more interesting comparison would be between the Sony RX1 and one of the DPM's at base ISO. For one third the price, I'm betting the Merrill would come out pretty darn well as a specialty tool, perhaps even besting the rX1.

I still do not think so many people are aware of the qualitties of the Merrill, but yes this will be a very interesting comparison (at base iso)

Oct 13, 2012 at 12:05 PM

mpmendenhall
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p.14 #6 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

Tariq Gibran wrote:
What were the processing settings you used for this torture test of the gray card out of curiosity?

Working on a TIFF/16 imported into Aperture, I turned up the "saturation" and "vibrancy" sliders to the maximum, then used "levels" to stretch the exposure range to cover the whole output range (set the black point and white point to match the dimmest and brightest part of the card).

Oct 13, 2012 at 02:30 PM

Bifurcator
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p.14 #7 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

mpmendenhall wrote:
Here's a quick test to check the DP2M's color constancy / blotching issues: a defocused shot of an 18% gray card.
ISO 100, f4, custom in-camera white balance under outdoor overcast/shade:
http://praetoriusphoto.images.s3.amazonaws.com/fmforums/20121011_dp2m/greycard.jpg

Same image, heavily processed to exaggerate color and exposure:
http://praetoriusphoto.images.s3.amazonaws.com/fmforums/20121011_dp2m/greycard_sat.jpg

There are two main things going on here: first, an overall shift from magenta to green tones going from the center to the edges; second, a non-uniform mottling/splotching/banding of the color tint. I don't think either effect is severe enough to be annoying in "normal" pictures; nonetheless, it's something to be aware of (and maybe try to correct for) in shots where you care about accurately reproducing very fine color gradients.

Tariq Gibran wrote:
What were the processing settings you used for this torture test of the gray card out of curiosity?

mpmendenhall wrote:
Working on a TIFF/16 imported into Aperture, I turned up the "saturation" and "vibrancy" sliders to the maximum, then used "levels" to stretch the exposure range to cover the whole output range (set the black point and white point to match the dimmest and brightest part of the card).

Hey, that's an interesting test. Have you tried this with other cameras? What were the results with them?

Oct 13, 2012 at 02:45 PM

mpmendenhall
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p.14 #8 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

Bifurcator wrote:
Hey, that's an interesting test. Have you tried this with other cameras? What were the results with them?

Here's the same test with the one other digital camera I have to compare, a 5Dc, using a C/Y 100/2 at ISO100, f5.6. I've tried to keep the processing identical on the "boosted" version as for the DP2M, but to do a quantitative comparison you should look compare the unmodified shots:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

The 5D sensor color shifts have a different characteristic, following the sensor edges and side-to-side variation rather than a radial dependence (so color shift in this case is not correlated with light angle from the lens, though this could also be lens dependent). Color "blotching" is present with a finer-grained structure. The overall color variations, based on looking at the a,b channels in Lab color space, appears to be roughly half that of the DP2M; perceptually, the 5Dc gray card shot looks a bit more uniform and neutral to me.

Perhaps people with access to other camera bodies can post their results here? I'd be interested in seeing how newer sensor tech than the venerable 5Dc behaves (Canon 5DII/III and current Sony/Nikon sensors).

Oct 13, 2012 at 03:19 PM

Tariq Gibran
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p.14 #9 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

mpmendenhall wrote:
Tariq Gibran wrote:
What were the processing settings you used for this torture test of the gray card out of curiosity?

Working on a TIFF/16 imported into Aperture, I turned up the "saturation" and "vibrancy" sliders to the maximum, then used "levels" to stretch the exposure range to cover the whole output range (set the black point and white point to match the dimmest and brightest part of the card).

Thanks. I'm already seeing much more neutral color from this DP1M than I ever expected just using "Sunlight" and "Neutral" in the Sigma software. I'm also seeing really smooth tonal gradations which allow for really nice B&W conversions - much better than I saw with the Sony NEX-7 for instance. For the right applications, I'm quite impressed.

This is one of my typical, boring test subjects for landscape detail and color, here taken with the above settings and the DP1M. 100% crop follows. Sharpening was -1 in Sigma Photo Pro (-2 would be off).

This image is copyrighted by the owner

B&W. The 100% crop below also illustrates extremely impressive infinity landscape detail imo.

This image is copyrighted by the owner

100% crop of above:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

Oct 13, 2012 at 03:31 PM

Herb1911
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p.14 #10 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

Untill now it was fun to explore the boundaries of the DP2 Merill regarding resolution, sharpness and color.

Now back to the basics. First the color. Two images. One with Sigma Photo Pro Neutral setting. The next
one imported into Lightroom and adjusted as follows:

Red

Hue +15
Sat +15

Green

Hue +25
Sat +15

Blue

Hue -25
Sat +25

To be continued.

Herb

SPP neutral / Lightroom embedded (default)

SPP neutral / Lightroom corrected

Edited on Oct 13, 2012 at 06:13 PM · View previous versions

Oct 13, 2012 at 04:03 PM

Herb1911
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p.14 #11 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

Correction for Chromatic aberration in Sigma Photo Pro.

Do not correct CA in SPP with the automatic profile. It will make CA worse.
If you see still any CA in Lightroom after importing the tiffs then correct it here.

The screendump shows on the left the wrong corrected SPP and right the uncorrected Lightroom version.

Herb

2013 © Herb1911

Oct 13, 2012 at 04:49 PM

Herb1911
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p.14 #12 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

Sigma Photo Pro neutral with Lightroom color adjustment as in previous post.

The exposure was according the meter of the DP2M with no exposure correction. This gave a slightly underexposed picture (-1/3 to -1/2 stop). Did not correct for this in post process. The white balance was done in SPP on the third grey square from left.

In Lightroom now applied a medium contrast tone curve and a +20 highlight correction.

ISO 100 f/8 1/6 s. shot from tripod in clouded daylight.

Please note that Sigma Photo Pro is not rendering any color adjustments done here. So you are working in the blind in this horrible piece of software. I adjust only for highlight correction (0), sharpening (-1,5), noise reduction (chroma one notch up, luminance one notch down from default) and white balance as good as possible.

This provides the best starting point for my tiffs to work in Lightroom.

In the third image I pushed all colors in the LAB colospace in Photoshop, just to see how each color behaves with noise and artifacts. Blinding colors that still look good to me.
All is still rendered to sRGB for the web. In Lightroom it looks amazing, though hard to print on most papers.

Herb

Sigma DP2 Merill shot Neutral with Lightroom color correction

Sigma DP2 Merill as is comes out of SPP with Neutral setting

Push it!

Left pushed colors / right normal color corrected middle blue square 100%

Oct 13, 2012 at 05:02 PM

Herb1911
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p.14 #13 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

With the previous learned workflow regarding sharpening, color and other corrections I reworked a previous image accordingly. The Sigma files deserve this extra effort I think. However I would love to work them directly in Lightroom or Aperture or Capture One to name my top three.

Herb

Cloud, version #2

zoom in, crop 50%

Edited on Oct 14, 2012 at 01:53 PM · View previous versions

Oct 13, 2012 at 06:07 PM

Tariq Gibran
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p.14 #14 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

Herb1911 wrote:
Correction for Chromatic aberration in Sigma Photo Pro.

Do not correct CA in SPP with the automatic profile. It will make CA worse.
If you see still any CA in Lightroom after importing the tiffs then correct it here.

The screendump shows on the left the wrong corrected SPP and right the uncorrected Lightroom version.

Herb

I noticed that as well. Pretty odd.

Oct 13, 2012 at 06:20 PM

Herb1911
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p.14 #15 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

Tariq Gibran wrote:
Herb1911 wrote:
Correction for Chromatic aberration in Sigma Photo Pro.

Do not correct CA in SPP with the automatic profile. It will make CA worse.
If you see still any CA in Lightroom after importing the tiffs then correct it here.

The screendump shows on the left the wrong corrected SPP and right the uncorrected Lightroom version.

Herb

I noticed that as well. Pretty odd.

Thanks Tariq.

There is even more. If you select the RGB colorspace in your camera the file info will still show sRGB.
Do not know yet if the colorspace is faulty or the name. The brilliance of engineering is all in Dick Merill's Foveon sensor. The rest is average work at best with lots of surprises.

Also worth mentioning is the heavy noise reduction going on at default SPP setting. Together with high levels of sharpening.

Enjoy your Merill,
Herb

Oct 13, 2012 at 06:30 PM

Herb1911
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p.14 #16 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

Blotchines purple and green.

The best way to reduce them sofar for me in Lightroom (besides staying at base ISO):

1. check Remove Chromatic Aberration
together with
2. increase color noise reduction with care
and
3. reduce saturation sliders Aqua and Blue with care not to remove these colors from your image
(so not the purple and green sliders as you might think)

All used special noise reduction software has no to very limited effect.

One thing about the histogram in the camera and in SPP. Both are very misleading. When it looks you have hit
the upper limit you will have 1 stop+ to play with in Lightroom / Photoshop. This histogram is probably based on a rendered jpg but nonetheless way off.
As I have the impression sofar that underexposing will have a negative effect on the blotchines we will have to do some exposure bracketing.

Herb

Edited on Oct 13, 2012 at 07:49 PM · View previous versions

Oct 13, 2012 at 07:11 PM

Tariq Gibran
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p.14 #17 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

Herb1911 wrote:
Tariq Gibran wrote:
Herb1911 wrote:
Correction for Chromatic aberration in Sigma Photo Pro.

Do not correct CA in SPP with the automatic profile. It will make CA worse.
If you see still any CA in Lightroom after importing the tiffs then correct it here.

The screendump shows on the left the wrong corrected SPP and right the uncorrected Lightroom version.

Herb

I noticed that as well. Pretty odd.

Thanks Tariq.

There is even more. If you select the RGB colorspace in your camera the file info will still show sRGB.
Do not know yet if the colorspace is faulty or the name. The brilliance of engineering is all in Dick Merill's Foveon sensor. The rest is average work at best with lots of surprises.

Also worth mentioning is the heavy noise reduction going on at default SPP setting. Together with high levels of sharpening.

Enjoy your Merill,
Herb

Hmm. I set up the DP1M in camera color space as AdobeRGB and that seems to stick through processing in Sigma Photo.

Yes, the sharpening at 0 is very high. I think -2 is probably off. I have not played around with the NR at all yet.

Oct 13, 2012 at 07:32 PM

Herb1911
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p.14 #18 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

To get the color I want from the Sigma DP2 Merill files is not easy.
I start with SPP Neutral files that are white balanced correctly.
Keep sharpening and noise reduction low.
I save these files as 16 bit tiff's in ProPhoto colorspace.

I import these files in Lightroom with some basic settings as a preset that are quite rigorous compared to a regular workflow.
See my screendumps. Please note this is still a work in progress and not the final word :-)

After this I adjust Exposure, Whites and Blacks. Followed by Clarity and Vibrance.
Then followed usually by a little fine tuning

It is very important to get the white balance right as early as possible. Try to come close already in SPP.

One thing is clear to me, we will have to work very hard on the Sigma files to find the right settings.
But in the end it can look more real than anything else I have seen.

I hope it is of any help to some of you working with the Sigma raw files.

Herb

2013 © Herb1911

contrast adjust for Sigma DP2M

Birds in flight

Edited on Oct 14, 2012 at 08:23 PM · View previous versions

Oct 14, 2012 at 07:30 PM

carstenw
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p.14 #19 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

Wow, it is pretty complicated to get these files to behave! You must really love these sensors

Nice work and nice photo.

Oct 14, 2012 at 07:43 PM

Herb1911
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p.14 #20 · Sigma DP2 Merrill: Have any of you tried it?

Here is a ColorChecker comparison.

On the left the SPP Neutral file. On the right the same file adjusted according the three screen dumps of the previous post. This is for daylight.

The second comparison is left again the SPP Neutral. Right the color and tone curve adjusted file with additional
corrections for Whites, Blacks, Clarity and Vibrancy. Low values are used to taste as for my regular landscape images.

Herb

2013 © Herb1911

left SPP Neutral, right Lightroom adjusted as before with additional settings

Oct 14, 2012 at 07:48 PM

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