timballic Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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Been out this afternoon with the DP4. Some good, some less so.
(Mainly using my Sigma 150mm at F2.8.)
The Good:
• Focus excellent. I never once felt I needed a higher resolution screen. The edges of the in focus area really "popped" and I could have increased the sharpness setting to get even more "pop".
(However, I found the special "focus assist" feature less accurate than without it)
• Composition: good in Nikon setting (with 5DII) as that shows the whole image without cutoff, and yet fills screen top to bottom with black each side.. The image size is nearly 4" diagonal, and is a big improvement on the 3" camera LCD, plus of course it swivels and tilts.
( although smallHD make a big thing about rescaling for Canon, this cut's off top and bottom, which is not helpful for stills.)
• Brightness. I set to 90% backlight and I never felt I needed it brighter, and it was a sunny day.
• Overall look of the image, contrast and saturation is good
• Small size and light weight.
Neutral comments:
• Colour slightly yellow. However there are individual RGB channel adjusts which I haven't played with, so I probably could get colour even closer. It's fine for me.
• Reflection off shiny acetate screen cover. I'm going to get this whichever Monitor I use. Perhaps a non reflective screen would be better though. It wasn't direct sun on the monitor that was the problem, but the reflection of my sunlit chest and face. (Note to self: Remember to wear black shirt!)
Problem area:
• Battery life. I had 2 fully charged EP-6 batteries and on constantly they only lasted 2.5hrs!
I hadn't expected this, as I'd read that others got 6 + hours. Perhaps it was having backlight at 90% plus non OEM batteries, ( I doubt I'd get more that 3hrs even with Canon ones.) This is a big problem for me.
• 2.5 - 3 sec blink between every action when screen goes blue. Review, view, menu etc, only 5x and 10x enlargement are without this annoying delay (I believe Magic Lantern fixes it) I could just about live with it as is.
For me the very poor battery life may be a deal breaker. At first I thought the unit had broken down, I mean 2.5 hrs with both batteries fully charged just isn't on! If it had been the 6 hours I'd expected then I'd be really happy with it and got used to the delay "blinks".
I really will really try to get the Sony monitor to compare with it now.
PS. SmallHD tell me the erratic scroll wheel isn't user replaceable, it would need a complete new main board replacement at $175 + shipping both ways, I'll live with it as it is!
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