I used to shoot with a Canon SLR and very big,very heavy,very expensive L glass.
Then I bought a Sony RX100 for $650, and sold my Canon gear for thousands.
Then I had all this money so I bought a Merrill DP2, and put my Sony on a shelf and stopped talking to it.
But I tried to make my Merril do what it didn't like to do, and became short tempered with it
Now I carry my Sony and my Sigma together, and I'm a happy boy again.......and have a hell of a lot more keepers!

Mordical: yes, the Sigma offerings can't really replace other high end p&s cameras for some types of shots and I think I'd go mad using just the Sigma DP.

I have the GXR to balance it out a little bit and the M mount does really well and allows for a variety of lenses and a better user interface to boot.

My gear:
5D mkII
Canon 50mm 1.4
Canon MP-E 65mm macro x5
Zeiss ZE 85mm
---
I do everything with it, but I canīt travel no more even just with the body and the 50mm. Itīs too heavy. My health doesnīt allow me to carry heavy gear.
Cannot switch to just a compact only solution because thereīs no macro lens like the one Iīve. I donīt even like Canon; I prefer Nikon and others.
I bought the Canon just for the macro MP-E 65mm. Yes I work with my gear but I donīt like it a lot.
I donīt like A-A filters.
Nikon bodies are better. Nikon sensors are better.
Leica M (a compact quality hypothesis) is not good for macro (and too expensive). Just my opinion.

So I need a FF body at least for my macro work with that manual 65mm lens and a small compact body to travel.
If I can find an adaptor (is there one? please make me a suggestion) to put my EOS macro into a Nikon Body Iīll sell all my gear, but not the 65mm macro and make a switch. I even consider a Sigma DSLR body but it only accept Sigma mount as far as I know.

I donīt even need my 50mm and 85mm lenses with a DSLR body.
I only need a DSLR for the macro.
I think I would be happy with the DP2 (42mm is even closer to the so called "human point of view" than the regular 50mm lenses) for the standard. The DP1 for wider vistas and if needed the new DP3 for portrait, etc. I just finished a portrait work last week with my Zeiss 85mm.

I donīt trust marketing (I know a bit from inside). I prefer users opinions. Iīm not a big gear connoisseur. Only when I need; only when a piece of gear starts to fail...
Finally some brands are producing non A-A filter cameras, Full Frame compacts and of course thereīs the Foveon.

Iīm in a crossroad. And I do understand what you felt Mordicai ,-)

It's taken me a while to learn what it is not happy with, but like any relationship, once you understand the limitations it makes for a more enjoyable experience.

I am in the process of considering retiring/replacing my 5D3 plus L/Sigma/Zeiss glass with not one but a number of compacts. I can carry my DP2M, my X100 and my G1X in a small bag and do pretty much everything I could do with my DSLR. I say 'pretty much everything' because I can't do Macro, well, I can with the X100 but not with the control that the 5D3 and Sigma 150 can give me. However, I generally do macro in a controlled environment and not in the field so certainly the days of carting my whole DSLR kit along with me on days out have gone.
With the DP2M I can even produce results that are just about impossible with the 5D3 because even with stitching I can't get that 'Foveon look'. I have DP2M in my shoulder bag along with the G1X and have the X100 around my neck for 'snaps', the G1X comes out when I want to zoom or HDR and the DP2M comes out when I see something that would benefit from the Foveon. It's a really great combo. Oh and another benefit is that I'm not putting anywhere near as many shutter actuations on the 5D3 so it should last for years.

I am in the process of considering retiring/replacing my 5D3 plus L/Sigma/Zeiss glass with not one but a number of compacts. I can carry my DP2M, my X100 and my G1X in a small bag and do pretty much everything I could do with my DSLR. I say 'pretty much everything' because I can't do Macro, well, I can with the X100 but not with the control that the 5D3 and Sigma 150 can give me. However, I generally do macro in a controlled environment and not in the field so certainly the days of carting my whole DSLR kit along with me on days out have gone.
With the DP2M I can even produce results that are just about impossible with the 5D3 because even with stitching I can't get that 'Foveon look'. I have DP2M in my shoulder bag along with the G1X and have the X100 around my neck for 'snaps', the G1X comes out when I want to zoom or HDR and the DP2M comes out when I see something that would benefit from the Foveon. It's a really great combo. Oh and another benefit is that I'm not putting anywhere near as many shutter actuations on the 5D3 so it should last for years.

It seems that itīs impossible to mount EOS glass on other DSLR bodies. Size problems. Thereīs even no adaptors (that I know) to put FF EOS glass on Nikon, Pentax, Sony, etc.
I saw once my super macro lens mounted on a Nex-7 but thatīs not Full Frame.
And like you I do macro in studio.
So if I want to keep doing x1 to x5 times macro with one lens I must keep with a Canon DSLR; like it or not.

Luis: if you do any sort of specialized photography and would like to keep doing it - even if it is not so often - you will probably have to keep whatever is necessary to do that.
Keep a Canon body and your best macro lens (or two if you need them).

The holy grail solution has eluded photographers since the dawn of photography and some have actually found their solutions - the rest of us struggle and juggle gear to keep it to a bare minimum. Many get tired of hauling gear around (me included) and some love to bring a lot of gear. No right or wrong here - just preferences. And dealing with anxiety and the hassle of rapidly changing technology that sometimes does not bring the experience of photography forward, but sideways.

Out of curiosity, I am trying to analyze the images and find what is causing the look.

Henrik, your images on the previous page have some of the "HDR processing" look, with enhanced local contrast. The crop of the white branches against the blue sky brings the evidence, there has been local contrast enhancement with radius about 10-15 pixels, and strength somewhere around 10-20 %. This is consistent with what I found in Tariq's comparison with the D800.

The per pixel crispness I can also emulate from a higher MP bayer sensor. If i resample to twice the linear resolution of the Foveon using bicubic, the sharpen a little, and downsample to the exact Foveon resolution using Nearest Neighbor, I get a very similar per pixel look.

Now if I only knew how to replicate the Foveon colors, I have the complete recipe for a "Merrilizer" filter i photoshop

@Luis:
For your macro-work get yourself a Kodak SLR/c. It should be cheap (little hard to find perhaps). It has 13,9 MPs and no AA-Filter. Besides its lighter than the usual DSLRs (magnesium body). Only disadvantage: ISOs are usable only up to 400. On the other hand the Kodak has the abilility to shoot real low ISOs like ISO 5.
All the best, Peter

I guess this is for me ,-)
Could you Peter specify better the Kodak camera youīre talking about?
Thanks.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/kodakslrc

There is a thread on those Kodaks on dpreview, too

Thanks; Iīll check it.

@alundeb
No, you can not get the the file quality of the DPM's by PP Bayer files!
It's not just enhanced local contrast etc..
Best you can do is "mime"the files quality, but you don't get real sharpness and detail by doing so.
The Fovenon does not work with software tricks.

Werner_Utsch wrote:
@alundeb
No, you can not get the the file quality of the DPM's by PP Bayer files!
It's not just enhanced local contrast etc..
Best you can do is "mime"the files quality, but you don't get real sharpness and detail by doing so.
The Fovenon does not work with software tricks.

I am talking about sensors with higher real resolution. Everybody agrees that the D800 sensor shows more real detail than the Foveon sensor. How can I then not get the real sharpness and detail?

alundeb wrote:
Out of curiosity, I am trying to analyze the images and find what is causing the look.

Henrik, your images on the previous page have some of the "HDR processing" look, with enhanced local contrast. The crop of the white branches against the blue sky brings the evidence, there has been local contrast enhancement with radius about 10-15 pixels, and strength somewhere around 10-20 %. This is consistent with what I found in Tariq's comparison with the D800.

Now if I only knew how to replicate the Foveon colors, I have the complete recipe for a "Merrilizer" filter i photoshop


Yes, it is actually even more noticeable when downsized.
It is absolutely possible to process the files and avoid the HDR-look.

In the test shot mentioned there was a high contrast scene and even with small increments in SPP the results varied dramatically - polarizing filter like difference. I agree on the LCE look. It was a fine line of balancing it to "pop" or "not pop" and some settings looked a bit drab. The shot was overexposed to begin with (my bad) as I had shot a few shots into the sun and had to dial in +1.3 EV for that and didn't change back before that shot. I was going to erase the shot in camera but thought I'd see how it does in SPP when overexposed.

As for the snowy twigs the highlight contrast was very high and I doubt any camera could have managed without severely underexposing the sky. In reality it looked like halos around every twig.
Not the best example for the Foveon look perhaps.
/ Henrik

I just wonder if Sigma does this by default, and why nobody complains. In the snowy twigs example, is it possible to get the same luminance of the blue between the outer twigs to the same brightness as the blue just a little more outside them? The difference now is B 55 near twigs and B 67 a little away. I would have to add a blur layer to do it afterwards?

Luis,
You could try a Sony Nex 7, with the metabones speedbooster adapter that allows you to use your Canon lenses on the Sony e-mount.
Good luck, Derrick

dakel wrote:
Luis,
You could try a Sony Nex 7, with the metabones speedbooster adapter that allows you to use your Canon lenses on the Sony e-mount.
Good luck, Derrick

I once saw a guy with my macro lens mounted in a Sony Nex-7; Iīm not totally sure. But itīs a small sensor with a FF lens. Iīm not in the mood for another bayer sensor with A-A just for macro.

alundeb wrote:
Werner_Utsch wrote:
@alundeb
Everybody agrees that the D800 sensor shows more real detail than the Foveon sensor.


Is this true?
I guess the "E" version of the D800.
Or itīs also because of the huge megapixels numbers of the D800E?