The Inevitable

Well I cracked. I bought a Sigma DP2 Merrill. So I now have, er, 5 cameras. And a few “backups”. Better than spending it on booze I suppose. Anyway, the DP2M has been written about to death all over the place. Suffice it to say that it is everything I expected it to be, for better and for worse. So far the photos seem pretty good, and yes, I got the “wow!” reaction when I first zoomed in. Somebody somewhere compared it conceptually to the big Fuji rangefinders: I used to have a 670GW, which I regret selling, and yes, the DP2M seems to occupy a similar niche - fantastic when all appropriate ducks are in a row, totally useless otherwise.

It’s not so easy to live without a viewfinder, so I’ve ordered the Sigma clip-on. I’m not entirely sure how useful it will be without any information display. Same as the Ricoh GRD I suppose.

The Sigma PhotoPro software, in my opinion, is nowhere near as awful as it is reported to be. It does what it is supposed to do, and has some more the adequate exposure controls. The exposure balance tool is an interesting idea which I don’t think I’ve seen elsewhere. The DP2M (and DP1M) is not easy to find in Switzerland, but I got mine at a low price with amazingly fast delivery from Digitech in Zürich.

And now for some pretty pictures from my first wander around:

more to come…