I’m back from my first business trip with the DP1 as my camera. It was a short trip, with only about 3 hours available for a walk around my destination, Geneva. It had been raining all day, but the sky moved to broken clouds during the afternoon. Later there was a thunderstorm, which led to some images as well.
Since I had left before the update to Sigma Photo Pro had been released with its improved treatment of Auto White Balance, I shot with WB set to cloudy. At this point I’ve downloaded it, but haven’t explored it’s improvements yet, so I’ve stuck with the old preset workflow for now.
As a photographic tool, the DP1 impresses with its results, but falls far short of any DSLR in use. I did eventually get into a rhythm for using it, but it inhibits my usual pace of working.
I can easily adapt to the focus mechanism on the camera. Like any point and shoot, autofocus takes a second with the image becoming perfected by contrast detection. A DSLR just snaps into focus with its phase detection mechanism. It’s a very long shutter lag if you try to simply point the camera at the scene and fully depress the shutter release. Most of the time, I’m choosing a focus point and can take the brief time to focus, recompose and release because the scene is static.
However, if there’s motion, the sophistication of a DSLR’s many focus modes and control makes many images harder to get. In these kinds of situations, typical when photographing on the street, I experimented with manual focus with the DP1. I haven’t had a chance to edit the images enough to understand how well this may have worked.
It’s the slowness of the storage on the camera that has much more impact on my shooting. Once the shutter is depressed, many seconds go by before any camera setting can be changed or another image captured. It’s actually the frozen setting controls that seemed to be the more frequent frustration. I might have shot with manual focus and wanted to try auto. Or try a different approach to exposure. On the D300, I’d change setting and shoot. Move to slightly different angle and shoot. With the DSLR it’s a seamless flow with the camera always ready for my next action, whether it’s metering, changing a setting or capturing an image. WIth the DP1, it was shoot and wait, making it impossible to establish a shooting rhythm of any kind.
The DP1 tended to drive me to single shots of a subject unless I felt the subject was really worthy or I had obviously made an error of some kind. Mostly, it wasn’t worth it to stand and wait for the camera. Better to keep on walking and looking while the camera did it’s own thing.
Of course, this all simply means that the electronics of the DP1 are those of a typical compact digital camera. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that most of the electronics are sourced from the same suppliers as other compact cameras. The DP1 has the sensor of a DSLR at it’s heart, but it still has compact camera electronics for brains.