Shots from the street
This will likely be my final post before I take off for Europe for 10 days. I had the opportunity to take the DP2 out last night for Portland’s infamous Last Thursday festival/street fair/celebration, and for the first time I really got to put the little guy through its paces.
The most challenging aspect that I had to overcome was the autofocus. I am so used to the 40D SLR that I’m really having to re-learn how to ensure that a high percentage of the shots are perfectly in focus. I played around with the manual focus, but I only had marginal success. The following pictures are candid and hardly works of art, but they do show a bit more of what this camera is capable of.
ISO 200, f/9, 1/125
ISO 200, f/3.2, 1/500
ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/50th
ISO 400, f/2.8, 1/80th
ISO 400, f/2.8, 1/80th
I was struck by how little processing each image needed, especially compared to my big Canon. A simple adjustment of the ‘Blacks’ slider in Lightroom got most of the shots 80% of the way there, and a couple of curves, sharpening, and saturation tweaks were generally all that was needed to finish it off. When the focus is right-on the pictures really sing, and I’m starting to see the mythical “pop” that people attribute to the Foveon sensor.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll be back on June 9th with plenty more DP2 impressions and a whole lot more pictures.
Cheers,
Peter
Nice pics.
I shoot with an FM and a few prime lenses, so the simple (and idiosyncratic) DP-2 with a core feature set that replicates the strengths of this all manual camera is really attractive.
I think the only thing holding me back from scooping one up yesterday are the rumours of a DP-3 with possibly improved Foveon sensor, possibly interchangeable lens mount, possibly improved AF, but no mention of improving that LCD. These things were mentioned by the DP-2 design team themselves in a DP-2 special in ‘Asahi Camera’ magazine.