Big test
screwed in. These have a quarter-inch thread, so in theory you can swap out the strap and mount other gear, such as the aforementioned accessories, but also regular quick-release plates, cages, mics, arms or other gear – again, it’s a feature that’s more aligned with filmmaking than stills, but a good option to have. If you want to use flash, there’s a hotshoe adapter included with the camera body, and to fit that, you take off a rubber cover from the side of the body and screw it in, then screw the lug into the adapter to reattach the strap. On the subject of flash, the fp’s electronic shutter limits it to a maximum sync speed of 1/30sec. On the downside, when I tried mounting various sizes of quick-release plate to the regular tripod mount, all of them blocked the battery compartment door, so had to be removed before the card or battery could be changed. I found the fp’s battery life to be somewhat erratic. I ran the camera for around a week, shooting with a variety of exposure settings as well as working through menus, and sometimes it was asking for a recharge after between 60 and 100 shots. Another time, I shot continuously for several hours and achieved over 1400 shots. The specification states up to 300, but that’s not great by many standards. Either way, you’d definitely want to invest in a spare. The fp can be charged via its USB-C connector, and can also be run off the mains using the optional CN-21 DC connector. On the plus side, the fp has a very solid feel to it, and the body is die-cast aluminium and it has a level of weather sealing, which is quoted as ‘dust- and splash-proof sealing on a total of 42 points over the camera’s body’. We didn’t have a weather-sealed lens to test this with, but it’s encouraging use in wet and dusty environments. The fp uses a contrast-detect AF system, with 49 selectable points, as well as the option to use tracking, face and eye detection modes. As mentioned previously, the dedicated buttons on the rear make it quick to switch between modes, and AF points can be set using the touchscreen. AF performance was OK, but it lacked the assurance of mirrorless cameras that use an on-chip phase-detect system. Like most contrast-detect systems, it wanders a bit when focusing, but the Eye and Face AF modes worked really well, I found, even when shooting in continuous AF with the subject moving towards or away from the camera. That said, we only had the f/2.8 lens to test it on, rather than a more challenging faster optic. You can’t pick the closest eye, but I found it defaulted to that anyway. Manual focus was good, too, and the large clear screen makes focusing easy, along with the usual
PERFORMANCE: EXPOSURE LATITUDE
PERFORMANCE: IMAGE QUALITY When it comes to image quality, the Sigma fp does very well indeed. The full-frame 24.6-megapixel chip produces lots of detail, and the lack of an optical low-pass filter increases sharpness. This is theoretically at the expense of moiré patterns and the sensor is comparatively low-res compared to those normally dispensing with an OLPF, but we didn’t detect any real problems. Raws are shot in DNGmode, which is very handy, as the common format doesn’t require the latest updates to be opened in software. One of the only downsides in image quality I found was the fp’s Fill Light mode. This, accessed from the Quick menu, can be set to +/-5, but anything over +1 gave quite garish results. The built-in three-frame HDRmode is much better and well worth using on high-contrast subjects. Of particular interest was the fp’s expanded ISO range, which goes as low as 6 and is therefore very useful for shooting longer exposure or using wider apertures in bright light. Expanded ISO ranges canmean a loss of quality, and exposure latitude in processing, though, and while the ISO 6 images looked just as good as those at 100 straight out of the can, when altering exposure on the comparative DNG files, a loss of exposure latitude was progressively seen. Used with care though, the low-extended ISO is a great option to have. assistance modes like focus peaking and image magnification. High shooting speed maxes out at 18fps, which is a very good number, but the fp is only capable of 12 frames at that speed, so you need to use themwisely. And dropping to the medium speed of 5fps, it’s the same story, and the buffer takes seven or eight seconds to clear. Low speed, 3fps will shoot 24 frames before the buffer fills. All in all, this performance doesn’t make it much of an action camera, if that’s what you’re looking for. The fp is compatible with L-Mount lenses that use optical image stabilisation, and it has an in-body electronic system. When you switch this on, the shutter speed is limited to a slowest setting of 1/4sec, and I shot at that speed with the mode turned on and off. There was a clear improvement with the electronic stabiliser on, with almost all shots sharp, compared with very few without it. Electronic IS is more common in video cameras than stills, and often uses a cropped view of the sensor to counteract vibration. That’s maybe what’s at work here, but images retained the 6000x4000 pixel dimensions, and looked very high quality, even if they were being interpolated after processing. KS
The Sigma fp’s sensor has a 12.5EVdynamic range and, overall, images straight out of the camera contained a goodmixture of highlight and shadow detail, even in challenging light. When it comes to exposure latitude in Raw, the camera did well.We shot over- and underexposed images then corrected the DNG files by the relevant number of stops. Underexposed shots fared well, showing little extra noise until -4EV. Overexposed shots did well, too, with blown highlights well returned at +1EVand +2EV.There was slight greying of the brightest areas at +3EV, and a flat result at +4EV, but overall performance was good.
+1EV
-3EV
-2EV
0
-1EV
+2EV
+3EV
“THE FP HAS A SOLID FEEL TO IT, AND THE BODY IS DIE- CAST ALUMINIUM AND IT HAS A LEVEL OF WEATHER SEALING, WHICH IS DUST- AND SPLASH-PROOF”
62 Photography News | Issue 72
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