When my blog suffers from lack of activity I know my life is too busy and that changes must be made to regain my equilibrium. While that is true in this instance, it’s not the whole story. The other part of the equation is my discovery of the Sigma DP2 Merrill, a simple camera with too many limitations for most photographers, but one that will yield extraordinary results for those willing to work with it. While it has a fixed lens exquisitely tuned to the sensor, this simplicity is at once both limiting and liberating. Want a different focal length? Then buy one of it’s two siblings, also with fixed lenses of extraordinary quality.

When I first was shown the images this little jewell is capable of I was absolutely stunned. I couldn’t take my eyes off the two very large prints that a fellow photographer had taken. The richness of the colours, the fine detail, and the almost three dimensionality of the images brought back memories of shooting medium format Kodachrome and Velvia film. I had never seen anything like it from a digital sensor. Shooting digital had suddenly fulfilled it’s promise of delivering a small, simple, and very high quality device. Will I ever shoot with anything but the DP2 M and it’s two siblings? Not unless someone ups the ante, but that doesn’t seem likely in the near future.

In the short time I’ve had the DP2 M I’ve enjoyed looking at any well exposed image from it regardless of the subject matter because they are so visually rich to my eye.

The following six images are a few of the experimental images taken with my new DP2 M. Of necessity they are in .jpg format. The raw files are much richer.