Sigma DP2 Merrill Review | 108 Data compared

The Sigma DP2 Merrill, as reviewed by The Absolute Sound, is a specialized, niche camera offering unmatched, medium-format-rivaling image quality through its 46-megapixel APS-C Foveon X3 sensor. Its key strengths include extraordinary edge-to-edge sharpness, stunning micro-contrast, and realistic texture detail, rivaling far more expensive systems when used in optimal, bright lighting. However, the review highlights severe operational drawbacks, including slow contrast-detection autofocus, an 18-second write time for RAW files, and poor battery life that necessitates carrying spares. Additional limitations include limited high-ISO performance and mandatory use of proprietary software for processing. The camera is ultimately recommended for patient photographers prioritizing unparalleled image quality over operational speed.

The Sigma DP2 Merrill features a 46-megapixel APS-C Foveon X3 sensor paired with a razor-sharp 30mm f/2.8 lens (45mm equivalent) that produces flat-out amazing, three-dimensional image quality at low ISO settings, surpassing competitors like the Leica X2 and Sony NEX-7. The camera excels in capturing luxurious color, rich tonality, and exceptional fine detail in both JPEG format and RAW files. Built with a solid, simple, blocky metal body, the camera offers an intuitive, easy-to-navigate menu system alongside functional manual focusing via a lens ring and an efficient AF+MF mode. However, its slow, sluggish operation and lack of features like a viewfinder, image stabilisation, or modern video modes make it a highly niche tool suited strictly for patient, methodical photographers shooting landscape, portrait, and still-life subjects in good lighting. The camera's severe performance drawbacks compromise its usability for everyday or spontaneous shooting. Its autofocus is remarkably slow, hunts in low light, and exhibited an annoying defect-related squeak during testing, while saving a single massive RAW file to an SD card takes up to 12 to 18 seconds. Furthermore, its poor battery...

The Sigma DP Merrill series (comprising the dp1, dp2, and dp3) is a unique line of heavy, metal-bodied fixed-lens compact cameras praised for delivering "unreal" sharpness and an astonishing visual presence. Their primary advantage lies in the proprietary Foveon sensor, which features three full-size sensor layers—one for each color—eliminating the need for color interpolation and producing detail that far outperforms standard CMOS sensors at a similar resolution. While Sigma markets the sensor as 46 megapixels, the actual pixel dimensions yield a 15-megapixel file size. Additionally, the integrated lenses are highly tuned and exceptional for static scenes or post-processed black and white photography. However, the reviewer compares the frustrating user experience to the slow, painstaking process of shooting large-format film. Major drawbacks include a narrow dynamic range, ugly blown highlights, poor autofocus, non-obvious controls, and a dim, low-quality LCD screen. The cameras are effectively restricted to ISO 100 to avoid high noise, necessitating a tripod or full sunlight. Furthermore, shooting requires saving to RAW format—as the built-in JPEGs are terrible—which takes an incredibly slow 10 seconds to write to the memory...

The Sigma DP2 Merrill, as reviewed by ePHOTOzine, is a highly specialized camera delivering exceptional image quality through its 46-megapixel APS-C Foveon X3 sensor and sharp 30mm f/2.8 lens. It is praised for producing medium-format-like, detailed images with realistic color reproduction, all housed within a solid, well-built metal body. However, the review highlights that achieving this quality requires patience, as the camera suffers from significant drawbacks including slow operation, sluggish autofocus, poor high-ISO performance, and limited battery life. The workflow is demanding, necessitating exclusive RAW shooting and the use of slow proprietary Sigma Photo Pro software, while lacking an electronic viewfinder. ePHOTOzine

The PCMag review highlights the Sigma DP2 Merrill as a specialized camera delivering exceptional image resolution and optical clarity, largely due to its Foveon X3 APS-C sensor. It features an extremely sharp fixed 30mm f/2.8 lens and an improved in-camera JPEG engine. However, the camera suffers from a slow, 46-second buffer clearing time, a demanding Raw workflow, and a lack of HD video, maxing out at 480p. Additionally, it lacks an electronic viewfinder and the f/2.8 lens is relatively slow, limiting its versatility, notes PCMag.

The ⁠Shark & Palm review positions the Sigma DP2 Merrill (DP2m) as an unapologetic, slow-operating point-and-shoot digital camera that yields spectacular, medium-format-level image quality. The reviewer lauds the 14.8-megapixel Foveon X3 sensor paired with a fixed 30mm f/2.8 lens (45mm equivalent), highlighting its unique capability to separate RGB colors into three distinct layers to provide stunning micro-contrast, true-to-life colors, and an overall "painterly" feel. The camera functions beautifully in bright natural light, offering intuitive manual controls and a fast autofocus system that makes it highly inspiring for intentional landscape shots and portraits. However, the review stresses that the camera comes with massive, agonizing compromises. The list of cons includes a dreadful battery life of only 60 to 97 frames, an excruciatingly slow write speed taking up to 10 seconds per shot, and a bricky, minimalist design completely devoid of a viewfinder. Furthermore, the camera's low-light performance is poor; shooting past ISO 200 or 800 results in muddy, green-tinted images. Post-processing also introduces heavy friction, requiring photographers to use Sigma’s sluggish, proprietary Sigma Photo Pro software to manage the unusual.X3F RAW...

This real-world review explores the Sigma DP1 Merrill (19mm f/2.8 lens) and DP2 Merrill (30mm f/2.8 lens) compact cameras during a landscape and fine art photography trip to Venice. The standout feature of both cameras is their exceptional image quality, driven by the APS-C sized Foveon sensor that captures 46 Foveon-megapixels (15.36 regular megapixels across three colour layers). This setup delivers stunning clarity, per-pixel sharpness, rich tones, and an absence of digital artefacts like moiré or aliasing. Both lenses are sharp and well-corrected to minimise distortion, with the DP2 Merrill's 30mm lens performing particularly well wide open. Furthermore, the reviewer notes that the cameras produce some of the best black and white images ever seen from a digital sensor. On the operational side, the cameras offer a wonderfully simple menu system, responsive autofocus, and hassle-free tripod integration using standard 49mm filter threads and internal focusing lenses. However, these cameras suffer from major physical and technical drawbacks. The most critical flaw is an incredibly short battery life, which often yields only 50 to 100 images per charge and requires users to...

The Sigma DP2 Merrill is a highly unique compact camera from 2012 that is defined entirely by its specialized, multi-layered Foveon sensor. The reviewer praises the camera's exceptional image quality, stating that it produces some of the sharpest digital files of any camera they have used, with performance reminiscent of medium format digital cameras or film. Its 30mm f/2.8 lens (~46mm equivalent) is incredibly sharp from corner to corner, and at low ISO settings, the camera provides true-to-life, CCD-like colors, a pleasing film-like grain, and shadow details that are highly flexible during editing. Furthermore, its understated, all-black plastic body provides surprisingly solid one-handed ergonomics and light handling on the go. However, the camera suffers from severe operational and usability flaws that make it a frustrating primary choice. On the downside, low-light performance is poor; color shooting is restricted to a maximum of ISO 400, while ISO 800 and 1600 are only usable for black-and-white images. The camera acts slowly when saving files, the autofocus struggles significantly with smaller, close-up subjects, and the out-of-focus bokeh often looks busy and distorted. Additionally,...

The Sigma DP2 Merrill is a compact $1,000 camera that functions primarily as a mobile vehicle for its unique 46-megapixel Foveon X3 image sensor, which utilizes three stacked 15.4-megapixel layers to capture distinct primary colors. The absolute best part of this device is its remarkable imaging technology, delivering impeccable color rendition and entirely noise-free photos when shooting at sharp lens details at or below ISO 800. Lightweight and ideally suited for street photography, the camera rewards patient photographers with beautifully detailed images once they are unloaded onto a computer. However, the exceptional sensor is severely hindered by a clumsy, unpolished body and poor internal construction. Significant cons include an abysmal battery life that only yields 50 to 60 photographs, a low-quality 3-inch LCD screen that makes manual focusing a guessing game, and minimal on-body controls. Furthermore, image quality completely falls apart at high ISO levels, and the video capability is locked to an outdated 640x480 resolution at 30 fps. Because of these deep usability flaws, the review concludes that it feels like an expensive prototype that will frustrate most everyday...

The Amateur Photographer review highlights the Sigma DP2 Merrill as a specialized camera delivering medium-format, high-resolution imagery via its 44.3-million effective pixel Foveon X3 sensor and 30mm f/2.8 lens, yielding exceptional sharpness and color. Key advantages include its compact, solid metal design, excellent tone, and bright 3-inch LCD screen. Conversely, the camera suffers from significant usability drawbacks, including slow autofocus, poor low-light performance, and excessive file processing times, making it unsuitable for general photography. Other cons include poor battery life, a weak screen in direct light, and a mandatory, slow software workflow for optimal RAW results.