Today we're gonna be discussing this,
the Sigma fp L, a camera that has confused me
more than any other I've reviewed on this channel.
Let's get Undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone, and...
So, as usual, some disclosure:
Sigma sent me this camera to review.
This is a pre-production unit.
There's still some kinks to be worked out.
I do not get to keep this camera,
no money changed hands, and Sigma does not get
to preview this video before it's posted.
I did, however, inform Sigma that my review
would likely not be very favourable,
and asked them if they wanted me to hold off.
I generally don't like to just make a video bashing a product,
and I'm a big fan of Sigma in particular.
If you've been watching my channel for a while,
you'd know that I'm constantly raving about
the quality and value that their lenses provide.
But I think it speaks volumes about them as a company
that they encouraged me to go ahead and publish my review,
even though I cannot recommend this camera.
So, let's talk about why that is.
Well, it just doesn't make sense to me to buy it.
I can't figure out who it would serve best
at the price they're asking for it.
It's $2,500 US for the base camera package,
and $3,000 if you want the EVF kit.
And if you're planning on using this for photography,
monitoring your audio, or using it outside in sunlight,
the EVF is basically mandatory.
I'd highly recommend you familiarize yourself
with the original Sigma fp by watching
Caleb Pike's or Philip Bloom's reviews.
They detail the improvements they'd like to see in future
models in the lineup, but unfortunately,
most of the issues they raised were not really addressed
in this new camera, but the new EVF add-on does
resolve one of Philip Bloom's biggest annoyances,
so that's a good thing.
But then we're back to the pricing issue.
This combo now with the EVF is $3,000 US.
The fp L is housing a 61-megapixel full frame sensor.
I guess it's likely the same one you'd find in Sony's a7R IV,
but the a7R IV has several things the Sigma fp L does not,
like a mechanical shutter, a proper grip,
better ergonomics, more buttons, extensive photographic features,
incredible autofocus, an angled screen,
dual card slots, a bigger, better battery,
and the list goes on and on. And guess what?
That a7R IV is also $3,000 US.
So, I'm not gonna bother showing you sample photography images
and I'm just gonna wrap up the entire photography
section of this review right here by saying:
if you're looking for a great camera for taking pictures
for three grand, buy the a7R IV, not the Sigma fp L.
This is not a proper photo camera.
And that pricing thing is gonna be a recurring issue,
because even when we transition into video,
it's now competing at the same price as
the new Blackmagic Pocket 6K Pro and EVF combo,
it's more expensive than the Panasonic S1,
and nearing the price of the a7S III or S1H.
And this is when the camera stops making sense.
This 61-megapixel sensor was not made for video,
and this compact camera was more enticing
when it was much cheaper, like the original fp,
which is only $1,700 now,
and which is actually quite similar in video capabilities
to this new one. For example,
this new fp L can still only shoot 4K30
as the max resolution and frame rate.
It still only records 8-bit internally,
and is still an ergonomic hassle,
but now, due to the higher resolution sensor,
it has worse rolling shutter, and the battery drains faster.
I was only averaging just over an hour on a full charge.
It does allow for powering over USB-C,
which is nice, but that then removes
your ability to connect an external SSD
and record 12-bit RAW.
Now, there are some positives on this camera,
and I'll talk about some of those now
to break up my barrage of criticism.
First off, from a material and build quality perspective,
this thing is well made.
It's solid with great tolerances and tactile response.
I also didn't experience any overheating
on this camera, which is extra impressive
when you explore the new crop zoom
and sampling techniques on this 61-megapixel sensor.
The fp L allows you to choose anywhere between
1.0x and a 2.5x crop
with an adjustable slider, effectively changing
the source resolution for sampling as you crop in.
A lot of cameras let you activate a 1.5x crop,
but I've never seen the camera do it to such a variable degree.
And what's better is the image coming out of it
looks a lot better than the line-skipped image
you'd usually get from such a high resolution sensor.
I can't say for sure what process they're using,
but it looks very similar to oversampling in my tests.
I asked Sigma directly, and the response I got was
"To make the recording size in line with the Ultra HD format,
we create 3840x2160 from the sensor's effective pixels.
We are afraid that we are not able to provide
information regarding the details of the processing."
But to test this myself, I captured a 61-megapixel
still image-- which is approximately 9.5K--
dropped it into a 4K timeline,
and then compared it to a non-cropped 4K image
captured during video recording.
Both images are DNG, and both appear to provide
very similar results, leading me to believe that the fp L
is oversampling the image in-camera
since it matches the oversampled image
I created in post, which is quite impressive.
But as already mentioned, this process leads to
terrible rolling shutter performance.
Honestly, this is some of the worst Jello
I've seen in a while. Shockingly bad.
The same is not true, however,
if you capture raw out through HDMI.
I was excited to try this camera with BRAW recording,
and I'll be going into this topic in further detail
in an upcoming third-party BRAW video I'm making,
but I'm sorry to say that the 4K image
recorded over HDMI raw is a soft, artifacty,
aliased mess, and doesn't look anywhere near as good
as the CinemaDNG recorded either internally or via external SSD.
The only time the image looked the same
is when the crop zoom was set to 2.5x,
which basically means a 1:1 readout.
At that point, the images were very similar,
whether internal or via HDMI raw,
which leads me to believe that the ProRes and Blackmagic RAW
recordings from this camera are terribly line-skipped,
where the DNG recordings are oversampled.
Still, though, that crop zoom function is pretty cool.
Oh, and if you shoot at 1080p instead,
you can get a crop up to 5x, and get a 1:1 1080p readout.
So, I would not recommend this camera for ProRes
or Blackmagic RAW capture, but that's probably
for the best, because it doesn't
make much sense to buy a camera this small
and then make it a massive rig.
But to be honest, I don't really understand
why this camera is so small. It's small to a fault.
You can't access the battery or SD card
when you have a tripod plate on,
and you can't mount large lenses without using a riser plate
below the camera, otherwise the lens hits the tripod plate.
They're using the awful Micro HDMI.
There's no headphone jack without adding the EVF module,
and if you do add the EVF, you lose the HDMI port
because it takes up all your ports on the side.
And there's not enough buttons to even set a proper exposure
without going into the menu, which, by the way,
is my least favourite menu to date.
Ergonomics generally are pretty subjective,
but I find this camera to be very annoying to use.
Everything just feels tedious.
It's very similar to the original fp, though,
so if you liked using that camera,
you'll probably like this one too. I do like some things.
I like how you can put the waveforms on the display,
and how there's two sizes for them.
I like the manual focus punch-in feature,
and I think the screen is decent indoors.
It's reasonably bright and clear,
but the fact that it can't be tilted,
mixed with its limited brightness for outdoors,
can be annoying.
There's also a whole bunch of frustrating little things,
like when you don't have a memory card in,
there's this giant prompt that takes up the whole screen,
which is weird, because they already have an indicator
of that in the top corner, which is already pretty large,
so why additionally block the whole screen?
Or when in Stills mode, it doesn't automatically
show your depth of field preview.
When in video, if you stop down,
you see your depth of field change automatically,
but in photo mode the scene just gets darker.
It doesn't actually update your depth of field
until you press the depth of field preview button,
which you have to map yourself to a button of your choosing,
and there's already too few buttons on this little camera.
And if you turn the camera off or let it go to sleep,
it resets your manual focus on electronic lenses,
and I couldn't find anything in the menu to disable that.
It does have a custom white balance tool, which is good,
but the reticle is too big, it can't be positioned,
and it doesn't actually tell you the capture details
when you use it.
Generally, I'd prefer if the camera told you
that it captured a white balance of 4800 Kelvin or something,
but this one doesn't seem to. You just have to trust it.
Another thing that's new in the fp L is
it now has phase detect autofocus, instead of
a lousy contrast detection from the previous model.
Unfortunately, this one doesn't work very well either.
I was told that they're aware of an issue
where the camera doesn't change subjects well
and it's being worked on for the production version,
but I also have concerns
about the general speed and reliability.
There's no refined controls for speed or responsiveness,
and it just feels very sluggish and uncertain.
It has eye detection, but it did a terrible job of tracking me,
and I have no confidence in the autofocus in its current state.
Alright, now let's talk a bit more about the image,
because sometimes you can forgive all of
the other issues if the image is just fantastic.
But in this case with the fp L,
it feels that the camera is trying to undermine that goal
every step of the way. For example,
if you like the size of the camera
and you want to just record internally to the SD card
using that oversampled image,
well, you're gonna face some challenges.
If you want an image with decent colour accuracy,
you'll have to use one of the colour profiles like "Neutral,"
but then you'll be stuck with an 8-bit image
with only about 7.5 stops of dynamic range, which is painful.
So, maybe you switch to the newer "Color Off" setting,
which is kind of like a pseudo-Log profile.
Well, now your colour accuracy is completely gone,
you're still in 8-bit, and now your image has some
nasty over-sharpening that you can't turn down
because the control is disabled when turning the Color Mode off.
You do get a bit more of the dynamic range, though,
bringing you closer to 10 stops,
but still nowhere near what the competition can do.
So, then you decide to record externally to an SSD
and capture 12-bit CinemaDNG RAW.
Well, now you have two modes.
You can either use Color Mode Off again,
or you can choose a colour profile.
But it doesn't seem to matter which profile you choose,
they all look the same in post--
probably because it's raw-- except for "Off."
Again, "Off" gives you better dynamic range but worse colour.
But if you're willing to fuss with the colour in post
and you shoot 12-bit with Color Mode off,
you can get just over 11 stops of usable dynamic range.
But now you're using a raw format that takes
approximately 17 gigabytes per minute at 24p,
meaning you'll need a terabyte for every hour you record.
It's absurd. So, this is why I got excited about BRAW.
Thanks to some tricks in post, you can even get more
dynamic range if you convert your raw data
to a proper log curve before grading.
I got good results with V-Log and Canon Log 2,
both of which got me close to 12 stops.
and if you use Resolve's "Highlight Recovery" tool
for BRAW and expose in a very specific way,
you can sometimes get even better, nearing 13 stops.
However, that weird "Color Off" mode causes
strange saturation issues, and applying manufacturers' LUTs
for V-Log or Canon Log 2 don't fix it,
and the image looks a bit muddy and flat.
So, you're still gonna have to fuss with it a bit in post
to get an image you're happy with,
and even if you do fuss with the colours, you're still gonna have
that terrible softness, moiré, aliasing,
and colour artifacts that are produced by the line-skipped
and compressed stream going to the external recorder.
So, when I put all these factors together,
I just can't understand why anyone would want
to shoot with this camera, especially for $3000,
when there are other cameras out there
that give you a much better image
for a lot less effort, and for less money.
Sigma also likes to promote that you can use this
as a director's viewfinder,
but you could also do that with the original fp,
which is much cheaper.
Again, I don't mean to dump all over Sigma.
I think they're a great company,
but I just don't see the point of this camera,
and a lot of these issues cannot be saved by firmware.
The best thing Sigma could do for this camera
is to drastically drop the price
and install a nice 10-bit log image
to an internal codec that can be written to the SD card.
Then the size and design language might make some sense.
But in the meantime, I cannot recommend this camera.
But that's gonna be it for me. I hope you found this video
entertaining, or at least helpful. And if you did,
make sure you leave it the old thumbs-up,
and consider subscribing if you haven't already.
But if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining,
try setting the playback speed to 75%.
Alright... I'm done.