The Online Photographer

Here are the five things about my camera I don't like:

1. You have to look through the viewfinder to make any settings, check the battery, etc. The chimney finder just magnifies the viewing screen. So you have to turn the camera on and look through the VF to set or change most things.
2. There's a cover for the huge eyepiece (illustrated below) that has to be snapped on when you're not using the camera. The problem is that direct sunlight through the magnifier could damage the viewing screen. Although it's not something I've ever had to do before on any other camera, I actually don't mind it in practice. Cameras are quirky; you get used to the ones you use.
3. Electronic shutter only. As far as I know rolling shutter is possible. I haven't experienced any problems with it yet. I might have to do some tests. 
4. The conversion probably spoiled its resale value—I'll never get my money back out of it. I don't currently want to; but still, if I wanted to, I probably couldn't. 
5. The worst problem by far is also no problem at all: the crucial difference is that you have to know about it. Here it is. If you're reviewing a picture and you enlarge the review image as much as possible to check focus, it will look unsharp. That does not mean it is unsharp: when you get the file back to the computer it will be razor sharp. But if you don't know about it it will throw you for a loop when you first encounter it. I've actually read of people returning this camera after purchasing it because they are convinced it won't focus and everything is unsharp at the level of fine detail. That's an illusion. Of course, once you know about it, this is not a problem. [UPDATE: See Henry White's Featured Comment below.]

The eyepiece cover. Remove for use and replace when you're done.

There's actually one more problem, which is that some people give me a hard time for having/wanting a monochrome camera. But that's not the camera's fault. And I don't mind it, to be honest. I yam what I yam.

Do I recommend this camera? Probably not. Not as a monochrome conversion anyway. I'd recommend getting a factory Pentax K3 III Monochrome or a Leica Monochrom to preserve resale value, or getting an older camera converted, one you already own (although conversion is expensive, so don't convert one with tons of shutter actuations or lots of wear already on it). 

As a color stills camera? Hmm. Obviously I've never used one that way. But it has a cult following, and supposedly there's magic in Sigma's color science, and as far as the form factor is concerned you'll either love it or hate it, which means some people will love it. So maybe. 

Reducing friction
After yesterday's post, Rob L. mentioned, "Barely comes up, but reducing friction makes life more fun." He's gone down to one lensmount and configured his cameras to make them easier to use—that's what he means by reducing friction. That's probably the main thing I'm experiencing with my FP-m: I've got it set up so sweetly for my uses that it really reduces friction.

There might be one problem I haven't mentioned—now that I'm happy, I don't really look around at new cameras any more. And that leaves a void where GAS used to be. But you know what they say—oh well!

Mike

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Featured Comments from:

Henry White: "Workaround for camera finder unsharp imaging on review: The camera, when shooting in raw, creates a very, very small JPEG from the raw file to show for review. If you want a big, sharp review file, then shoot with the camera set to raw+large JPEG. Upon review the camera will show the large JPEG.

"This is the case not just with the Sigma camera but across other brands as well. It's an easy fix and if you are so disposed you can just toss the JPEGs when you download the files to your computer."

Mike replies: So that's it. I figured it was because the review JPEG was too small, but I didn't know the correction. Thanks. 

robert e (partial comment): "These two posts were really interesting. It's much more enlightening to read how a person gets along with a thing while they do what they want to do than to read about how the thing is designed to work for generic uses."

Erwin Frank-Schultz: "This comment is somewhat cheeky on this post as it refers more to the Phone post than this one...but one thing I don't like about my (phone) camera is that it is an internet connected computer. I recently finished Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman (highly recommended)—one of his ten recommendations at the end is to use single use devices, to not get distracted. This struck a chord; whenever I use my phone to take a photo, there is a temptation to look at that e-mail or WhatsApp that just came in. Not a problem on my XE-3 and certainly not on my FM2."