MikhailA

Went into the garden to test the new firmware
I opened the CDNG's in photoshop, shot at full-frame with the Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar® T* 3.5-4.5/28-70, I'm happy with the results.
 all shot at 25 fps with firmware 2.0  
 
 

 

Indeed, Z6 and  Z7  have a similar problem. Indirect bad sign for Sigma issue is that they have it even on firmware 3.0. Looks like it is impossible to fix or Nikon just doesn't care.
 
 

Hello.  Here is the official answer from Sigma about 0.1 second shutter lag:
 
”We are so sorry that your fp is showing a lag between the moment of release and the actual picture. We are aware of this, and unfortunately, this is how fp works at this point. This is a display lag happening between the sensor and LCD.
 
I will forward your message to our engineer team, and they will check if there is something they can do to fix this. However, at this moment, we have to ask you to accept that this is how fp works.”
So maybe they will come up with something...

Hello.  Here is the official answer from Sigma about 0.1 second shutter lag:
 
”We are so sorry that your fp is showing a lag between the moment of release and the actual picture. We are aware of this, and unfortunately, this is how fp works at this point. This is a display lag happening between the sensor and LCD.
 
I will forward your message to our engineer team, and they will check if there is something they can do to fix this. However, at this moment, we have to ask you to accept that this is how fp works.”
So maybe they will come up with something...

Somehow it was discouraged to further add to the thread.
Anyway, I had to shoot a very short clip over the weekend. It is so easy.
I dropped it into Davinci Resolve - engaged the Blackmagic Film setting in the camera drop down (as some have advised not to), didn't use ACES, adjusted a bit of exposure, contrast and saturation and it looked great. Job done.

Also, is there anywhere we could start a comprehensive list of current quirks? Something that could easily be referenced by Sigma to hopefully be addressed in future firmware updates. I feel like a lot of stuff has been mentioned here, but it's spread out over 50+ pages...

https://www.sigma-global.com/en/download/cameras/firmware/#fp
 
Ver.1.02
It has corrected a phenomenon affecting a very small number of individuals whereby DNG files could not be processed during interval timer shooting.
It has corrected a phenomenon whereby video footage appeared distorted when recorded in MOV format and UHD resolution.
It has corrected a phenomenon whereby video footage appeared distorted when Distortion Correction and Vignetting Correction operated incorrectly near infinity focus.
It has corrected a phenomenon whereby a card error occurred when using certain SD cards.
It has corrected the phenomenon whereby, depending on the Exposure Bracket setting, the camera would shoot bracketed exposures even when the function was set to off.
It has corrected a phenomenon whereby the brightness of the monitor changed depending on the subject even when the monitor exposure in M mode was set to "on".
It has corrected a phenomenon whereby the monitor exposure display in M mode was not displayed correctly when using a mount adapter without an electronic contact.
It has corrected a phenomenon affecting a very small number of individuals whereby the power consumption was greater than usual when the power was turned off.”
 

Second attempt as i had uploaded the wrong images before.
So long short short,  i was testing resolution of 6k vs FF UHD to check the level of aliasing. The only chart i had was an old one i'd printed off myself many moons ago but should be enough to create issues (but i really need to find a better way...)
But i can clearly see 6K still vs scaled UHD but what i found interesting is if you switch to DC mode i am pretty sure you're just getting a 1:1 crop of the sensor in UHD - it looks similar to the 6K. Either way the DC UHD RAW mode is much clearer than the FF.
But i need to do some better tests but try it yourself and see what you think.
cheers
Paul
 
So top is full frame UHD and lower is DC UHD, see how much clearer the lines are

 

I've just found photoshop on my laptop so used that and yes, the UHD DC crop is a pixel for pixel crop from the centre of the sensor. You can A/B stills and cine and it's identical. So in this mode with no OLPF it would be interesting to see how much moire there is in motion.
I could guess that perhaps the DC HD mode would be pretty good too. The full frame HD mode not so much but there's a even scaling for HD.
cheers
Paul

Hopefully Sigma will read all of this before putting a firmware update out. I'll send them an email with all the annoyances and bugs in it.

Yes it is, I'm still trying to love it, but for stills this makes me crazy.
It all depends in what fixes the next firmware will bring.
and the shutter lag, that also makes me crazy, because when I think I have the shot, it takes it a fraction later.

Actually not... ? When the Sigma fp records CinemaDNG, it doesn't debayer the image, since a raw image is undebayered. But at the same time, I doesn't record the actual raw sensor image, but downscales the 6K undebayered sensor data to a 4K undebayered image - whose pixels no longer correspond to the sensor pixels and are a fake sensor pattern. 
Or, in less abstract language: the camera downscales the 6K raw sensor data into simulated raw sensor data of a virtual, software-made 4K sensor. Which creates all kinds of weird artifacts, as demonstrated above in the visual comparisons of the camera's 6K stills with the camera's 4K video.

Seems the 4k of the fp is not perfect, but I knew that, still its nice to see some test.

Here's another dynamic range shootout between the Sigma fp and the Pocket 4K, this time with the LED fresnel at full power to create maximum contrast and a hard shadow, and an X-Rite Color Chart Pocket Video in the shadow to have a better indicator of shadow dynamic range. 
Cameras were set to 11.2 degrees shutter, ISO 100 (Sigma fp) respectively ISO 400 (Pocket 4K). With this harsh light, I needed to set the Pocket 4K to f5.6 for ETTR exposure (i.e. exposure just below the clipping point) while the Sigma fp clipped at f5.6 and needed to be stopped down to f8 for correct ETTR exposure. (This is an indicator for camera's native ISO being 800 in log. In other words, the Sigma fp is about one stop more light sensitive at ISO 100 than the Pocket 4K at ISO 400.)
This resulted in the following pictures, with DCI-P3 color space + Rec709 gamma interpretation in Resolve and Color Temp/Tint and exposure sliders adjusted to have the two camera images visually match:

Sigma fp

Pocket 4K
 
And extreme lift of the shadows with the following curve...

...reveals the following:
 

Sigma fp

Pocket 4K
1:1 crops of the upper left color patches:
 
Sigma fp

Pocket 4K

I'd say that on the Sigma fp, three of the dark grey color patches can still be differentiated whereas on the Pocket 4K, they are undifferentiated. Since I don't have a precise-enough meter to measure the difference of the reflected light, I'd say in a completely unscientific way that the fp has probably one stop more dynamic range in the shadows when the picture is exposed ETTR.
It also seems as if in the extreme shadows, the temporal noise filter of the Pocket 4K's BRAW really kicks in, since single pixels on the fp's CinemaDNG are clearly differentiated whereas on the Pocket 4K's image, they are blurred. (This is why in this scenario/grade, the Pocket 4K's image is [surprisingly] less noisy than the fp's.)  - EDIT: indeed, if you compare it to the DNG still from the Pocket 4K where BRAW's processing isn't applied:

 
- This time, I created a complete zip archive (91 MB) with one frame of the Sigma fp's CinemaDNG recording, the Pocket 4K's original BRAW file (consisting of just 3 frames) + a DNG shot with the Pocket 4K, plus the full-resolution UHD 16bit tiff of all above images: 
 
 

Okay, made another test with the setup you proposed:
Pocket 4K with 0.64x Metabones Speed Booster & Tokina 28-70mm/2.8 at 50mm and f2.8 [=actually at 32mm + f1.8], with camera exposed at ISO 128,000 versus the Sigma fp with the conventionally adapted, non-speedboosted Tokina 28-70mm/2.8 at 70mm and f2.8 and ISO 256,000 Images:

Pocket 4K BRAW (= with some in-camera noise reduction), ISO 128,000 + 0.64x Speed Booster

Pocket 4K DNG, ISO 128,000 + 0.64x Speed Booster

Sigma fp CinemaDNG, ISO 256,000
1:1 crops:

Pocket 4K BRAW  (= with some in-camera noise reduction), ISO 128,000 + 0.64x Speed Booster

Pocket 4K DNG, ISO 128,000 + 0.64x Speed Booster

Sigma CinemaDNG, ISO 256,000
 
The result is pretty much as to be expected, with the speedboosted Pocket 4K vs. the Sigma fp performing more like an APS-C camera vs. a full frame camera in low light with high ISO. As soon you expose on native ISO (without pushing gain), you however will back to MFT vs. full frame sensor performance in regards to noise levels.

Since I found the YouTube comparison between the Sigma fp and the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K so worthless, I did a comparison test of my own.
I wanted to compare the cameras in two respects: 
(1) dynamic range when shooting a high-contrast subject under optimal light/with optimal exposure + robustness in grading the resulting image;
(2) low light/extreme high ISO image.
My setup was as follows:
Completely dark room; Both cameras with the same lens, Tokina 28-70mm/2.8 (Nikon mount adapted to L-mount and MFT respectively) at the same aperture setting (f4) on both cameras, but at 35mm focal length on the Pocket 4K and at 70mm on the Sigma fp to compensate for the different sensor sizes; Record settings: UHD 23.98p on both cameras, full frame CinemaDNG 12bit on the Sigma fp and BRAW Q0 on the Pocket 4K (= best quality codec settings on both cameras);  For the high-contrast test: daylight-temperature LED fresnel with maximum focus/spotlight on a plastic appliance reflecting some of the light to create high contrast; both cameras at minimum/native ISOs exposed ETTR/to the right. Both cameras set to 11.25 degrees shutter angle (in lieu of an ND filter, since motion rendering is irrelevant in this test).
(Note: Lowest, respectively native, ISOs on the two cameras are ISO 100 on the Sigma fp and ISO 400 on the Pocket 4K. Never mind that nominal difference, both cameras have almost identical clipping behavior at these settings, i.e. ISO 100 on the Sigma fp behaves like ISO 400 on the Pocket 4K. On both cameras, the zebras turned out to be reliable indicators for sensor clipping: To go absolutely sure that I would optimally expose the sensor, I also shot the scene at larger shutter angles - 22.5, 45, 90 and 172.5 degrees -, with zebras popping up as early as at 22.5 on both cameras. When looking at the material in Resolve, this was indeed where clipping had occurred and waveforms remained clipped in the RGB parade even when lowering exposure in Resolve's Raw control tab.)  For the low-light test: same 'scene' as above, but with the LED fresnel turned off and only a practical light in the background turned on. Both cameras set to maximum ISO (256.000), at f4 and 172.5 degrees shutter angle. Treatment in Resolve:
Basic image adjustments only in the Raw tab, interpretation in P3 color space with Rec. 709 gamma: adjustment of white balance/tint and exposure to make the Sigma fp and Pocket 4K footage match. (The raw material of the Blackmagic Pocket 4K was much warmer than that of the Sigma fp with the same Kelvin settings...) No highlight recovery. (Wasn't necessary anyway since there was no clipping in the images.) No noise filtering or sharpening, although the Pocket 4K's BRAW codec already has some baked-in temporal noise filtering. For the extreme grade, only a solarization-like custom curve was applied that pushed the shadows to the maximum and was meant to provoke banding in the material by pushing contrasts:
I exported 16bit TIFF screengrabs which can be downloaded here (6 TIFF files in a zip archive, 133 MB).
Here's how the well-exposed high-contrast scene looks like (25% downscaled images):

Sigma fp

Pocket 4K

- Note that the difference in sharpness may be my user error, and is also influenced by the different depth-of-field between 35mm/f4 on MFT and 70mm/f4 on full frame. The manual focus aides on the Pocket 4K are much better with latest firmware, so nailing focus without an external monitor was easier.

1:1 crops of the above two images:
 
Sigma fp (left) - Pocket 4K (right).
 
Extreme grade, with the same curve (as posted above) applied to the two above images:


Sigma fp

Pocket 4K
1:1 crops of the above:

Sigma fp

Pocket 4K
 
Low light, with both cameras at maximum (256,000) ISO, 172.5 degrees shutter and f4:

Sigma fp

Pocket 4K
1:1 crops of the above:

Sigma fp

Pocket 4K
So, to summarize, I think it's fair to say that the full-frame 12bit CinemaDNG material of the Sigma fp simply shows the benefit of a larger sensor and its lower image noise (even at base ISO if you compare the full-size TIFFs). It's thus only logical that it holds up better in extreme grades and in low light.
My likely user error in nailing the focus of Sigma fp also shows the strengths of the Pocket 4K, namely better camera assist functions and overally a better user interface/more practical user experience for video shooting. - But it's also nice to see that the Sigma fp has some genuine advantages over the Pocket 4K, especially for my own type of videomaking which revolves around event videos (concerts at indie/DIY venues) shot in extreme low light conditions.
 

So i said i'd post some stills, these are basically ungraded.
This frame is in a sequence with car lights, i like the tonality of this very subdued moment. Shot 12bit to manage shadow tonality.

From a different point above. All shot on a 50mm M Summicron probably wide open.

I think i hit the saturation slider here in Resolve. But this had car rolling over camera. It's a 21mm CV lens and i see some CA aberrations from the lens that i would deal with in post. But i'd never let a car run over a Red!

shot on an 85mm APO off a monopod. Nice tonality again and it's day light from windows with some small panel lights bouncing and filling in

A reverse of the above.

Some fun shots.
I think the true benefit of something like the fp is the speed at which you can see something and grab it. Using it just with an SSD plugged in and manual M lenses gives a more spontaneous feel. Now most of the film will be shot on Red, in controlled conditions with a crew and that's the right approach for multiple dialogue scenes and careful blocking. But the fp has it's place and i may hand it too someone and just say grab stuff.

 
cheers
Paul

The workflow with raw is very easy for me, I have realtime playback in resolve at 4k and even adding effects like filmconvert still play in realtime. ( I do have a radeon 7 that helps )
If you add a small hd oled, you also get your headphone output back
and the flipping screen
and the peaking and zebras at the same time
and lut support
Its what makes the camera complete for me.
Now I'm waiting for in camera playback and I'm all set

Here's a quick comp of a test i did a while back
The lamp clips, 2nd row down 12/10 and 8 bit. Clipped waveform under that. So this is sensor clipping.
The top row and the bottom row show highlight reconstruction. The DNGs have the non clipped highlights rebuilding clipped (Red)
The 12 bit and 10 bit are basically identical, both linear format and that final stop of light in the DNG has tonnes of tonality before clip. The 8 bit with it's linearisation has much less latitude in that final stop (because it has a better distribution in the mids). The knock on effect is that, like the shadows which go green, the highlights go magenta. As @Lars Steenhoff mentions i do wonder if this is a bug/issue or just a side effect of the lack of tonality.
But the take away is that 10 bit is the same a 8 in the shadows but does have a better highlight.
cheers
Paul

You can also do that by choosing 172.8 degree shutter with 24p/23.98p.