Sigma Impressed by Sigma DP Merrill(s)

Yeah but can you lift them?

Completely off topic BUT we were given Le Creuset pots when we got married in the 70s and to be honest they are too heavy and awkward.
We still have them and my wife hates the things ; hardly ever used.
The teapot we got in a sale last year for £9!

Back to the camera , I'm shooting just RAW now and doing some minimal conversions with the excellent Sigma Software.
The software takes a fairly powerful computer with lots of RAM but for me it's not too clunky.

Initially I started saving files as 16 bit tiffs and then tweaking in PhotoNinja ,LR5 and PE12.
Increasingly I've been satisfied with what the Sigma Software does and just saving out as jpegs.
 
Off topic Ditto with the Creuset wedding presents but used regularly - wouldn't dream of a teapot though

Back to camera
Always very impressed with these but as I would have to budget in a computer upgrade its really a non starter especially as I'd then be tempted into additional processing software

My ideal Merril would have a zoom lens 4-5 zoom adequate
 
Completely off topic BUT we were given Le Creuset pots when we got married in the 70s and to be honest they are too heavy and awkward.
We still have them and my wife hates the things ; hardly ever used.
The teapot we got in a sale last year for £9!

Back to the camera , I'm shooting just RAW now and doing some minimal conversions with the excellent Sigma Software.
The software takes a fairly powerful computer with lots of RAM but for me it's not too clunky.

Initially I started saving files as 16 bit tiffs and then tweaking in PhotoNinja ,LR5 and PE12.
Increasingly I've been satisfied with what the Sigma Software does and just saving out as jpegs.

I'm not finding SPP very slow, but my Mac has 16gigs of RAM, so that's maybe why. I'l try it on my windows machine which has 8gigs, and see if there's any difference.
 
I'm not finding SPP very slow, but my Mac has 16gigs of RAM, so that's maybe why. I'l try it on my windows machine which has 8gigs, and see if there's any difference.

I've just tried it on my Windows machine with 8gb RAM, and it's much slower than on my Mac with it's 16gb, so it looks like SPP needs a lot of RAM to run at a decent speed.
 
That's interesting.
I've got 8 gb of RAM and a Quad Core processor and it runs well enough to pose no problems for me - as fast as that other processor hog PhotoNinja
 
That's interesting.
I've got 8 gb of RAM and a Quad Core processor and it runs well enough to pose no problems for me - as fast as that other processor hog PhotoNinja

It runs well enough with 8gig - just noticeably slower. Wouldn't be a problem for me as I'm not one for doing things in a hurry, anyway.
 
On my recent Tenerife trip I used SPP5 on my netbook. It has a Pentium 987 dual core cpu and 8GB ram, and it ran surprisingly well. I'm sure a big part of the reason was that I never pressed the "full res" button, but I don't really see the need to in most cases anyway. My quad core i7 machine at home runs better of course, but it really wasn't a bother using the slower machine.

If I had 500 images the situation might have been different, but I find that the Merrills lead me to shooting more carefully, and I generally don't end up with tons of images to convert.
 
On my recent Tenerife trip I used SPP5 on my netbook. It has a Pentium 987 dual core cpu and 8GB ram, and it ran surprisingly well. I'm sure a big part of the reason was that I never pressed the "full res" button, but I don't really see the need to in most cases anyway. My quad core i7 machine at home runs better of course, but it really wasn't a bother using the slower machine.

If I had 500 images the situation might have been different, but I find that the Merrills lead me to shooting more carefully, and I generally don't end up with tons of images to convert.

For me, thats a big part of the appeal of these cameras.
 
Just as an FYI. A while ago, sigma rumors posted a work flow for spp..

Guide to Sigma Photo Pro

At first I was a bit put off by spp, but as I got used to it, I found it to be a very good tool.. It has its quirks as all sw but it is really a pretty powerful tool. I tend to use jpgs to preview and decide what I want to use. Start separating them out into three categories.
- batch process monochrom or color
- needs individual handling
- I want to export tiff to go thru photo merge process

I usually will batch process max of 16 raw to tiff 16 files at a time under a specified profile grouped for color or b&w costum profile..

Gary
 
Just as an FYI. A while ago, sigma rumors posted a work flow for spp..

Guide to Sigma Photo Pro

At first I was a bit put off by spp, but as I got used to it, I found it to be a very good tool.. It has its quirks as all sw but it is really a pretty powerful tool. I tend to use jpgs to preview and decide what I want to use. Start separating them out into three categories.
- batch process monochrom or color
- needs individual handling
- I want to export tiff to go thru photo merge process

I usually will batch process max of 16 raw to tiff 16 files at a time under a specified profile grouped for color or b&w costum profile..

Gary

Thanks for that that Gary. I'm actually happy enough with SPP - just interested in trying out another option.
 
After trying out SPP and Iridient Developer for over a week, I've not arrived at a clear preference for one over the other. On opening, the files look a bit nicer in SPP, but once you start adjusting things Iridient does just as well. I'm still very much in the early learning stage, so no real conclusions to share.

Does anybody have thoughts or tips to share about these programs?
 
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