Sigma FP-L 61MP Camera Review | 4K

Name: Sigma FP-L 61MP Camera Review | 4K | Open Video
Uploaded: 2023-07-19T00:13:34+00:00
Duration: 16 min 56 s

0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my standard review of the brand new
0:15
Sigma FPL camera. Now, I know that most of you, like myself, were mostly familiar with Sigma
0:22
because of their lenses, but Sigma has been making niche cameras for a while now
0:28
But last year, they began to design, rather than around their own Sigma SA mount, they began to
0:34
design around the Leica L mount, which is the reason why I think that we started to see a lot
0:40
of the new DN lenses coming for both Sigma mount and then Leica L mount. Not only, obviously, some
0:47
kind of agreement in place there with Leica, but also, I think, obviously, leveraging the Leica mount
0:52
and so that right off the bat you have a pretty big kit of lenses to draw from
0:57
Today's episode is brought to you by Into the AM, a clothing brand from Southern California that wants to outfit your passion
1:04
whatever it might be. Their everyday comfortable fabrics and designs are great
1:08
whether you're working from home, working out, or even just chilling out
1:15
I'm enjoying the fit and finish of these handcrafted shirts and love the fact that they layer well too as the weather turns colder
1:22
You can choose from the basics or more funky styles created in collaboration with local artists
1:27
Use the code DUSTIN10 or follow the link in the description to get 10% off site-wide
1:34
including their monthly t-shirt club. Visit IntoTheAM.com forward slash Dustin10 for more information
1:40
Now the original FP that came out in 2020 was a more standard 24 megapixel
1:46
very compact camera, you know, the smallest full frame of its kind
1:50
now we have again smallest full frame of its kind but in this case with a very high resolution 61
1:56
megapixel sensor which obviously opens up a whole lot of other possibilities and this is obviously
2:03
the smallest way and probably I think the cheapest way that you can get 61 megapixels of full frame
2:10
resolution though there's a caveat attached to that that I'll explain here the base price for
2:16
this camera will be coming out at around $2,500 US dollars. But the way that Sigma has designed this
2:23
is in a modular kind of way. It's pretty much a little bit, it's just a little box basically
2:28
in terms of the design. All squared off, not much here in terms of grip, there's no viewfinder
2:34
there is not even a hot shoe on there. So they do include the hot shoe but it's an accessory that
2:40
you've got a mount on there by mounting it here on the side of the camera and tightening it down
2:47
and that's what gives you your hot shoe. In the case of the EVF which is a new design here that
2:54
you can also utilize on the original FP it also has to be physically mounted here on the side and
3:00
it is fairly pricey. As a standalone it runs 700 US dollars and if you buy it the two items in kit
3:08
it's going to cost you about $3,000 US. So very quickly, we are bumping up towards the price
3:14
point of, say, the also very high resolution Sony A7R Mark IV. Now, in this case, I've got the Mark
3:22
III here for a size comparison. So you can see that the Sigma is significantly smaller, particularly
3:28
in the front to back depth. As I said, not much there in terms of a grip. And so they're designing
3:35
it to be more of a pocketable design. And so that's fine for you. But again, what's pocketable
3:41
is really going to depend on what kind of lens you put on there. So obviously Sigma has been
3:45
designing some compact lenses. And I think that this camera is at least partly in mind there
3:49
So the new i-series 24 millimeter f3.5, 35 millimeter f2, 45 millimeter f2.8, and then the
3:56
65 millimeter f2. All of these are compact primes that are a good match. You put a lens like Sigma's
4:04
24 to 70 millimeter F2.8 DN on there. And you know practically it not very small anymore And so again if you know you buying it to be pocketable you really going to have to prioritize to make sure you choose the right
4:19
lenses that are going to maintain that and also not care very much about something like an
4:24
an EVF. Another thing that I find that is missing here that I personally really miss
4:31
for a run-and-gun style camera is in-body image stabilization. The problem is is that all those
4:37
lenses that I just mentioned that are nice matches in terms of their size, none of them have built-in
4:42
stabilization. And so that means that for the first time, it feels like in a long time I was out doing
4:47
handheld video without any kind of stabilization. And I had forgotten how shaky high resolution
4:54
footage is if you don't have stabilization. So run and gun, but you're missing out on one of those
5:01
ingredients that really helps a lot for run and gun video. And so this makes it maybe a smarter
5:06
camera to either use on a gimbal or in a bigger setup where you've got it in a cage and you've got
5:11
other accessories mounted around it. And there, the basic, just basic squared off box makes a lot of
5:18
sense for that kind of application. So let me just give you a few things that I like and a few things
5:23
that I don't like over the course of my review period here. First of all, I do like the fact that
5:29
it is compact as that that's part of what they're marketing. So just to give you some quick specs
5:33
It's a little over 112 millimeters in width, 70 millimeters in height, and only 43 and a half
5:39
millimeters in depth. So definitely a very slim camera. And it only weighs in at 427 grams
5:46
even though it's built out of, you know, nice alloys here, nice metal construction. It feels
5:52
very well made, but it is very, very light. I like the fact that they have built-in heat sinks
5:57
in the design. And so they've dealt with in advance the idea that, you know, the problem
6:02
heat dissipation that's been an issue with a lot of these, you know, compact mirrorless cameras
6:07
that record high-definition video. And so built-in heat sinks are great. You know
6:12
the flip side to that is that your weather ceiling is not going to be as great when you actually have
6:16
you know, juncture points into the camera itself. I like the fact that it uses a native
6:22
the native file format is a lossless DNG format. So DNG is Adobe standard. And the, I find the DNG
6:30
I convert everything into DNG anyway, because it's a very efficient, lossless file format
6:36
And so it's the way I store all the RAWs and store a little space. And it's also very highly
6:41
compatible because Adobe is such a big deal, such a big standard. Everybody basically supports it
6:46
And so I like the fact that you're getting DNGs right in the camera. And so that means there's
6:50
no converting them. They're just ready to go. It's a great format and one that Adobe has promised to
6:56
support into perpetuity. I like the fact that the touchscreen on the back that you can actually
7:02
zoom in either in stills or video and you can touch or you can pinch to zoom. Now what I like
7:08
about this is that you can losslessly zoom if you're shooting 4k because the sensor is so big
7:14
so high resolution you can do lossless up to two and a half times and without and so you can zoom
7:21
in and so you can affect your crop factor at different steps along the way and zoom in without
7:26
losing any kind of resolution. Likewise, then if you're shooting on down in full HD, you actually
7:33
have a five times lossless zoom as a part of that. But what I also like is that they take that high
7:40
resolution and rather than like a lot of cameras, say the a7R Mark IV, for example, you go from 62
7:46
megapixels down to I think it's 28 is the crop factor because it goes all the way to its full
7:54
APS-C crop of 1.5 times. With the Sigma here, you get an option to have at least four, if not five
8:02
steps there along the way with, you know, slight crop factor differences in between. But what it
8:08
means is that you can really have a lot of control, even with raw files on, you know, the resolution
8:14
without resorting to cropping later on. It's a nice feature. I like the way it's implemented
8:18
I like the fact that out of the box it is designed to work as a webcam which is a big deal these days It wasn so big a deal a year ago but since this pandemic with so many people working and creating from home being able to use it as a webcam is obviously great
8:35
I like the fact that they have upgraded the focus system from contrast AF, which is where a lot of
8:41
camera companies started, to the hybrid phase detect backed by contrast AF that is more common
8:48
these days. Only 49 AF points which is not as high as what we're used to and I don't find them quite
8:53
as easy to access but certainly I like some of the improvements to autofocus and like the fact
8:59
that sensitivity goes down to minus 5 EF which is very good. I like also the fact that you have
9:06
the ability to power the camera externally and so particularly if you're shooting long format
9:11
that you're able to shoot you know with an external power source and not worry about the battery
9:17
dying, which by the way, my battery died in the middle of this episode. And so I had to, you know
9:22
stop and change that. Working from external power obviously helps to solve that problem
9:27
And you can shoot long format. There is no cutoff at, you know, 29.59. You can shoot up to two hours
9:34
and because of that good heat dissipation, you can really shoot long format and can shoot even
9:40
longer if you shoot, you know, you do external video and external recording to an external hard
9:47
drive and so you can go even longer because of the extra help and heat dissipation. I really do like
9:53
the overall look of the menu layout here. I like that it's uniquely Sigma. It has its own font and
10:00
a clean look. What I don't like is that you can't access the menus via touch and you have to use
10:06
old-fashioned navigation there. So some of the things that I don't like here. I've already
10:12
discuss the fact of how much I miss in-body image stabilization. I also find that the sacrifice that
10:18
was made for the heat sinks here is that the screen is fixed here on the back. And I have
10:24
forgotten, you know, you quickly get spoiled to being used to having either tilting or, you know
10:29
reciprocate or fully articulating screens and to be able to get them in any kind of shooting
10:34
position. And I found that I really missed it. Even when I'm shooting some of my like image quality
10:39
test and I've got it on a tripod, but it's not at my height. I'm quite tall. And so I had to kind
10:44
of stoop down so I could see what was going on on screen. I do miss not having a viewfinder
10:51
or not a viewfinder. I do miss a viewfinder by the way, but I miss not having an LCD screen that
10:56
I can move around the way that I want. And certainly when you're out in bright conditions
11:01
you do miss having a built-in viewfinder. It's my preferred way to shoot. And I found myself on
11:06
several occasions bringing the camera up to put an eye to nothing because I didn't have the viewfinder
11:11
attached. I also find that the attachment of the viewfinder is pretty kind of a picky process and
11:19
it requires you to hold back a flap here and then you have to line up and insert three different
11:26
things. There's some contact points in the middle but then you're hooking into the micro HDMI
11:32
HDMI and into the USB-C port and particularly on this pre-production model where you know all the
11:40
tolerances aren't quite production level I find that it's it's a little bit of a complex process
11:46
and I think that there is some potential there for bending things if you're not really careful
11:51
in that process because you've got to line everything up like that and then use the wheel
11:57
and tighten everything down. And I just don't always get it on the first go. And you have to
12:03
get it right, obviously, if you're going to have full contact and so that the EVF kind of works
12:09
The other thing about it is that the EVF, I've gotten very accustomed to EVFs having a sensor
12:14
to where if you're looking into it, the LCD turns off and vice versa. In this case, unfortunately
12:20
you have to use a switch on the side to utilize the EVF. So I find the implementation of this
12:26
kind of modular design to be slightly clunky in my opinion. And I think that there's some
12:31
better engineering that could yet be done to make this more of a useful situation I do miss having a decent grip on hand And yes a lot of times I do add on a grip extender or you know at least a QR plate and in some way and so that I can go right to a tripod but I miss having
12:50
something to hang on to I also another thing that I really don't like is that even if you're using
12:57
the hot shoe this is all designed around an electronic shutter and the downside is is that
13:02
its flash sync speed is one 15th of a second. Yes, you heard me right. Usually the bad rating
13:10
is one 175th of a second and, you know, and then they go up higher from there, but this is only one
13:17
15th of a second. And I struggle to see how that is even useful for any kind of real world application
13:23
And so if you're going to shoot, you know, portrait photography with this, it probably only is going
13:28
to suit your purposes if you are a more of a natural light, available light kind of person
13:36
And I will note that I didn't love AF performance on the camera. The AF, as I said, the focus point
13:44
selection process is a little clunky, but beyond that, I didn't find that the AF was confident
13:49
enough in that, you know, for example, in this situation where I'm trying to walk towards and
13:55
track the eye for video. You can see it's not doing a very good job there. I also then found
14:01
in a static kind of situation, trying to just test it for doing what I'm doing right now
14:07
I found that the video AF just wouldn't settle. It kept moving focus all the time
14:12
which is totally distracting. And I know from experience, my audience hates that
14:16
And so that I found that IAF had a hard time settling down where it should. And if I shot a
14:22
group, it was jumping from person to person all the time without just kind of locking in and giving
14:27
me a reliable result. And so that, you know, inability to settle made me get more focus misses
14:34
along the way and generally not enjoy the focus process as much. And so again, it's pre-production
14:40
you know, firmware, final, you know, firmware may help with that, but I suspect that at the end of
14:46
the day, this is not going to be as effective as some of the competing systems that it's working
14:51
against. So it's a quirky camera. It's designed around a really specific audience. And I see that
14:57
being one of two things. Either you're a person that likes to travel really, really light and as
15:01
compact as possible. You may enjoy this camera. You're getting a great sensor, high resolution
15:07
And I did extensive tests, which you can see in the definitive review. I tested dynamic range. I
15:12
tested high ISO performance. I looked at the resolution and I don't think that it's as good
15:17
as say what the Sony a7R Mark IV is, but it's not far off either. So it's giving you really good
15:22
image quality and a really compact package so long as you choose the lenses right. The other
15:28
application I think that it could be useful as someone who does a lot of gimbal photography and
15:32
you tend to work with, you know, external monitors so the fixed screen doesn't bother you, you know
15:37
things like that that allow you to have a really compact but, you know, high-performing camera that
15:43
It has a lot of different color profiles and looks that you can shoot in camera
15:49
So it gives you some versatility when it comes to that. It's also designed around compatibility with other cine cameras to give you a similar kind of framing and look
15:59
And so that's useful as well. And so I see that as being a second audience that it might work well for
16:04
For a lot of people, I suspect it's not going to be your cup of tea. But as always, I'm glad to have choices on the market
16:11
So kudos to Sigma and I wish them all the best in continuing to develop the FP lineup
16:16
I'm Dustin Abbott and if you'll look in the description down below, you can find linkage to my full text review
16:21
also to an image gallery if you want to look at some photos. Beyond that, there are some buying links there, though because the camera is brand new, just being announced
16:29
it may take a little while for a few of the retailers to populate their listings. So be patient with that
16:34
There's linkage to check out my channel merchandise, to become a patron, to sign up for my newsletter
16:40
and if you haven't already, please click that subscribe button right here on YouTube
16:44
Thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in

Sigma FP-L 61MP Camera Review | 4K

Dustin Abbott

22-Minute POST WORKOUT STRETCH for Injury Prevention & Flexibility

Stretching Books: Your Ultimate Guide to Flexibility

GOOGLE Pixel 6 Camera Tricks and Tips | Hidden Features & Advanced Camera Options

LENOVO K6 Note SCREENSHOT / Capture Screen / Edit / Share

The Kodak Pixpro AZ652 Digital Camera: REVIEWED

I Explored 7 Scuttled Warships in Scapa Flow

Never Before Seen Britannic Wreck Footage!

Best Digital Photo Frames You Can Buy In 2025

Avoid These Europe Winter Travel Mistakes

ROSES - Best Pruning Technique - Fertilizer - Deadheading - How to Grow

MKBHD Picks The Best Smartphone Camera

Tel Aviv Travel Guide: Best Things To Do In Tel Aviv Israel

B-52 Deploys Quickstrike-ER Naval Mines (2019 OP TEST)

This Is Not A Laptop...

iPhone 14 vs Nikon D850 vs Polaroid vs Film Camera: Photo Battle Royale!

Up next in 10

Sigma FP-L 61MP Camera Review | 4K

Dustin Abbott