Sigma FP

Any of you guys considering the Sigma FP?

This is a very very intersting LITTLE camera. A custom housing is being designed for it by Pawel Actel.

4K 12 Bit RAW at 23.98fps (plus some others but the 23.98 is the one that interests me). Claimed 12 Stops of DR, but we dont get anywhere near this underwater do we?? so how important is it to have more then 12 stops of DR?

It records the 12 Bit 4K RAW from a **FULL FRAME** sensor......its a little low light monster! It records that 12 Bit 4K RAW to SSD via a USB C just like the P4K or P6K.

Sure no 60P. Is that such a big loss? It has electronic image stabilisation and Pawel is building the housing very strong and light - lots of Titanium in the build of the housing. 

The housing will take an SSD inside the housing for recording the 12 Bit RAW at 4K.

Any interest here for such a setup? Its super small, full frame and is amazing in low light.

Thoughts?

**Edit** Oops silly me....forgot one of the crucial points about this setup. Pawel has made a Titanium lens mount for the Nikonos underwater lenses to fit this camera in the housing he is designing - does it get any better than this? (for under about 30 - 50K that is)

If you want to check out the housing.... https://24x7.com.au/Sigma/index.htm

So no one interested in this little beast of a gem?......tough crowd we got here....

But anyway, here is a very nice review of this camera by a credible source. https://noamkroll.com/full-sigma-fp-review-4k-raw-video-samples/?unapproved=551708&moderation-hash=57a784900539c126daaf7756f9b384be#comment-551708

Imagine getting this little monster underwater mated to a Nikonos 15mm !

Pawel is receptive to ideas of what to include at this stage as its still on his drawing board. If you are interested now is the time to speak up to him about it.

I have asked for the ability to have a way to insert gel filters BEHIND the Nikonos lenses. Ideal for red filters to bring back some data in the red channel in the 4 -15m zone. Maybe even an ND filter in 2 or 3 meters of water on a bright sunny day in the tropics.

There is a very interesting video on youtube 

 that shows the live streaming feature of this little monster. I have asked Pawel for the ability to connect a fiber optic USB 3 cable so that I could leave the camera on a tripod at 50 or so metres down and then be able to monitor and control the camera from the boat over the top of the dive site.....

Pawels housing will incorporate an M.2 NVMe SSD in the housing.....a small rig is the order of the day here and yet still be able to get superb 12 Bit *UNCOMPRESSED* 4K RAW all through a water contact optic.....the Nikonos. 

Don't know about you but I am excited by these concepts. Talk about cutting edge !

P.S it does do 60p RAW 12 bit at HD res.

Certainly sounds interesting and innovative. No word about battery life. Next to internal SSD, Pawel should make sure there is space for a battery pack inside the housing. I’d assume the small size of the camera does not allow for much battery life.

Thanks for rescuing me bubffm - for a while there I was just talking to myself.

Yes its quite the dilemma now. Sigma Fp or BMPCC6K. Pros's and cons each way.

The FP is REAL RAW and uncompressed at that - high data rates for sure so there's that to consider but the goodness of cDNG uncompressed is hard to overlook. Compared to BRAW which is not a "REAL" RAW at all (12bit YUV with a log  gamma curve).

FP is 4K at 24p - maybe a firmware update will bring 25p - it seems likely from all the reading I have done on it. It does do 60p at 1080p 12 Bit RAW though, so if 60p is a deal breaker you can still have it albeit at lower res. Still, its not 4K 60p, is it. So there's that.

BMPCC6K goes up to 6K which is great for cropping and destabilizing then use what is left to down res to 4K - that 4K is going to shine and we get 50p at 6K BRAW.

Those in the know claim the Sigma colour science is better then the BM colour science. Kinda makes sense given Sigma's Foveon cameras of the past. They understand colour science so it figures this carries over to the FP. But BMD keeps getting better and better at this.

The under exposure recovery of the Sigma FP is nothing short of AMAZING. Highlight recovery not so much. Depends on where you dive I guess. Being to pull up the shadows in post is something more important than recovering blown highlights I think. Not too many highlights down there at depth to blow.

The Sigma FP is totally usable at 6400 ISO no bother at all. Completely normal footage. WOW! Its still OK at 12800 ISO. Gets a little noise at 25600 ISO that can be cleaned up nicely in post.

The BMDCC 6K  you dont want to push past about 1600 ISO - which is still incredible compared to just a few short years ago, but its not 6400 ISO.

The Sigma FP is tiny and is having a tiny housing made for it - so far the specs of the housing are 142mm x 109mm x 70mm !! While it does not apply to me, it has got to be useful in a strong current to have a tiny housing setup with you to push through the current.

With the FP you are recording 24 x 12.7 MB 12 Bit RAW still frames per second - that's 2400 Mbps ! M.2 SSD's to the rescue thank God. This new housing still on the drawing board will house an M.2 NVMe SSD - and they go up to 2TB. So its all doable.

I was set on the BMD CC6K. Now - not so sure. Both have under water contact optics - I would say the Naughty Cam has an advantage here as with the new WACP 2 you can do under/over's and of course can zoom through a useful range all from one lens. But then again the Nikonos 15mm is a legend among legends. So ...I dont know.......

Price of Pawel's housing with Nikonos 15mm?

Pawel is saying he hopes to get it to market at around $3500 USD - housing only. No idea what he charges for his Nikonos lenses - he has a boat load of them that he tests and grades. You can have the pick of the crop if you are willing to pay for it.

On 12/8/2019 at 7:36 AM, John Doe II said:

With the FP you are recording 24 x 12.7 MB 12 Bit RAW still frames per second - that's 2400 Mbps ! M.2 SSD's to the rescue thank God. This new housing still on the drawing board will house an M.2 NVMe SSD - and they go up to 2TB. So its all doable.

The bitrates for BMPCC6K are max 203 MB/s which is "only" 1624 Mbps, so that is less than with the FP and still 4x the data of GH5s. Thus 1TB disk would give you 1h 20 minutes of shooting time. If I multiply this by e.g. hundred dives per year, the total storage needed plus backups scares me.

Obviously with this cost in mind, one would become much more picky of when to record and when not. I guess with a "cinema" camera you are supposed to plan and design your shots instead of just shooting opportunistically whatever you come across. Perhaps the solution would be to have a Paralenz or similar camera rigged on top of your proper camera. This secondary camera would be shooting the entire dive...

Another possible solution would be to use the preroll feature of the Z CAM cameras. I have not yet tried it, but there is supposed to be a 5 second preroll. If you keep your camera generally nicely framed with whatever background scenery there is and hit record when there is some emerging action or the scenery otherwise is turning beautiful, you might be able to not miss any opportunistic shots. Plus, you could still shoot the planned shots as well.

What I do like about the fp and Nikonos combination is its very small and travel friendly size.