>>2939956I thoroughly, thoroughly recommend the DP2 Merrill. I have never been satisfied with any camera before, I've been through the 500D, X-pro 1, X-e2 and 5D MII and none of them ever produced pictures I was satisfied with. (Well, I do still like my 5D MII because I really like big OVFs)
Perhaps it's the shooting experience, or the image quality but I enjoy every second of using that camera. Images are 100% pixel perfect wide open, and you can still get more than good enough shallow DOF with a 45mm f/4.0 equivalent for head & shoulders portraits.
I have a huge smile on my face while using it, and an even bigger one while I process my pictures. (Sigma Photo Pro is a lot better nowadays.) The raw files have some really fascinating characteristics, for black and white you can select to only use the blue channel in SPP and you end up with noiseless B&W shots up to iso 800.
For any current Merrill users browsing this thread, I came up with a great trick to work around built in noise reduction that makes the output a little less than the absolute maximum the sensor can achieve - If you use the B&W mode to export each colour individually (I.E. 100% B, 100% G, 100% R) and then combine the images in Photoshop afterwards into one file you get images which are even sharper and don't have any noise reduction applied whatsoever. Then you apply just a low level colour noise reduction in Photoshop and you end up with perfectly clear pictures. Colours get messed up sometimes, and I'm still working out how to fix automatically that but the results are stunning otherwise.
The 40mm Voigtlander viewfinder is perfect for the DP2, and I can also recommend the Richard Fraeniec grip.
I got my DP2M for £250 and viewfinder for £100 and it's a better camera than anything I've ever had otherwise.
Oh, and don't buy a fuji. I love their look and feel but the pictures are mushy as shit, literally the opposite of Foveon. If they didn't use X-trash it'd be fuji for life.
