As I mentioned a few days ago, after two months off I'm returning to using a theme...I actually had two ideas that I was considering for February that I'm going to keep around, since I kinda like them both.

But just yesterday Sigma announced that it's actually going to release it's DP-1 camera, which has a full slr-sized sensor wedged into a compact camera. It has some quirks, including the weird sensor that Sigma uses and the 16.6mm lens. That's an equivalent perspective to about 18mm on my SLR, so I decided to tape my zoom lens to 18mm and see what it does for me.

Not because I'm thinking of buying the Sigma - I'm really not. Despite having the huge sensor, its high ISO performance is terrible and the lens is kinda slow, and it's probably going to cost almost twice as much as a G9...which costs 3 times as much as my current compact. And it's bigger.

But Sigma is placing a multi-million dollar bet on many people wanting a wideangled compact camera. Maybe that's a fine idea? I tend to avoid wide angles, since I can only use them to make either empty, boring pictures or dull, cliched near-far pictures.

So I think I should learn the ways of the wide. Unfortunately, my SLR with the biggish, reverse-zooming (physically long when it's optically wide) lens is anything but compact...