A friend bought one of these over the weekend, and while he understandably won't lend it to me properly yet, we swapped our new cameras (I bought an RX100 recently) for an hour or so when we met earlier this week.
I've never owned a DP series camera, so no comparisons to be made there.
My initial impression was that this was definitely not the camera for me.
It felt like a step backwards in terms of things I had come to expect from high end digital cameras in general, namely speed of operation and low light performance. The RX100 has all of these things in *****s. (why is s-pade censored?)
I had no idea why anyone would spend $1000 on one of these.
The photos looked pretty average on the LCD too, but when I got home I was -immensely- impressed at the resolution the camera is capable of. All of the sudden the camera didn't feel like a joke. Most of my shots were botched by motion blur, though, since I admittedly wasn't taking it very seriously and it was getting dark at the time.
I still wouldn't buy one at the current asking price, but as others have mentioned this is a very specialised tool with a very specific target audience. I must admit it seems a bit odd though, since I think if I did actually get this little camera I would feel inclined to put it on a steady tripod to get the most out of it.
Less seriously, it's about the most film like camera I've handled in recent years, and it's not just the look of the files.
Batteries are a lot more like rolls of film than memory cards: with recent SD card sizes going up to 128gb, you can forget about carrying spares (well, perhaps one, just in case) and having to them swap mid-day.
But instead of having to change films every several dozen shots you have to change batteries instead
And when you run out, you're done for the day. No going back and deleting photos to squeeze out some more space. On the plus side, unlike rolls of film at least you can recharge them in your hotel room
Just my two cents.
Oh, and the battery died shortly after I handed the camera back - that foveon sensor must need some serious juice.
Edit: Forgot to mention I hate the ergonomics. A personal thing really, but I wish this camera was made by Ricoh/Pentax. Same goes for the RX100. There's just too much emphasis on making it look nice and clean, sacrificing grips and controls in the process.
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