It has been over a year since Sigma announced their revolutionary DP1 at Photokina 2006. It features an APS-C sized sensor which is a first for a camera of its size and means many people are keen to get their hands on one. Sigma has more recently showed some redesigned engineering samples at PMA in March 2007 but there has been no news since.

Sigma DP1 Digital Compact Camera with APS-C sized sensor

Sigma has recently released a statement apologizing for the lack of information and admitting that there has been a hold up in production due to the image processing pipeline needing ‘major revisions to it’.

‘…we found it was difficult to achieve image quality as good as in our other SD cameras. The images looked okay, but they clearly did not have the special image qualities that we see in our SD cameras: delicate, refined and 3-dimensional images rendered in fine detail.’

The good news is that alpha testing of the final design has begun this November but unfortunately there is still no definite release date. Sigma has assured its prospective users that the DP1 will be well worth the wait.

Read Sigma’s official statement here.

Sigma DP1 official site.