Posted by Scott Laird
Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:41:00 GMT
I love my Canon 5D, but it’s getting really long in the tooth. It’s basically a Canon 20D with a vastly improved sensor, and the 20D’s replacement’s replacement has now been replaced by the 50D. While the 5D was once the top of the market, Nikon’s D700 now outclasses it in almost every way. There have been rumors about a 5D replacement for years, and none of them have ever went anywhere.
It looks like that has finally changed. Canon’s running a teaser ad showing a very 5D-like silhouette with the words “Destined Evolution”.
Personally, I’d be happy if they’d take the 50D, give it a full-frame sensor with about 2 extra stops of dynamic range over the 5D, and improve the AF a bit. I still miss my EOS 3’s autofocus, which is insane–it’s 10 years old, and it’s still better then any of Canon’s midline DSLRs. Rationally speaking, I understand that they’ve been keeping the 1-series’s 45-point AF unit for their top-of-the-line models, but that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense now that the D700’s on the market. Canon got lazy, and Nikon’s passed them up. They can’t afford to leave features out of their semi-pro models just to protect their (slightly lackluster, compared to the D3) top-of-the-line.
Personally, I’d be happy if they’d keep the resolution the same as the 5D at 12 MP, but that’ll never happen. There’s just too much marketing pressure to crank it up, even though it ends up hurting the image quality. I suspect that most of their users would prefer 12 MP with a D700-like ISO 6400 over 21 MP with too much noise to make 6400 usable.
Tags canon, canon5d, photography | 1 comment
Posted by Scott Laird
Sun, 19 Aug 2007 05:53:00 GMT
It looks like Canon’s finally about to announce the long-rumored 40d and 1Ds mk III. They’ve been rumored forever, but they now have product pages at Amazon, so they’re probably legitimate this time:
The 40d looks fantastic–they increased the resolution slightly to 10 MP, which isn’t all that exciting, but they also raised the frame rate to 6.5 fps, bumped the buffer to 75 JPEG/17 RAW images, added their anti-dust shaker, sRAW, 14-bit DACs, weather shielding, and live view. They also completely re-did the AF unit–it still uses the same 9-point format as the 30d, but all nine sensors are now cross-type sensors up to f/5.6; this should make a huge difference in AF accuracy. They don’t appear to have improved the camera’s ISO range; it’s still 100-1600 + 3200, but other then that they seem to have picked up almost every other improvement that the 1D mk III added. I’m impressed; in the past Canon left features out of their mid-range series to avoid competing with higher-end models, but that doesn’t seem to have happened this time.
There’s also a new wireless module, the WFT-E3A, but Amazon doesn’t have any details yet. Presumably it’s a very slight change from the 1D mk III’s new wireless transmitter, hopefully at a lower price point. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to pay $999 for a wireless transmitter for a $1,299 camera. I could actually see myself picking up a 40d in addition to my 5d–it looks like a great camera for taking sports pictures, and the 1.6x multiplier would make my 100-400 lens a lot more useful for bird pics.
The 1Ds mk III is a bit out of my price range at $7,999. It’s up to 21.1 MP now, at 5 fps. It looks like they added everything from the 1D mk III, plus a new UDMA CF module, doubling write speeds with Sandisk Extreme IV and the equivalent Lexar cards. Amazon doesn’t mention ISO sensitivity at all, so it’s not clear if they now support ISO 6400 or not.
Finally, they updated their 14mm lens for better compatibility with the 1Ds mk III. Yawn.
All in all, this looks pretty good. Way to go Canon.
Tags canon, canon40d, photography | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Mon, 22 Aug 2005 14:25:11 GMT
I’m not really looking for a pocket camera right now, but I noticed something interesting on the Canon S80 press release–it’s able to record video at 1024x768@15 fps. It’s not exactly HDTV-quality, but it’s vastly better then the 640x480 that has been the standard for video for years. I suspect that the image quality is pretty good–I’d be amazed if there were any imaging artifacts left when producing 0.8MP images from an 8MP sensor, although the compressor settings might end up being a problem.
I wouldn’t expect this to kill off camcorder sales–if nothing else, I doubt that the S80’s video recording UI is very good–but it’s a sign of things to come. Frankly, the only hard part about recording standard-resolution video now is recording hours of it at a time without running out of storage space and battery life. We’ll probably see a flood of ED and HDTV recorders within a year or so, simply because the technology is making it cheap and easy, and people’s computers are easily able to handle higher-resolution and -size videos.
Tags canon, canons60, hdtv, video | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Mon, 22 Aug 2005 13:12:17 GMT
Canon announced the rumored EOS 5D today, along with the EOS 1D mk II N, a new flash, and a couple new lenses.
DPReview has details:
The 5D looks exactly like the rumors suggested–full frame, 12.8 MP, 3 FPS, 9 AF points. It’s essentially a cross between the original 1Ds and the 20D. Its buffer holds 60 JPEG frames or 17 raw frames. Canon has 4 sample images available, but their site is slammed and I haven’t been able to view them yet. It’s priced at $3,299.
The 1D mk II N (nice name, Canon) is a slight update to their top-of-the line sports body. It still has the same 1.3x 8 MP sensor, but they added:
- A bigger LCD (2.5” vs 2.0”)
- Slightly bigger and faster buffers – 48 JPEG images vs 40
- The ability to write RAW and JPEG to simultaneously to different flash cards, so RAW ends up on CF while JPEG ends up on the SD card, or vice-versa.
- A new “picture style” setting that presumably only matters if you’re shooting JPEGs in the camera and aren’t planning on editing them much.
- Slightly lower price: $3,999
I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of these features end up in a firmware upgrade for the current 1D and 1Ds mk II sometime in the near future.
There are also two new lenses, the 24-105/4L IS and the 70-300/4.0-5.6 IS. The 24-105/4L has been on a lot of people’s wishlists for years–Canon had f4 versions of their professional wide zoom (the 17-40/4L) and their long zoom (the 70-200/4L), but not their middle zoom (the 24-70/2.8L). They finally filled in that gap in their lineup, even adding image stabilization to the mix. I have the 24-70/2.8L, and it’s far and away my favorite lens, but the 24-105/4L is tempting, if only for the longer reach and IS. It’s slower, but that may not be a big issue for me.
The 70-300/4.0-5.6 IS is a replacement for Canon’s older 75-300 IS lens. The 75-300 was Canon’s first IS lens, but it had a reputation for lousy optics. So presumably the new model is a “sucks less” replacement using a more modern image stabilization system and better glass.
Neither of the lens announcement include pricing information. I suspect that the 24-105/4L will be around $1000 initially, dropping to $800 after 6 months or so, while the 70-300 will be around $550, dropping to closer to $400 next year. Those are total guesses, based on prior experience with Canon’s pricing. The 24-105L can’t be much over $1000 for now, because the 24-70/2.8L sells for around $1150, and the 24-105L is designed to be cheaper then the 24-70L.
Updates: Rob Galbraith makes some good points about the 5D, and points that it’s a bit slower then the 20D.
Tags canon, canon1dmkIIn, canon5d, eos, photography | no comments
