Product Alert: New Canon Tools?

[fotografz]

Canon just announced a couple of interesting new items that may be of interest to wedding shooters:

 

NEW EOS1DMKII: The third generation of the well respected sports and journalistic DSLR introduces a

number of new features including:

 

-an entirely new 10.1 meg sensor with integrated sensor cleaning. This camera is now 14 bit, which is a

Canon first. Crop factor remains at 1.3X. Options include a new loss-less sRAW compression option

which allows more images per CF or SD card. Dual card system remains, allowing instant back-up to

second card which I personally find invaluable when shooting once in a lifetime events.

 

- ISO to 6400. !!!!! Given Canon's clear leadership in high ISO capture this could be VERY interesting.

Remains to be seen. But 3200 should be pretty good. Think 85/1.2 at ISO 3200 : -) Flash becomes "fill"

even in a coal mine at midnight.

 

-3" LCD with "Live Preview": perhaps of interest to those like me who do blind, arms' length "Hail Mary"

shots in a crowd or in tight places.

 

-New, faster focusing with 19 user selectable AF points of the more sensitive cross sensor type. Of

interest to those using the fast aperture lenses of f/2.8 or less while composing off center in lower

light. An additional 25 "assist points aid in the job.

 

-Dual DIGIC III-Processors to provide up to 50% less shadow noise, and a new Highlight Tone Priority

option for controlling bright highlights (think wedding dress).

 

- New lighter body, and a new more powerful battery that's 1/2 the size of the current one, further

reducing the weight ... shoulders and backs rejoice !!! This camera has enhanced weather resistance,

and a new shutter tested to 300,000 exposures.

 

- 10 fps, with an enhanced buffer allowing 110 full res Jpgs ( or 30 RAW ) in a single burst. A boon to

those wedding shooters capturing 1000+ images per wedding and wanting to increase that rate (just

kidding), but the buffer can come in handy on occasion.

 

NEW 16-35/2.8L MK II. Finally Canon appears to have addressed their weakness in wide angles optics.

We'll see. 3 ASPH elements touted as improving edge-to-edge image quality, while a new circular

aperture for nicer background blur. Lens is also touted as being faster focusing than it predecessor.

 

NEW SPEEDLITE 580EX MKII: 20% improvement in recycling speed, new level of build quality including a

metal foot (YES!). Dust and water resistant like the camera; new silent recycle, WB info communicated to

camera automatically ... I presume this means you can set the camera on tungsten for available light

work, but when you switch on the flash it automatically switches the camera to flash WB. I REALLY like

that feature.

[mark u]

I think the original 580EX had the WB feature as well. It's not entirely clear what it is supposed to do, but I think it merely tweaks the WB marginally. Here's what the 580EX manual says:

 

"When the flash fires, the color temperature information is transmitted to certain specific EOS digital camera. This feature optimises the flash picture's white balance. When the camera's white balance is set to AWB or "flash symbol" it will work automatically.

 

To see if this feature works with your camera, see the white balance specification in the "Major Specifications" of your camera's instruction manual."

 

The 5D manual simply says "color temperature information transmission provided" and there is no further mention of the feature under the WB parts of the manual. I note that the flash WB is supposedly set for 6000K - so it should normally give slightly warm results since I doubt than many flashes are as cool as that.

 

Here's what the original 580 EX press release says:

 

"When used with the EOS 20D or 1D Mark II digital SLR cameras, the flash and camera communicate to make fine adjustments to auto white balance by electronically monitoring the charge level of the batteries and the duration of each flash burst, resulting in consistently accurate color for every shot."

 

I'm not sure how useful that really is given that AWB should adjust automatically anyway. What would be really nice would be an "auto gel" feature, so you could match the flash to the ambient light.

[stefanie1]

When I first saw this I thought "finally a camera that's really built for me!". Not so much for weddings, but for my other photography job, white water rafting. I've been shooting with a 20D but occasionally miss shots due to 5fps being too slow (never thought you'd hear that did you?) and the buffer filling too fast. Being able to shoot that fast in RAW is a huge help too, since the water is white and a lot of the time the background ends up black because I have to shoot into the sun. I'm a tiny little woman, so the last version was too heavy for me (I couldn't lift it off the table with anything more than a 50mm on it), but this is promising!

 

Now if only they could make an 18-300 f/2.8 IS that fit into my waterproof housing...

[medina photography cherry]

I know, I read about the new 1D MK III the other day and am really excited about it. I just wish I had new money to go with the new gear :)

[ben_rubinstein___mancheste1664880652]

It is an exciting camera save for one point, it isn't full frame. If you need anything wider that 20mm then you're screwed really. Aside from that for the rather large group of photographers for whom the resolution of the 5D is just enough, this won't really cut it.

 

What is exciting for wedding photographers is the AF points and ISO quality. With only one cross sensor on the 5D and a few more on the 1 series but all in the wrong place for wedding shooters, this could really make a difference. The ability to fine tune the focus of each lens is also quite exciting. Until now if you wanted the AF and build of the 1 series (been doing a lot of shooting in the rain recently, the B&G had an umbrella, my non waterproof 5D didn't!) then you needed to buy the 1 series which meant either the 8 megapixels and noisy 1D mkII or the 1Ds mkII at a very high price. Now you can get a 1D mkIII with the 5D's noise (hopefully!), even better AF and 1 series build. If you don't need the extra megapixels or don't need wider than 20mm then it should be a great choice.

 

Of course with that fps and buffer, you could shoot video with it as well! ;-)

 

A waterproof 580ex, that does sound interesting, shot the ceremony and some portraits of the last two weddings in the rain, would have killed for a weather proof flash as the idea of that high a voltage getting waterlogged isn't very comforting when you have it next to your face. I've had flashes stop working till they dried out after a wet ceremony, if there's one thing that you need a certain backup for it's your flash. They are flimsy, snap at the hotshoe easily, can get wet, etc.

 

Silent recycle. I'm not going to bother buying the newer versions (I would need 2) given that my 5D is also non weatherproof but I wouldn't miss the recharging whine for one second, it always sounds like everyone else can here it!

[fotografz]

I can live with a 1.3X crop because I rarely use anything wider than the 18mm that my

14/2.8L provides. This camera would bring back more use of my 24/1.4 which went to

sleep when I went all full frame. However, I wouldn't entertain the idea of this camera

without also already having a full frame camera in the 1DsMKII.

 

If the high ISO of this camera performs as expected, my 5D will go bye-bye, or be

relagated to vacation snaps. I do not like shooting weddings to one memory card. The 1

series cameras solve that problem for me.

 

Apparently the new flash has a Quick Release built in. There is also a new off camera cord

and flash bracket that are also weather-proof, and it says the flash can now be controlled

with camera settings ... but only with the MKIII. What is not clear is wether the auto

setting of the WB will revert to flash from a setting of tungsten when the flash is turned

on, and back again to the original tungsten setting when turned off.

[ellis_vener_photography]

"-New, faster focusing with 19 user selectable AF points of the more sensitive cross sensor

type. Of interest to those using the fast aperture lenses of f/2.8 or less while composing off

center in lower light. An additional 25 "assist points aid in the job.

 

-Dual DIGIC III-Processors to provide up to 50% less shadow noise, and a new Highlight Tone

Priority option for controlling bright highlights (think wedding dress)."

 

For me this is the really big news. I'll take better pixels over more pixels every day of the

week.

[russ_konrad]

At over $4000 a copy - I don't think that there will be a ton of wedding photographers lining up to buy this new camera.

[jmichaelc]

6400!!!!!! AWESOME!

[conraderb]

The white paper says that you can only focus manually using live preview - hence not as useful to most weddingphotographers :-(

 

Along with the people at www.strobist.com, I'm excited that canon finally woke up to 1990's technology and added a PC sync to their flash!

 

Over $4000 a copy - it will come down. Wait for Marc Williams to buy his and then get a report :-)

[ben_rubinstein___mancheste1664880652]

Did someone say quick release, metal shoe and PC socket? Wow, now I really might get one, if only for my main on camera flash. Now if only they had put an auto mode in it then it would be as good as Nikons flash units have been for a while...

 

We will have to see how the 14 bit sensor output pans out, as Ellis mentions it could be a great boon to facial tones and wedding dresses, on the other hand, think of what the 1Ds mkIII will be like with the resolution and the bit depth to really become a wedding photographers wet dream.

[jfr]

Yup, the 1DsmkIII might just be too good to be true.<br>

So many steps forward at once! Brilliant job canon! I hope the high ISO will be as smooth as with the 5D.<br><br>

 

Check out the <a href="http://web.canon.jp/Imaging/eos1dm3/eos1dm3_sample-e.html">sample images on dpreview.com</a>. Especially the dynamic range is impressive. In the "wedding" pic all the highlights held detail.

[ken c oshkosh, wi]

I've got mine on order... If I like it enough I'll ditch one of my 5D's for a second one.

[chas_matthews]

Lots of interesting features, but how about Hilight Tone Priority?

 

"This new feature extends the dynamic range of highlights by about one stop and improves gradation within high light areas. By expanding the range from the correct exposure level(18% gray) to the maximum allowable highlight level, the gradation from the grays to the highlights becomes smoother and loss in highlight detail is minimized. If [C.Fn II-3;1: Enable] is set, the settable ISO speed range will be ISO 200- 3200. The display will show "2oo" with the zeros in smaller characters. Depending on shooting conditions, noise in the shadow areas may increase slightly"

 

It's unclear how this feature actually works, but the idea of being able to select preservation of highlights as an option is pretty cool.

[robbie_caswell]

You can actually order the beast? Where?

[fotografz]

I ordered the camera already, (under $4000. not over BTW), along with the new lens, flash

($20 more than current 580EX), plus new off-camera cord and new flash bracket, all weather

sealed. #1 one on my dealer's list, delivery is when it gets here : -)

 

When I get it and shoot a wedding, I'll report back.

[Jim_Tardio]

The most interesting new product to me is that Powershot TX1 featuring HDTV in the size of a very pocketable digital Elph...neato!

[rtrace]

""This new feature extends the dynamic range of highlights by about one stop and improves gradation within high light areas. By expanding the range from the correct exposure level(18% gray) to the maximum allowable highlight level, the gradation from the grays to the highlights becomes smoother and loss in highlight detail is minimized. If [C.Fn II-3;1: Enable] is set, the settable ISO speed range will be ISO 200- 3200. The display will show "2oo" with the zeros in smaller characters. Depending on shooting conditions, noise in the shadow areas may increase slightly""

 

This does sound a bit weird - I assume that it just underexposes automatically by one stop when you expose correctly for 18% to keep you from blowing the highlights. So that's not much IMO, but a safety thing if you don't know how to hold the highlights yourself or forget to -1 or whatever. If it was truly one extra stop, it would say so and not be an "option". Interesting to see. I think it's for JPEG shooters who can blow the highlights easier if not careful.

 

What really sounds nice is the ISO range (3200 is the new 1600!) and 14bit. The latter is the best really. THAT is what will give you smoother gradations and tones 14bit vs. current 12bit - even when converted later to 8bit (in camera or post).

 

Bogdan

[wedding-photography-denver]

6400 and live view, increased shutter performance etc. Cool.

 

Now, where oh where is my small body (5D size) version with a dial that locks? Enough with the two fisted settings already...

 

 

Still, great product for its intended market, but not for me I'm afraid.