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Last weekend I went to the launch in Kuala Lumpur, of the new Canon 1D Mark II . And I had a play with the camera fitted with the new 35-350mm F3.5-5.6L lens. With a bit of time on my hands, I decided to summarise my views here.
This is not a review of the camera, but more my light-hearted personal impressions after a very brief encounter with the new Camera.
What I'm writing here is simply my own impressions from the point of view of an advanced hobbyist. The questions in my mind are - would I take a second mortgage on the house to buy this camera, and would I want it bad enough to even consider selling one of my kidneys. I bet you didn't know that you can quite happily survive and lead a normal life with just one kidney....
Here are comparison pictures of the new Mark II and my 10D fitted with one of my favourite EF lenses - that often neglected and underated, very fine, very fast and quite reasonably priced Canon EF 50mm F1.4.
Canon EOS 1D Mark II
Canon EOS 10D
Well, what can I say ?
The Mark II was simply awesome. It has "presence". One of the largest SLRs around. Compared to my 10d, it is a giant of a camera, and is as heavy as it looks. It is huge, and in a pinch, I suspect it can be used quite effectively as a weapon-of-wanton-destruction. I mean, if somebody tries to mug you, you could bash their teeth with this camera, and when they are flat and unconscious on the ground, you could then snap their lifeless picture, and I'm sure the pictures will come out right, and the camera would be none the worse for wear. It has the looks of one tough cookie, and because it is designed for the proes who generally thrash their equipment, I believe the sales talk that this is one very well built camera body, with magnesium alloy and all that.
(Hah, your EOS 300D is plastic. That's why it is so cheep and fragile).
I'm sure those lady photographers, and those loaded, semi-senile, elderly gentlemen hobbyist photographers, are going to find it tough to lug the Mark II around. Hell, you might even need a wheel-barrow to cart it around. I estimated the combined weight of the Mark II with the 35-350mm zoom to be nearly 3 kilos, which is 20% of the economy class hand baggage entitlement. Try to carry 3 kg round your neck on a whole day field trip to shoot birds at the the Endau-Rompin National Park and you'll quickly understand what three kg feels like.
I also have reservations about the 35-350mm Telephoto that was attached to the test camera. A few months ago when I was itching to extend my telephoto reach, I seriously considered getting this lens. But I asked the proes around the forums on the internet, and most advised me against it. They say it is quite technically difficult to make a good 10x Telephoto lens at Canon's going price for the 35-350mm lens. That Red "L" Band in this lens is probably because of the two pieces of UD (Ultra Low Dispersion) glass at the front end of the lens, no doubt to help boost the performance a bit. A one-design-fit-all-thingy is bound to have compromises in several departments. So if you are after "sharp" pictures - sharp as in the sharpness available from Canon's highly touted EF300mm F2.8L lens - which has UD and Flourite elements, then you'd best not buy this lens.
However, the 10x zoom 35-350mm lens would be an excellent one-lens-for-all-occasions, as demanded by photo-journalists, reporters and clueless tourists where razor sharp images are not so important. After all, some of the pictures we see in newspapers might as well be taken with simple point-and-shoots. If super-fine image quality is not a critical factor - as with pictures for newspapers, etc- the 35-350mm is an excellent choice.
And I'm glad that I didn't buy that lens, opting instead for the 100-400mm, which BTW, I'm hardly using, preferring instead the 70-200mm F2.8, which IMHO is one of the finest lenses that Canon makes. I love especially Canon's Image Stabilization technology, which allows hand-held shooting up to 3 stops less. When I need to travel light, and can carry only a few lenses, the lenses I would carry would be the 15mm Fisheye, the 16-35mm, the 50mm, and the 70-200mm. I will also carry my 1.4x tele-extender which will increase the natural reach of my 70-200 to 280mm, and with the 1.6x multiplication factor of the sensor thrown in, to an effective 448mm. I've also ordered a 500d screw in, filter type macro Close-up lens attachment for the 70-300mm. It is an excellent alternative to a bulky and expensive actual macro lens.
But I digress. This is supposed to be about the Mark II.
Well, I've also been playing with a 1Ds belonging to a friend, and I think the Mark 2 beats the pants off the 1Ds in terms of performance, technical wizardry, and ability to confuse the average user with the zillions of customisable functions and settings available. IMHO, the only thing the 1Ds has more of, is simply a few more pixels in its sensor. In every other department, I believe, the Mark 2 wins pants down. Now I wonder what a 1Ds Mark2 is going to be like. But I believe both cameras are targeted at different pro segments, so I am not expecting anything extraordinary.
The main thing that impressed me with the Mark II was the 8.5 frames per second continuous shooting capability. I inserted my IBM Microdrive, touched the shutter release and by the time I thought of lifting my finger, I saw that 15 frames had already been shot !!! I pressed the shutter again, and another 8 frames were exposed. It felt like the old SMG (sub-machine-gun) that I was being trained to use during my previous life at the Royal Military College. The shutter release even sounded like a machine gun.
And the Buffer allows you to shoot max JPG continuosly for about 40 frames before it stops (20 for RAW, according to Canon's Sales Manager Mr Teo Peng Kee, whom I was trying to persuade to give me a big discount).
Awesome !!
By comparison, my 10d shoots only 3 frames per second upto a maximum of 9 frames. Then I have to wait for ages for those 9 frames to be written to the microdrive, before the buffer is emptied again. I also noticed the very quick start up time of the Mark II.
Of course the other pull factor of the Mark II is the 8.2M CMOS sensor. Bigger than the 10d by 2 megapixels, but less than that of the 1Ds by nearly 4 megapixels. I was obsessed with the 12 megapixels for a long time, but my good friend in the UK, who has been testing the Epson 4000 Pro Printer for a well known Digital Photography magazine, wrote that :-
" .... the print engine and methodology used by the $1750 Epson Pro 4000 can produce mind-boggling quality prints to 20"x 16" from mere 2MP digital camera images,,, and produce 'true' high quality B&W prints that are found acceptable by even 'wet' B&W workers -.."
and
"...I've printed out a fair number of DCS 620 images, and the results have to be seen to be believed - there's no way that you could guess they had come from mere 6MP files....."
That has led me to reasses my obsession with megapixels. BTW my English Pro friend also has the Kodak 14n and the Canon 1Ds.
Sometimes I feel we allow ourselves be carried away by the megapixel count. Today's printing technology has advanced to such a stage that even low megapixels images can be printed to perfection. And unless you are a real Pro with a need to sometimes print Billboard size images, 6 megapixels is really quite enough, and 8.2 is plenty. If you need more pixels, I can reccomend Fred Miranda's Stair Interpolation PS Action which quite efficiently produces more pixels without problems.
However, if like me you secretly dream of selling your images online through one of the more high end stock photos agencies, you need to be aware that stock agencies like top-end Getty's will not accept anything less than the 12 megapixels generated by the 1Ds. But then my other American friend has been selling images through Getty's for more than 10 years, and he makes an average of USD$40,000 per month. So for those sort of applications the 1Ds and the Kodak 14N would have to be the weapons of choice. But as an aside, after playing with the 1Ds, I felt the 1Ds images are sligtly softer and less crisp compared to my humble 10D. I stand to be corrected in this.
What else can I say about the Mark II ?
Oh yes, the astounding customisation possibilities with the new camera. If you are like me, always fascinated by features that I don't even understand, and probably would never ever use, this camera has the ultimate in bragging rights for the number of Custom and personal functions that it has. It seems it has 21 Custom Functions with 67 settings and a total of 27 Personal Functions. You can save your favourite personal settings on your memory card.
The beast also has TWO memory card slots - one for CF cards and the other for SD cards. ISO speeds are from 50 to 3200. Although the colour LCD monitor is very bright, I find that you can only see it within a certain arc. And I also discovered it can record sound, which my 10d can't. The Canon techie person also said each battery charge will last for about 1200 shots. I later found out that an extra battery for the Mark II costs as much as a third of the price of the Digital Rebel, and nearly 8 times the cost of my CAR battery. I was also taking a swipe at Canon during the introduction seminar, complaining loudly that an in-car battry charger for my 10d batteries cost nearly $100. I bought a Nokia in-car battery charger for my NOKIA mobile telephone for less than the cost of a roll of film. What the hell is going on here??
So, in conclusion, would I buy the camera?
It's a nice toy and I'd love to have it, and of course I'd buy it if money is not a constraint. (money is always a constraint !! ) It will cost more than 3 times what I paid for my 10d. If I buy it, it'll be like buying a Formula 1 car to go buy groceries at Tesco's. Nice for bragging rights, but I don't think I will take any better pictures than what I currently shoot with my humble 10d.
But why is it that a little voice inside me is egging me to go ahead and buy it ?? In fact I am already negotiating seriously with a couple of potential buyers for my humble 10d body. If I can sell my seven months old 10d for a loss of not more than 15% depreciation against the new price, I'd go to the shop right now and get me one.....
I havent worked out what excuse I need to cook up though, for the Home Finance Minister to approve the purchase....but then I've got a very cooperative Home Finance Minister. I know if I cry a little bit, sulk, pull a long face, and buy her flowers everyday for the next 2 weeks, she'll definitily approve the purchace ....Otherwise I just go out and buy it anyway.....
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