Archive for November 10th, 2011
Thursday, November 10th, 2011
Canon 1DX and the Canon EF 8-15mm f/4 L USM Fisheye lens hands on
During the photoadventure fair in Vienna I got my hands on the new Canon 1DX.
First thing I tried was the new autofocus. I am very happy with the autofocus of my 7d, the automatic af point selection in AI Servo mode works pretty well. But jumps around when too much people are moving at the same distance. Also in very dark areas its safer to work without the AI Servo mode.
On the 1DX I turned AI Servo and automatic point selection on (easy to change with the Mfn button like on the 7d).
You can imagine that a lot of people are running around on a fair. So I pointed one of the focus points in the face of a visitor and pressed the shutter half down (I prefer to have that focusing action on the af on button).
The visitor started moving thru the crowed and the focus system of the Canon 1DX was following him. No matter how many people crossed his way at the same distance and no matter how much I moved the camera, the camera kept focusing on his face. I guess the color detection af feature is responsible for this great result. I tried to shoot some pics in between of the visitor and every single one was sharp (Love the new function to zoom in at 100% with one time pushing the zoom button)
I had the feeling that the shutter is more quiet as the shutter on the 7d. I asked also for the face detection af, but the Canon guy told me that this feature is right now not working very well.(I just thought, who needs that feature if the normal af works that perfect)It will be full functional in a later firmware release.
Another thing was, that the camera felt pretty heavy with the 70-200 2.8. Again I can only compare it to the 7D with the battery extension.
I know, everybody wants to know the performance in low light situations. (The girl behind me was very excited about that)
The memory card slots were taped, so no chance for posting pictures here, I only can post my experiences about the image quality with checking the lcd on the cam (btw, that one looks realy great and I also liked the new menu a lot)
The camera was set to L jpg with noise reduction on. So I changed the cam to raw and tried some shots with ISO 25600 and 51200. As expected I was able to see some noise on the pictures, but its tough to compare that to other cams when you are only able to check them on the camera screen. I just can tell you that I did not see any horizontal or vertical lines (like other websites netioned) in the noise, I had the feeling they look very good for that high ISO. I changed the setting back to iso 6400 and shot some pictures. Checking those on the screen was pretty amazing, I could not see any noise on the screen . Would realy be interesting how they look like on the pc.
Finally I got my hands on the new fisheys zoom lens. I tried it on a full frame and on a crop body. Somehow liked it more on the crop body, because you have the same view as on the full frame. How come? On the full frame at 8mm you have a lot of black nothing around the picture, the crop camera has less “black nothing” and so I had the feeling you get more resolution out of it at 8 mm. The build quality is very good and I guess this baby could give me some amazing views during a big tournament. I also liked the minimum focus distance a lot. Makes fun to shoot close up faces with that lens 😉
