snowboarder wrote:
It looks like Canon is really thinking (like I remember them saying at launch time) that photojournalists don't need and don't want a FF camera, but Nikon is offering FF with practically the same money. OTOH, Nikon seems to want to shake the marketplace by offering more than 1D for practically the same price.
Nikon is offering what Canon doesnt have, a lower priced, full frame pro body DSLR at a lower price than the 1Ds mk2/3. Basically what the new 1D mk3 should have been the D3 is. Actually Canon could have beat the D3 with a $4500 16mp FF 1Dmk3 with crop modes.
Quick question - does the 1D3 have one of the diopter adjusters on it somewhere? I looked at the 1D3 flash site and did not see it mentioned nor could I 'see' it when I used the 3D flash animation of the actual camera. I know it must have it but can't see it so just curious to confirm.
I just read the white paper. It appears that the optical engineers at Canon are the only ones that are able to get improvements incorporated, while the other engineers are throttled. An example is the ddr memory. DDR III memory has been available for over a year now and the Mark III is still using DDR memory.
WHY? They are not even using SO memory. There are quite a few other items that show the lack of really trying to give the photographer state of the art cameras. Its not that they can't, they won't. If a computer manufacture tried that they would soon go belly up from the competition. Nikon is just as bad, they just don't have the sensor technology to compete. Pentax appears to be trying. I'm sure if they had the sensor technology they would have a K1 that would kick Canon and Nikon in the slats if the K10 is any indication. And this from a person who has never liked Pentax.
If it is like the 1D Mk III, it will be hidden underneath the eyecup. You have to remove the eyecup to gain access to it.
- helps prevent accidental changes.
The diopter adjustment is well designed, compared to non 1 series.
Paul, specifically in regards to memory, faster may not make any difference to system performance. But I believe not increasing buffer size was a cheap move. Yes, it writes faster to expensive cards. But I expected a bigger buffer.
I agree with the general tone of your posts. The small changes are almost shocking after three years. Leadership? Perhaps Canon isn't comfortable in that position. Look how hard that white paper tries to bring out the improvement over the MK II. Seems to me that the marketing department isn't terribly comfortable with the new feature set. Essentially they want us to accept as a good thing that adding 5 million pixels and maintaining the ISO performance of the MK II is impressive. I'm not impressed.
Did Canon build the best sensor they could and still make a nice profit. Or did the build the minimum sensor possible to maximize their profit in the short term?
Canon may still have the premire camera wihen Nikon releases the D3x. But why squander the lead? They expect the 1DsIII to be the premiere camera until 2010? I'm skeptical.
I don't have a 1DsII, so I will buy the MKIII. If I had a 1DsII, would I upgrade for a little more resolution and ISO performance "just as good as the MKII". No, I wouldn't.
Canon spending huge amounts of money on R&D and putting a great deal of effort into manufacturing efficiency usually seems like a good thing. But virtues can be overdone. Those of us with a lot of equipment have a long term relationship with Canon. Canon is in a temporary position of significant superiority and has apparently chosen to do the absolute minimum for their customers. That's not a good business decision.
i think it's too early to declare the 1Ds III a mediocre upgrade.
the COMBINATION of the DR/color improvements that we already see in 1D III images with higher resolution could very well yield some very significant IQ improvements.
although high ISO is important to me, i'd rather optimize the 95% case (for me) of ISO 100-400.
alfieri wrote:
i think it's too early to declare the 1Ds III a mediocre upgrade.
the COMBINATION of the DR/color improvements that we already see in 1D III images with higher resolution could very well yield some very significant IQ improvements.
although high ISO is important to me, i'd rather optimize the 95% case (for me) of ISO 100-400.
What DR? The white paper states that the 1Ds3 has similar DR to the 1Ds2. I find that quite discouraging because that's one area where I specifically wanted to see improvements.
The whitepaper also states that the 1DSIII also gets 1800 shots to a battery charge. I would settle for 1/2 of that to have a 16 bit A/D and a 16 bit path. I'm not sure of the battery current penalty of peltier cooling but even a small amount of cooling would drop the noise floor tremendously. For all their marketing hype, Canon hasn't even began to approach the current technology in hardware design, and until some manufacture steps up to the plate and holds their feet to the fire they will continue to milk the technology. Canon and Nikon are both disgusting in the price they charge for mediocore technology. They bank on the fact that most people don't have the engineering background to know better. Many may think I'm just poping off, but I do have the background in low light imaging (actually black and microscopic) to know what really can be done.
Paul Gardner wrote:
I'm not sure of the battery current penalty of peltier cooling but even a small amount of cooling would drop the noise floor tremendously.
I would suspect condensation issues would be much more likely to hold them back from using a peltier strip than battery consumption (?)
I agree on the condensation, I just didn't want to open that can of worms. It can be dealt with sucessfully without a great deal of effort although it is not trivial, and is part of the current penalty.
Because of the cost of the 1DMKIII I've been closely watching the price of a new to mint Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II and so far the average going price on EvilBay is $4300
PrecisionPhoto wrote:
Because of the cost of the 1DMKIII I've been closely watching the price of a new to mint Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II and so far the average going price on EvilBay is $4300
Funny I dont see any for sale or any completed. Not sure what your looking at. No way for 4300 either. 48-52 is the going price here.
That's insane. That's a bigger drop in value than between the 1Ds and 1Ds2, which was a far bigger upgrade than from 1Ds2 to 1Ds3... sigh. Such a beautiful camera.
