Luck and fortune shined upon me, and I got the call to pick up the 1D X.

I haven’t had much quality time with the camera yet, but so far, it is just terrific. Noise levels are fantastic, but I know a lot is very interested in its shadow recovery abilities, banding and pattern noise (and thus usable dynamic range).


I have taken some test shots in raw and ISO 100, and the sensor is good, but not a Sony Exmor-killer. If you push a photo with near-blacks, you will get some pattern noise. It normally gets visible around +2 EV. Now, please take note of that I wrote near-blacks, not shadows.

Because when it comes to shadow recovery, things are looking much, much better. Most of the time you can push a +100 Shadows recovery in Lightroom 4/Photoshop CS6 without seeing any pattern noise worth noting, if any.

I only have one example where it starts to show up around +60 and this is because there are only grey tones in the shadow part. Luckily, I might add, because you can pretty much take care of it if you use the Adjustment Brush and dial in some Noise and Moire reduction.

The pattern noise is much less likely to pop op if the shadows has some color in it, like foliage.

Lets take a look, shall we.

First, the test sample.


Crops will come in the next reply.

So to sum it up, I think the good news at least is that Canon got that noise pattern down into the near-black area where it seldom will be a big issue, while the shadows should be good – especially for landscapes.

If anybody wants to try the raw-file themselves, just send me a PM, and I will get you a link. I only ask that you keep it within the Fred Miranda family. I most certainly will not be a part of an Apocalypse over at dpreview.

Feel free to ask any questions you might have.

Oops, sorry those samples got so big, it is the first time I use the image upload feature here. Silly me.

very nice, look like DIGIC ii colors

Looks decent to me, but I'm not an expert in this area

Thanks for these!

In the crop with exposure +2, is that plus 100% fill or exp comp only?

Come to think of it I might as well show the photo, where pushing the Shadows slider at +100 showed some pattern noise. It was easy to tame with some local Noise + Moire reduction i LR4, but here it is with just Shadows at +100.

alundeb wrote:
Thanks for these!

In the crop with exposure +2, is that plus 100% fill or exp comp only?


Just with Exposure at +2.

Ok, thanks!

I think it is safe to say that the 1D X sensor does not bring any improvement in low ISO DR over previous Canon cameras.

Thx for the information and yes keep it away from DPR.. the +4 vertical banding will go viral. While the EXMOR's without question do better with shadow recovery, getting back to exposure basics at some point has to come into play. Loks like Canon did a decent job here to my eyes.

alundeb wrote:
Ok, thanks!

I think it is safe to say that the 1D X sensor does not bring any improvement in low ISO DR over previous Canon cameras.

+1

This is sad to me. Very sad. I'm a 5D III owner, and still feel a tinge of buyer's remorse over those darn shadows, but as a 1DX owner paying double the price..., ouch.

WilliamG wrote:
This is sad to me. Very sad. I'm a 5D III owner, and still feel a tinge of buyer's remorse over those darn shadows, but as a 1DX owner paying double the price..., ouch.

I wouldn't go that far. The shadows on a 1DX has quite low noise and color seems to be held up pretty good when exposure is raised, so while I would prefer no pattern noise at all, there is still some good detail to work on in post processing. I just looked on a Mark IV ISO 100 file I have, and at least the 1D X seems is better in this regard.

I dunno about the 1Ds Mark III tough.

Stoffer wrote:
WilliamG wrote:
This is sad to me. Very sad. I'm a 5D III owner, and still feel a tinge of buyer's remorse over those darn shadows, but as a 1DX owner paying double the price..., ouch.

I wouldn't go that far. The shadows on a 1DX has quite low noise and color seems to be held up pretty good when exposure is raised, so while I would prefer no pattern noise at all, there is still some good detail to work on in post processing. I just looked on a Mark IV ISO 100 file I have, and at least the 1D X seems is better in this regard.

I dunno about the 1Ds Mark III tough.

Actually, better than 5d2 but same shadows effects when pushed as my 1ds2 and 5dc

Great Cat shot. What lens did you use?

Ralph

Nils, thanks for the comparisons. I think you're right that the color holds up a little better than in previous generation Canons. Not the major improvement we might have hoped for, but as much as we could expect after seeing the 5DIII and knowing that Canon hasn't made the kind of changes that Sony did with the Exmor. I'm sure some will yell and scream, but considering all aspects of the 1DX capabilities, I'll bet a lot of photographers are going to be very happy working with it - until Canon comes out with an ultra high dynamic range sensor, that is. And 40 MP.

OK, I have examined a 1DX black frame. It's not really very encouraging news, at least not entirely, although it definitely is better than the 5D3, mostly because it has less nasty banding and it is nice to see the control that a bit better again.

Overall it's probably, usably, near a tie for best from Canon, quite close to 1Ds3 probably. So it's nothing so much bad as just living in half a decade ago glory levels and not progressing any.

The DR measures about par for the course for Canon cams as of the last 5-6 years.

After seeing their astonishing break-through at light collection and record high iso performance I had gotten excited they would maybe at least get the 1DX to D4-like dynamic range at low ISO, even if hardly D800 level, but nope, probably 1.2-1.4 stops worse than D4.

I'd need to go check the other files, but off-hand, I'd guess it's one the better Canon efforts in terms of banding, at least.

It has, for sure, less low ISO shadow banding than 5D2/5D3/7D/50D. I vaguely recall that the 1D4 was kinda bad for banding in low ISO shadows, so the 1DX is probably better than that as well.

It's probably somewhere in the mix with the 1Ds3/1D3/40D as the best in terms of low iso banding from Canon.

The 1DX actually has more horizontal banding than the 5D3, which has none of that at all, but it's quite low levels of horizontal all the same, and while it still has some noticeable vertical banding, it has quite a lot less of that than the 5D3 or 5D2 or 7D, etc., considerably less.

So the banding on the 1DX is probably getting to be more like 1Ds3, only this time in the other direction (you'd think if they can stop it in one direction one cam and in another direction on another cam then they could stop it in both directions though but the 1Ds3 seems to be the onyl cam they ever solved vertical banding with, they are close for horiz with the 1DX and the 5D3 is the only one they have ever totally solved horizontal banding at low ISO with).


ISO 100 back frame read noise NOT normalized this is at 100% view level (lower is better):

5D3 6.4-7.0 ADU [6.4(beta copies); 6.6 (many release copies); 7.0 (my copy )] = the worst per photosite read noise, by a tiny margin, since the 30D-era.

5D2 6.1 ADU

1DX 5.8 ADU (3.86 normalized to 8MP requires 0.666x conversion factor )

1Ds3 5.7 ADU

7D 5.4 ADU

1D4 5.2 ADU

It seems Canon reach the lowest level of per photosite read noise with their 1D4-era cameras.

OTOH they reached the lowest banding levels with the 1Ds3/1D3/40D and now also 1DX.

Per total image the highest measured engineering DR they have produced is in the 1Ds3, 1D4, 5D2 and perhaps 1DX. But the 1Ds3 and 1DX appear to have much less banding than the others so they should be more usable than say the 5D2, 5D3, 7D, 1D4 and such even if the others appear to measure as well.

So 1Ds3 and 1DX are arguably Canon's best for DR, but the 1DX is nearing 1/2 stop worse than numerous Nikon bodies and solidly over a stop worse than Nikon's new D4 and of course miles behind anything having an Exmor sensor.



ISO 100 engineering dynamic range (normalized to 8MP as per DxO):
All of the Exmor stunners:
DxO's D800: 14.3
DxO's D7000: 13.9
DxO's D3x: 13.65
DxO's D5100: 13.6

And the new Nikon stunner, considering it does not make use of any fancy Exmor patents:
DxO's D4: 13.1 (Note Nikon was able to get this WITHOUT using Exmor patents so anyone else, theoretically should be able to do so without patent violation as well.)

And then it's the best of the distant rest:
DxO's D3: 12.2
DxO's D300s: 12.2
DxO's D700: 12.15
DxO's D300: 12.0
DxO's CANON 1Ds3: 12.0 (still Canon's king 5 years later, almost 1/2 stop DR and with much less banding than my 5D3)
DxO's 1D4: 11.95
DxO's D3s: 11.94
My 5D2: 11.93 (but it has a lot of banding so the usable isn't at all as high as for the others in the near 12.0 range)
DxO's 5D2: 11.86 (" ")
My 7D: 11.8 (also suffers from a lot of banding so the usable is not as good as some of the others in this range)
Two beta 5D3s: 11.76 (zero horizontal banding, but still a lot of vertical so not as high usable DR as some of the others in the range)

1DX: guessing 11.75 (not quite sure what the well depth is though, but that number should alter results too much, probably not by more than +/- 0.1 or +/-0.2 at the worst) (the banding is definitely less than for 5D3 and 7D and 50D and 5D2 and all the nasty ones, it's probably closer to the 1Ds3 banding, I have to go find my 1Ds3 and 1D4 samples, I don't remember exactly off-hand.)

DxO's 5D3: 11.74 (" ")
DxO's 7D: 11.7 (" ")
Another FM'ers 5D3: 11.7 (" ")
DxO's 1D3: 11.7
My 5D3: 11.6 (" ")

And then the rest of the back pack (although a few with very low banding may have slightly more usable DR than a few of the cameras in the set above):
DxO's 60D: 11.5
DxO's D200: 11.5
DxO's Rebel 600D: 11.45
My 40D: 11.4 (very little banding, so despite 1/2 worse measured than 5D2 in the real world it might do you at least as well)
My 50D: 11.4 (a ton of banding though)
DxO's 50D: 11.4 (" ")
DxO's 40D: 11.2


And below here are the old school bottom of the heap:
DxO's 20D: 11.0
DxO's D40: 11.0
DxO's D2Xs: 10.9
DxO's D2X: 10.9
DxO's 30D: 10.8
My second 20D a very late production run copy (I always felt it wasn't as good as the first copy, looking at DxO's scores, maybe so, it also had slightly different construction than my earlier copy 20D): 10.6
DxO's D70: 10.3

alundeb wrote:
Ok, thanks!

I think it is safe to say that the 1D X sensor does not bring any improvement in low ISO DR over previous Canon cameras.

Yeah measured DR is par for the course of 5D2,5D3,1D4,1Ds3.

OTOH at least they seem to have gotten banding somewhat better again, probably closer to the old 1Ds3-levels, but I need to go check to make sure. DIrectly comparing to the 5D2 and 5D3 black frames I had on hand, the 1DX definitely has less banding. Less than the 5D2 in either direction. It has a touch worse horizontally than the 5D3 but still only to a very low level and it has much less vertical banding than the 5D3.

So you should be able to mess around it with more like a 1Ds3,1D3,40D before seeing nasties than you can with a 5D2,5D3,50D,7D,1D4 and since out of the 1D3,40D,1Ds3 only one is FF and has a of MP, it is the 1Ds3 and 1DX that the rule the Canon low ISO roost.

So the 1DX sensor best guesstimates so far:

best highest ISO ever, stunning light capture efficiency improvement!!!!

considerably mediocre read noise for this day and age (many stops behind exmor and 1/2 stop behind old nikon stuff and over a stop behind new non-exmor nikon stuff)

reasonably solid banding performance, more like the old 1Ds3/1D3/40D did than the nasty banding stuff they have mostly released of late

overall for canon, accounting for all aspects from low to high iso, dr, snr, mp, etc. overall i'd say it is their best sensor ever....

overall for all brands, " ", i'd say the D800 totally whomps it all over at lower ISOs by large margin with the D800 have 2x the MP and much better DR and not that much worse SNR but the 1DX rules the roost at high iso and totally whomping anything up there that is not a 5D3/D4/D800 (I'd say it whomps the D3s because the D3s has so many less MP the noise 'grain' looks too large and NR doesn't work as pleasingly on it).

So low ISO: D800 best ever (ground breaking) and D3x for second place
and high ISO: 1DX best ever (ground breaking)

Stoffer wrote:
WilliamG wrote:
This is sad to me. Very sad. I'm a 5D III owner, and still feel a tinge of buyer's remorse over those darn shadows, but as a 1DX owner paying double the price..., ouch.

I wouldn't go that far. The shadows on a 1DX has quite low noise and color seems to be held up pretty good when exposure is raised, so while I would prefer no pattern noise at all, there is still some good detail to work on in post processing. I just looked on a Mark IV ISO 100 file I have, and at least the 1D X seems is better in this regard.

I dunno about the 1Ds Mark III tough.

Yeah it definitely holds up better than 1D4 (and 5D2/5D3/7D/50D).

Not sure about the 1Ds3 either, they may hold up pretty close.