Canon EOS-1D X and 6D Impressions

January 13, 2013 by

Many thanks to Canon Hungary for kindly supplying test cameras for our project!

From time to time a bunch of cameras arrive at my desk for measurements and software compatibility testing. This is a double-fun exercise: besides learning a lot about cameras I have the opportunity to try out and photograph with almost all of them. Among the recent group borrowed from Canon Hungary, there was two cameras I was eager to try out: the EOS-1D X and the EOS 6D. Fortunately the testing period included a weekend, so I had a little more time to go out and play with both, and to compare them with my 5D Mark III and 1D Mark II (which I still have because it can’t be sold at any sensible price).

First and foremost: I would be hard pressed if I had to choose between the 1DX, 5D3 and 6D based solely on image quality. All three are capable of producing great images. You can’t go wrong with any of these. You can also find several reviews on the web doing all the pixel-peeping. So I will concentrate on handling and usability – both playing an important role in my camera selection.

In General

I have been an EOS-1 user for almost a decade, and I immediately felt home with the 1D X. Sure, it is bigger and bulkier than recent models, but at 1550g it’s still 20g lighter than the 1D Mark II. For me this weight dictates the use of the E1 hand strap.

It seems that only the 1-series Canons are designed for people having a nose. Having anything than a small and flat nose is a recipe for discomfort and greased LCD on all non-1 Canons. The 1D X being thicker reduces the distance the viewfinder protrudes from the body, so it’s slightly less convenient than previous models. In comparison: the 5D Mark III is bearable, but the 6D is awful: I can’t see the entire image in the finder without risking to break my nose…

Switching between the 1DX and the 5D3 is effortless: I was able to instinctively find all the controls as they were where they should be. Not so with the 6D. I found the omission of the joystick, the inconvenient selection dial and mixing picture taking controls with playback controls so much frustrating to use that I put down the camera just after half an hour and decided against buying one, despite holding it still feels good. I understand that it’s a sacrifice one has to make for reduced size/weight/price, but I’m rather carrying/paying more for something that’s a joy to use. If I desperately need a cheap/light backup camera then I might buy one, but at the moment I don’t feel that need.

The CF compartment door on the 1D X I tested was loose and emitted a squeaking noise every time I squeezed the body – and you have to squeeze it to be able to pick it up. I don’t know if it’s a problem with this given demo unit, but it’s not something that I experienced with previous 1s and definitely not something I would accept on a $6800 camera. Even the 5D3’s CF door was better.

Features I Miss

Although the 5D3 and the 1DX are from the same mold, there are a couple of pretty useful 1-series features I miss on the 5D3: eyepiece shutter (the 5D3’s plastic thing is a joke), the ability to save the whole camera configuration to a card and load it later, and the ability to lock up the mirror for several shots (which is pretty useful if you do brackets).

On the other hand, the RATE button introduced on the 5D3 and the truly silent shutter of both the 5D3 and the 6D (the silent shutter on the 1DX is pretty useless) are features that could find a home the 1DX.

Things That Need to be Done Fast

All four cameras were pretty responsive, but I was especially interested in a few things. The first was buffer clear time. Lots of people talk about the buffer capacity, but I found the time needed to write all images to disk more important. Even a smaller buffer with faster clearing could be useful. In this comparison the 1D2 lost by huge margin: using a 16GB SanDisk Extreme Pro card it was capable of taking 19 shots (on average) in a burst and it took 15 seconds to clear the buffer. During the last decade it proved to be inadequate more than a couple of times. The 5D3, with a 32G Lexar Pro 1000x card was able to capture 37 images before starting to slow down and the buffer cleared in mere 2.5 seconds! The 1DX was able to capture 58 shots in a 12 fps burst, and wrote them to the same 32GB Lexar Pro 1000x card in 7 seconds. Even the 6D was better than the 1D2: it took 21 frames and wrote them in 8 seconds to a 32GB SanDisk Extreme Pro SD card. In terms of fast capture and fast card writing both the 1DX and the 5D3 are wonderful.

I was interested in how fast these cameras drive a long telephoto (without and with teleconverters). I made no numerical comparisons, just how fast they felt. Surprisingly the 1D2 was the candidate for the fastest lens drive medal, but it has to correct what it did in a second round several times. Maybe its NiMH batteries could provide more power to the lens? The 1DX drove the 500mm f/4L IS quickly and precisely, even with teleconverters attached, so the aforementioned medal went to the 1DX. Lens drive is not where the 5D3 AF system shines. However, my experience shows that its AF system is far better than the 1D2 for tracking birds – even if it drives lenses noticeably slower than its big brother. Here the 6D pleasantly surprised me: lens drive was faster than the 5D3’s! So I sincerely hope that Canon would be able to squeeze out a 6D-equivalent lens drive from the 5D3 with its upcoming firmware update.

The last thing I tried was low light focusing – with the center point only. The 6D is the clear winner here – it was able to focus on features I was barely seeing! The 5D3 took second place, with a bit of hesitation (read: several seconds) before grabbing focus at the same spot where the 6D focused instantly. The 1DX hesitated even more, but was able to grab focus, but the 1D2 was unable to achieve focus in any of my tests.

Conclusions

Let’s start with the easiest one: the 6D impressed me with its low light focusing ability and speedy focus drive, but it was not enough to outweigh its shortcomings in the handling department. So as I mentioned I decided to skip this body for now.

The old 1D Mark II held against the competition pretty well, despite its 9 years in service. I changed my mind about selling it: I would get less for it than a medium level Montblanc pen costs, but its still a pretty usable and capable camera – up to ISO 800. It stays until it dies.

And now the big question: 1DX or 5D3? I bought the 5D3 at the time when the 1DX had no f/8 focusing ability. Would Canon introduce the 1DX with this feature I would end up with that camera, no question about it. But the 5D3 will get that feature in April, so again a tie. Now I see four decision factors:

  • Action-stopping ability (high fps, focus tracking and focus drive). It you need this go with the 1D X.
  • Size/weight. I would take my 5D3 to a vacation paired with my beloved light primes without any hesitation. Would not even think about that with the 1D X (been there, done that with the 1D2 – not again).
  • You get 22% more pixels with the 5D3, which is important for landscapes/architecture. I will do some print comparison between the 1DX/5D3 files in the coming weeks to see how much they differ at 40×60 cm print size.
  • And, of course, price. At $6800 I feel the 1DX a bit overpriced. At the vicinity of $5000 it would be an instant get for many people I believe.

Nowadays I do more landscape and architecture photography than birding, so the 5D Mark III serves me well. Metering and the quality of its files are well above previous generations. The only advantage of the 1DX from my point of view is its action-stopping ability. In all other aspects the 5D3 is a better choice. Should I feel the need for more than 6 fps and slightly faster focus I will grab one.

Oh yes, one way to avoid the above decision is to own them both :)

  ☕ ☕ ☕

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Filed Under: Photo Equipment Tagged With: , , , , , ,

MacBook Pro with Retina Display

August 18, 2012 by

It took a month, but my machine finally arrived two days ago. I spent the whole yesterday on moving my digital life over to the new machine and set it up for work. This post is a collection of my initial impressions. I will not reiterate the specs that can be found in numerous online reviews. All of those I recommend watching just this one.

My configuration is the 2.6GHz machine with 16GB of RAM and a 500GB SSD.

Winner of Two Lotteries

You enter two “lotteries” when you buy an Apple notebook. The SSD lottery and the display lottery. The reason is that Apple sources these components from two vendors: Samsung and Toshiba for SSDs/flash memory (I will use the Solid State Disk term instead of Apple’s “flash memory” marketing talk from now on – because these are all SATA connected SSDs – although in different form factors) and Samsung and LG in case of displays. Unfortunately the non-Samsung options are vastly inferior to the Samsung ones.

For example, Samsung SSDs are using the great Samsung PM830 controller. The Toshiba one use a Sandforce SSD controller. Sandforce SSD controllers compress all the data before it gets written into the chips for an almost twofold throughput increase. But if you are like me, and use FileVault to encrypt your disk then this compression becomes useless: almost random data can’t be compressed. Which results in halved performance. Fortunately, for larger capacity drives Apple seems to be using the Samsung ones. So I ended up with an 500GB Samsung SSD. One win.

You might wonder why did I mention 500GB instead of the advertised 512GB. Because the 512GB is simply a lie. The drive actually measures 500GB (if you count 1,000,000 bytes as one GB – as the storage industry as well as Apple does) and 476GB if you count (1,048,576 bytes as one GB – which is how many bytes a GB truly is).

Regarding the display lottery, lots of LG manufactured panels are defective out of the box. Just execute the command in the linked article to show your display’s manufacturer. LP is for LG and LSN stands for Samsung. I have a Samsung panel. Another win.

Is the Lack of Upgradeability a True Problem?

Lots of people on the Internet fret about this. Frankly, in the last 15 years I can only mention two occasions when I upgraded memory in my machines. And CPUs were never changed. Disks are another story. Before SSDs I regularly went to faster disks as they became available. But since I’m using SSDs I don’t feel the need to upgrade yearly. I usually buy my machines maxed out with RAM and disk, and opt for the one-less-that-the-fastest CPU option (they cost way less and the performance difference is negligible). So the lack of upgradeability is not a problem for me.

And on the positive side, soldering RAM to the motherboard gives some huge performance benefits (read the section below the graph). Wow, 99.9% processor bandwidth utilization IS something!

Two Missing Pro Features

ECC memory and 30-bit display output capability. I know that ECC (Error Check and Correction) has disappeared from consumer machines and Intel only supports ECC with their Xeon processor line, but 16GB is a lot and for mission critical work (like huge CAD models) ECC is a must. So for situations where it is not acceptable that your memory can forget a few bits here and there, the Mac Pro is the way to go. For example I use a Xeon E3-based server machine with 16GB of ECC memory.

The other one is 30-bit color. This is available on all current high end graphics displays and NVIDIA makes mobile chips that support 30-bit. Usually these chips are completely identical to the consumers ones Apple is using, just high precision stuff is enabled in them (I remember those times when I hacked consumer NVIDIA cards to Quadro ones…). For a notebook at this price point, pro graphics should be the standard.

Needs a Thunberbolt Dock

On the left side of the machine I have:

  • The power cable.
  • A mini displayport to DVI adapter for my EIZO CG241W display.
  • A Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet adapter.
  • An USB connection to the EIZO. Keyboard and mouse is attached to the EIZO’s hub.

Looks ugly. And plugging in all these when I use the machine as a desktop is a hassle. I can hardly wait for Matrox’s solution.

Usability

The machine is light (for such a powerhouse), fits neatly into the notebook pocket of my Lowepro Pro Trekker 400. Key travel is a bit short, but it’s not really a problem. I miss PageUp/PageDown and Home/End keys…

It gets a bit warm during use, but it’s bearable. As the majority of current applications are incapable of driving the four processor cores (with eight processing threads), so fans are spinning silently. Even if you can put some heavy load on the machine they produce an almost pleasant noise. Nothing disturbing (and believe me I’m overly sensitive to machine vibration and noise).

Battery life is rather short – I found it about 5 hours in my normal usage patters. This is way less than Apple’s advertised 7 hours, but there are reports that Mountain Lion causes this reduction. We’ll see.

Applications and the Retina Screen

The screen resolution is astonishing. Brightness uniformity is not on the same level as my EIZO (actually I would score this as pretty bad). The display calibrates very accurately (in one spot at least). I was surprised that it produced less deltaE2000 than the EIZO. If uniformity would be better, this could be a great graphics display. All in all I want this high resolution on my desktop graphics monitor! Hope that either EIZO or NEC will come out with a high resolution display like this.

I would also note that the Intel integrated graphics is not capable of handling such large amount of pixels. You can’t even watch a movie full screen using integrated graphics, so the machine uses the NVIDIA chip a lot.

The real problem is that most of the applications are not yet ready for supporting the HiDPI modes of the Retina display. These apps would really need the upgrade:

  • Photoshop
  • Lightroom (it displays UI text in high res, but everything else is pixel-doubled)
  • Capture One
  • Kindle

Others, like Parallels Dekstop and VLC, already support the display. It’s still a waiting game. And the display would only realize its full potential when these apps become ready.

Filed Under: Computer Hardware Tagged With: , , ,

Gitzo 3532LS First Impressions

July 20, 2012 by

I had sold my 8 years old Gitzo 1325 tripod along with my 5D Mark II a few weeks ago, so I was looking for a new tripod. There was nothing wrong with the 1325, I just had an opportunity to step up. I was looking for something similarly spec’d. This boiled down to two choices: the new (2012) Gitzo 3532LS and the RRS TVC-33. They are shockingly similar in all aspects, except two: the “I’m an expensive tripod, steal me” pattern on the RRS and their prices. The RRS retails for $925 (which is about 960 EUR after shipping and import duties), but I bought the Gitzo for 680 EUR including shipping (both are net prices). That is, the RRS is 40% more. Simply does not worth it.

The 3532LS is a great tripod. But even the 1325 was a great one. Weight is about the same. Length is about the same (add or take a few grams and millimeters). Gitzo added some nice features to their newest generation, however:

  • Leg locks. On the 1325 I had to learn the exact torque that I should use to tighten the locks – tightening the upper ones a tad more than the lower ones. Just to avoid inadvertent unlocking. The G-Lock system does not let the legs to rotate, so this is not an issue any more.
  • Included spiked feet and snow feet. The spikes are rubber covered. The snow/mud feet looks a bit clumsy compared to the huge one I had for the 1325. But that size was really prohibitive – I had used them only once in 8 years. These smaller ones will find a permanent place in my bag.
  • Spare washers and grease is included (as well as wrenches and a dust cover).
  • Although I had no issue with the 1325’s top plate locking system (and I had carried it over my shoulder with the 500/4 attached a lot), the new secure locking system is a welcome addition.
  • Max load is doubled (25kg now).
  • The entire tripod seems to dampen vibrations much quicker and better than the 1325 did.
  • Weight hook at the bottom of the top plate. Great to hang your heavy bag (or a beanbag) here in windy conditions. I really appreciate this addition.
  • A carabiner hole on the rim of the top plate (I prefer to attach the strap with a carabiner than wrapping around the head).
  • Leg angle stops can be pulled out from the outside (there are finger recesses on both sides), so you don’t have to push them out from inwards. Nice!

The only negative thing I found was that after removing the top plate, some of the exposed edges were quite rough. Actually they were not deburred. I thought that they will scar my fingers in the worst moment, so picked up a file and deburred those edges.

I hope that this product will prove to be at least as reliable as it’s predecessor. It’ll stay with me for the upcoming decade – or even more.

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Canon 5D Mark III Initial Impressions

June 28, 2012 by

Finally got my 5D Mark III today! Spent the last 2.5 hours on updating the firmware and setting it up the way I use to use Canon bodies and did some initial tests. For the curious and impatient: it’s a 8 out of 10 body in my opinion.

What I like:

  • Construction. Feels more like an 1D than a 5D. No flexing and squeaking parts when you squeeze it. Also like that it is a bit heavier than the Mark II was – it fits my large hands much better.
  • Speed and responsiveness. This camera really reacts fast. Feels even faster than my aging 1D Mark II.
  • In the few shots I made colors seemed more natural than the Mark II, but I think future versions Capture One should improve their handling of the files.
  • The ability to reverse the top and back dials for manual mode. I usually shoot in Av, and prefer to use the mail (top) dial for setting aperture even in M mode. This was always working on the 1 series, and finally it is available on the 5D!
  • Like that Canon went forward in the level of customization – it’s still quite limited, and not enough for me, but at least the direction is good.
  • Depth of field preview button is finally on the right side.
  • The remote release socket is moved down to the position where it was on the original 5D. Mark II was a pain to use in the portrait position with a RRS L-bracket. I really appreciate this change.
  • The live view/movie mode switch. I don’t care about movie shooting at all, so it’s great that all the movie related stuff is moved away in still image mode.
  • The LCD. It is way better that the old one was. Finally Canon made and LCD with the aspect ratio of the images the camera produce.

All in all, it’s light years ahead of the 5D Mark II. Does it reach the level of the 1 series? Not really. There are few things that I strongly dislike (some are shared with the 1DX and I would dislike them even on that body):

  • No dedicated mirror lock-up button. This is ages old… Maybe sometimes somebody will listen… I would love to set mirror lock-up to the M-Fn button!
  • The USB port is a joke. It’s not deep enough, the cable does not sits in it snugly. I had to push it in a couple of times to make a secure connection.
  • Don’t like the on/off switch’s position. I managed to turn off the camera twice while changing the exposure mode.
  • Virtual level. Imprecise, and pain in the ass to use. I’ll continue to use the 3D level in eFinder Tools of my Viewfinder app or a simple 2-axis bubble level.

I dislike several things about the AF system from the user interface design point of view, some are cosmetic, some are pretty serious. It might be that I’m overly sensitive to UI design (this is what I do part time for a living), but these annoy me too much.

  • Illumination is worthless against bright backgrounds. I don’t see that the points are illuminated at all. I would prefer the strong illumination on the former 1-series bodies.
  • They way the grid is implemented. I always disliked this feature on Nikons and preferred the interchangeable focusing screen approach (I use the grid screen on my older bodies). The fact that the gridlines flash red annoys the hell out of me. Especially when I move the active focusing point with the joystick. Of course I can turn off illumination completely, but then I loose it completely…
  • Not to mention the infamous ‘AF point does not illuminate in AI Servo mode’ issue.
  • I ended up using the mode where all 61 points are always displayed (just to know where they are without fiddling with the selection around). When I leave the camera idle for a while (that is, when the bottom part of the viewfinder is not visible) then non-cross-type points are starting to flash. This is OK when I select them, but in this mode it is downright annoying. Imagine you are watching a bird to do something and the camera starts to flash the AF points (all of them except the central region with an 500/4 and 1.4x attached)…

All in all I like the camera – it definitely worth it’s price – but will stick with my 1D Mark II for occasions where the UI of the new AF system does not make me happy. Hope that Canon will fix the AF UI issues in the rumored upcoming firmware update.

Stay tuned for more as I use the camera regularly.

Filed Under: Photo Equipment Tagged With: , ,
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