#digic 5

Exactly one month ago we wrote about Canon’s brand-new mir­ror­less sys­tem. We cov­ered the new fea­tures and dis­cussed the rea­sons why we pre­ordered one here.

Since then we have had the great oppor­tu­nity to play with one of them and we want to share our impres­sions in this post.

The Good

• Lenses: We tested the kit lens, an ultra wide “pan­cake” EF-M 22mm ƒ2.0 and the image qual­ity is amaz­ing. We also tested the EF mount and shot stills and video with the EF 70–200 ƒ2.8 and the EF 24mm ƒ1.4. They both worked like a charm.

• Video: This is a con­tro­ver­sial topic. The movie files are recorded in MPEG-4 for­mat, using AVC.H.264 com­pres­sion and a vari­able bit rate. The qual­ity is very good, with only a very tutored eye being able to dif­fer­en­ti­ate the M ver­sus the 60D footage. We only shot 1080p at 24 fps and our impres­sions are based on that test. Read this if you want to under­stand HD Video compression. Another great video fea­ture that got our atten­tion was that both Pro­gram and Man­ual shoot­ing modes are sup­ported in movie mode. So far, so good. The real issue (as you will read below) is the lack of fast and easy access to adjust exposure.

• Size: The main rea­son we wanted this cam­era was so that we could use it as a C (third) cam­era on our video shoots. Hav­ing such a tiny body with the same APS-C 18.0 Megapixel CMOS sen­sor we have on our EOS 7D (with the lat­est firmware update) and EOS 60D would allow us to put the cam­era in tight spaces, and it would make using a hand­held rig or a steady­cam a much more pleas­ant experience.

An Overview of What Should and/or Will Be Improved

In all fair­ness, the cam­era that we had was a pre­re­lease sam­ple. It was not a pro­duc­tion piece, which means that the hard­ware, as well as the firmware, will be mod­i­fied and improved.

• Touch­screen: Hav­ing a touch­screen is not only great, it makes absolute sense. The more we “flip” and “pinch” our smart­phones and tablets, the more sec­ond nature these “ges­tures” become. Have you seen the video of the five-year-old girl who thinks a mag­a­zine is a bro­ken iPad?

Click to keep reading

• Viewfinder: Many pho­tog­ra­phers com­plain on forums about the lack of a viewfinder. I have been shoot­ing pro­fes­sion­ally for more than 12 years and I didn’t miss it. We need to under­stand that this cam­era is about size and weight, while pack­ing a giant sen­sor and a pow­er­ful DIGIC 5 image proces­sor. You can’t have ALL the fea­tures and expect things to be small and light. Yes, shoot­ing in bright exte­ri­ors, espe­cially with video where focus is ultra crit­i­cal, might be a prob­lem. But that’s a com­pro­mise we need to make.

• RAW: We con­stantly test new gear for clients and to ful­fill our own needs and curios­ity. The first batch of images that we shot with the EOS M, which was a “won­der­ful” storm hit­ting New York, are use­less. The rea­son? We shot all the images in RAW only to later dis­cover that there’s no soft­ware (cur­rently avail­able) that can open the EOS M CR2 files. We mis­tak­enly assumed the files would share the same “recipe” as the 5D Mark III, or at least its younger brother, the EOS 60D. Nope. These new files will need new soft­ware. We tested Light­room 4, the lat­est ACR, DPP, and sev­eral oth­ers. Inter­est­ingly, Ligth­room can grab the JPEG pre­views within the CR2, but it can not import the data. Our own fault. The sam­ple images embed­ded in the video below were shot as Large JPEGs.

The Bad

• Bat­tery: We have a new bat­tery, and, of course, a new bat­tery charger.We can’t even keep track of how many we have and where they all are. We also had prob­lems with the bat­tery los­ing its charge overnight. At first we assumed that we left it on, but after a few days we con­firmed that that was not the prob­lem. We have seen this issue with other pre­pro­duc­tion sam­ples and they always get resolved when the “real” cam­era ships out. So, I wouldn’t worry about this part. But, why a new battery?!?!

• User Inter­face: It is very nice to be able to select dif­fer­ent set­tings with your fin­gers, but, unfor­tu­nately, the UI, as it is today, is not ideal for video shoot­ing. There are too many steps to access the most-used menus, and we truly felt “hand­i­capped” by not hav­ing a top dial and a quick dial to eas­ily con­trol shut­ter and aper­ture settings

• Con­tin­u­ous Auto Focus: Our biggest com­plaint so far, espe­cially when shoot­ing video. It lacks speed and it seems to have issues with extremely con­trasty sit­u­a­tions. We felt as frus­trated as shoot­ing with the Pow­er­Shot G1X when we tested the best and most cur­rent Pow­er­Shot mod­els (the arti­cles can be accessed here and here). At that time, we ended up pho­tograph­ing all our “food” images with the more respon­sive (and REALLY nice) Pow­er­Shot SD100. But that’s a dif­fer­ent topic for another day.

Con­clu­sion: You have until Octo­ber to change your mind. We will play it safe, and can­cel our pre­order, get a pro­duc­tion sam­ple when the cam­era is released, and depend­ing on the new firmware, we will buy one, or two.

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Nikon D800 offi­cially announced.

The new Canon EOS C300 explained (for photographers).

H.265: A New Stan­dard for Dig­i­tal Cinema?

Canon’s Light Leak Issue.

Test­ing Canon’s C300 in jail.

Canon EOS 7D firmware update.

Everybody's been waiting for the elusive Canon 5D Mark III to be announced, released, whatever. Well here's something that should excite you a bit more that a new 5D, if your are into features and things... rather than just having the new IT camera hanging around your neck. A few of the notable features are a brand new, fully redesigned, FULL FRAME sensor, 2 of Canon's brand new DIGIC 5+ processors handling images , AND a DIGIC 4 processor for exposure only. It's ISO range is out of this world too (capable of a staggering ISO of OVER 204,000!). Check this beautiful beast out. And keep your fingers crossed the the Federal Communications Commission authorizes it manufacture and sales!