Last Friday night, I got back to Korea, and coincidentally Canon organized the EOS-1D X Mark II seminar at Photo & Image Show in Seoul on Saturday. I found that one of the lecturers, fashion photographer, Hyoungwon Ryu, went to RIT, the neighboring college of mine. In Korea, it's not easy to meet someone who went to U of R or RIT, so I was really glad to meet him. Also, the seminar gave me an excellent chance to learn a lot from the sports photographer, Simon Bruty. "Simplify", Mr. Bruty said.
EOS-1D X Mark II definitely has an edge on the shutter speed. Using CF Fast card, it can take 14 frames per second, and due to the faster buffer speed, according to Canon, it can take up to 170 frames continuously without hitting the buffer threshold. In Live View mode, since it's not using the mirror, it can take 16 frames per second. Because I like more control, I take photos by using the view finder, but because of the fast shutter speed, sometimes it give you blackouts where you cannot see the target that you are taking the photo of. For this reason, I felt that it may be necessary to have an electronic view finders as the shutter speed goes up, so it seems that Trey Ratcliff's claim that mirrorless cameras becoming dominant in the future is becoming the reality as time goes. If the auto-focus speed becomes faster (Since 1D X Mark II uses Dual-pixel CMOS AF, it's already quite quick to focus), at least in the field of sports and journalism, it seems mirrorless cameras can be the future.
Low noise ratio in higher ISO was one of the topics regarding 1D X Mark II, but I was clearly able to see fine noises in the shadow area. It is also observable in ISO2500, and it seems that from ISO500 and on, noise slowly creeps up. However, since they are fine noises, if one doesn't have a tripod and has to take photos handheld, it definitely is an amazing camera.
But the current biggest problem for this excellent camera seems to be the compatibility with software. Because it is the newest camera, one needs to update his or her Lightroom CC to the most updated version to import RAW files. As for Capture One from Phase One and Optics Pro by DxO cannot recognize .CR2 files from 1D X Mark II, but if they are converted into DNG format from Lightroom, Capture One can use it. However, as for Optics Pro, according to DxO, because the encryption in RAW files are different from the camera type to type, and since DxO itself has to test in detail on 1D X Mark II, they expect the update compatible to the camera in September.