Slashdot Mirror
Canon's new 16.7MP Digital SLR, with WiFi
LoudMusic writes "Canon has recently announced the EOS 1Ds Mark II, successor to their previous excellent professional cameras. What makes this one so cool is that it can network. The early review over at dpreview.com says there is an optional part that gives it both 802.11a/g and wired networking capabilities. I can see photographers shooting sporting events with a 12" Powerbook in a backpack receiving images to its 80GB drive and automatically uploading them to SI. And with its full 35mm CMOS it is the first camera to effectively reproduce the image quality of 35mm film. I wonder if it plays mp3s too ..."
*Sigh* I can see it now... live, high resolution Pr0n. No, seriously... can I see it now???? *grin*
I would like to say that only the next thing we need is a motion picture camera to capture full 35mm frames... Then I thought of the next level of using IMAX frames and realized that upgrading will never end.
I can see me taking a laptop to a game and downloading their pictures too!
While I'm kidding, I'm sure it's just a matter of time...
This is not the first digital camera with a full 35 mm size sensor. Canon 1Ds already had that at the previous Photokina two years ago.
i thought this was for professional photogs..
j/k this camera is pretty neat, i love the 10d , just hope nikon can catch up soon (i have a D70 that i love too)..
how long will it be before we see an exploit that pulls the images out of the wifi net and posts them to the web before the publisher gets a chance?
..no USB2 high-speed (480Mbps)
people snarfing my dirty pictures before I can even get home with the camera!
/. put on the brakes!
I posted first but
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
No it was not free advertisement, Canon actually paid Slashdot to publish this.
would be really nice if you could configure it easily on the fly to sniff out open wireless networks and upload your pics as you are taking them.
i could see someone walking around a city taking shots and as they walk around the camera is uploading those shots to a website and resizing and posting them to their photoblog. hot.
Wifi... networks... I wonder if it plays mp3s too ...
Never mind that. I wonder if it takes pictures.
Don't most of the pro-level DSLRs already have 35mm sensors? Maybe they're trying to say it's the resolution that gets it to 35mm film, but it sounds like they're implying it's the sensor size...
with a 12" Powerbook
Or any laptop with a 802.11 card.
Usually when something new comes to gadgets, you almost know it was going to happen long before it does, but this time, I was actually suprised and intrigued. This is something I never thought could use wireless networking, but now that it's been done, it seems like something that should have been done long ago.
Home pr0n hosting just got more efficient.
Live forever, or die trying.
To be fair, Canon (for once) took a technological idea from Nikon. The D2H had wireless FTP support back in July 2003.
Also there have been 35mm sensors before, including Canon's own 1Ds.
You tell me how "whilst" differs from "while," and I'll stop calling you a pretentious jackass.
The joy of shooting a billboard-sized picture of Britney's latest pimple or a near nip-slip of Jessica and then jog over to a Starbucks and distribute it to the masses all while getting a mocha frap must be heaven. Why did I ever bother with a college degree when so much fun could have been had!
I can't... I'm pretty sure all PowerBooks go to sleep when you shut the computer lid. Assuming you shut it correctly, of course. You can 'trick' the computer into thinking the lid is open when it's really not, but I don't recommend it, because you don't really know what the computer's going to do when it comes to going back to sleep or staying awake. :-) I've tried.
Nonetheless, being able to set up a 'base station' of sorts with a computer receiving pictures off the network is pretty neat. About damn time, too... I'll be waiting for the $250 version.
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
than having to buy memory sticks for the fuckin' things. I've got a sony 828 and the 1 gig memory stick fills up QUICK!
And with its full 35mm CMOS it is the first camera to effectively reproduce the image quality of 35mm film. I wonder if it plays mp3s too ..."
Um, the previous generation had a full frame CMOS sensor as well...
Look Here
And with its full 35mm CMOS it is the first camera to effectively reproduce the image quality of 35mm film.
:)
The Canon 1Ds (11 megapixel) has a full frame sensor (in other words, does not have the 1.6:1 cropping of the 300D, 10D, and now 20D).
The original Mark II was 8 megapixels and its biggest advantage was its ability to rapid fire shots - like 8 or 9fps, out to 20 frames... something like that.
The 1Ds was the king of image quality. Now it seems like Canon is offering the best of both worlds. If you have 8 or 10 grand or whatever they are pricing it at
why not just have a built-in iPod? extra $300 to a $7.5k camera body gives extra battery for emergency, 20gb of shared storage for mp3 and those huge pics, and everything else...
I don't know much about cameras so i'm asking you. Can this camera take multiple shots with clarity? Like say 7 pictures in about a 1.5 second time frame?
Also, this camera is very ugly, anyone else agree with me on that?
Mark
And it can be yours for the low, low price of $8,000! Ok, I guess its a decent price, considering that about 4 years ago a 6 mp DSLR cost upward of $20,000. Megpixels aren't everything, and Canon has really been at the forefront of other developments- like the full frame sensor. The best lowly people like me can hope for is that the advancement of both high end and mid range DSLRs continues to drive the prices down. I suspect in the next year or so we will finally see some (entry level) DSLRs at less than $500. I hope so anyway.
http://www.rupertphotography.com
[FromTheMorning]
When the sports reporter gets a bit drunk and takes photos of some less-than-dressed female? What about a shot that just doesn't turn out right, for that matter? Automatic posting of photos is almost never a good idea.
We might mention that Nikon beat Canon to the punch with a wireless adapter for the D2H back in July. Still a cool development from Canon, but give credit where credit is due, I allus say.
You can ONLY do it with a PowerBook. No other platform can handle images.
Maybe if you looked past the marketing hype, Kodak has had a 14 megapixel professional camera with a full 35mm CCD for a couple of years now. I used it to take pictures at AirVenture 2003. (Unfortunately I got the CCD dirty before I took it out there, and didn't notice until it was too late.)
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
If I were a subscriber who paid to eliminate the ads, I'd be pretty irked at still having to put up with the ones disguised as news articles.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
...802.11a and 802.11g, b isn't mentioned.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
This is a great camera! I want one, but one thing wrong with the story submission. This is not recent news, many people have gone over this before, but a 6MP sensor is enough to get you better then 35mm film.
The 16.7MP of this camera is getting very close to medium format (if not already there).
Again awesome camera!
see
not file
like-it-is
shootout
This guy is one of the best. If you don't believe me check out dpreview or google
I went to the aqaurium in KY right across the river from Cincinnati. They were taking pictures with digital cameras that had wireless cards. They were free roaming... The pictures could be picked up at the end of the day when you were ready to leave.
It was definitly pretty neat.
If all cameras had this (or any sort of net connection, even via GPRS) it would be great to use a script like galleryadd to pump the photos into your Gallery from the road. I do it via procmail, shell scripts, and galleryadd now with my hiptop's camera (although I suppose you could do it with any camera that allows photos with email attachments).
"I can see photographers shooting sporting events with a 12" Powerbook in a backpack receiving images to its 80GB drive and automatically uploading them to SI."
Really? I can see uploading straight from the camera to SI. The computer is an intermediary today because it's a necessity. When every device has is on the internet, the intermediary function of computers will disolve.
"And with its full 35mm CMOS it is the first camera to effectively reproduce the image quality of 35mm film."
It had been generally accepted that this camera's predecessor, the 1Ds, was close to the quality of medium-format film. We've been beyond the quality of 35mm film for quite some time now...
I'm not a professional photographer, so I'm sure they have their reasons for needing an $8,000 digital camera. For someone who doesn't make a living taking pictures, though, is there any way to justify a camera that costs more than a used Toyota?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I can see a reporter in a repressive country using it to get the stories out before the police take away their camera.
Link
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
But it doesn't look like they have embraced Adobe's new DNG format yet, wonder who is going to be first with that one? http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/main.html
Does the camera look like a webserver on your LAN via wifi. When you take another pics and refresh in the webbrowser you see another file? If so... Sweet!
I don't think so!o delTechSpecsAct&fcategoryid=139&modelid=10 598
.94 inch CMOS array essentially tells you they have a cmos with a 7micron pixel pitch. This is hardly revolutionary. Assuming the optics are similar in quality to a comparable film camera, to have the same image quality that would be equivalent to saying that ordinary film has 7 micron light sensitive (silver?) particles. This is ridiculous!
/ resolution.html
http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=M
From here.
4992 x 3328 pixels over a (36 x 24 mm) 1.4 x
http://science.howstuffworks.com/film3.htm
here says that "The imaging layers contain sub-micron sized grains of silver-halide crystals that act as the photon detectors". That's submicron.
So it's a nice camera. That doesn't mean it's a fantastic sensor - it still suffers from the same attributes that other CMOS/CCD sensors do. They've got phenomenal ADC's but the sensors just can't be packed as tightly as silver can be.
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~fyiglover/articles
says that "All three silver microfilm manufacturers (Agfa, Fuji & Kodak) certify their medium speed microfilms to have the ability to achieve 800 lines/mm of resolution."
If you're not using the WiFi, take CF card out, place in card reader, insert 2nd card in camera. Carry on shooting while images are being copied to laptop/Portable Digital Storage device.
Otherwise your camera is out of service while you're copying several GigaBytes to another medium.
Pro photographers won't leave the house with only one card.
Besides, it's got FireWire.
Here are some of the full-size samples available on the site:
Sample 1
Sample 2
The rest of samples can be found here. I don't want to slashdot poor dpreview. I'm sure as progress marches on, their bandwidth prices skyrocket.
1) ieee1394 wifi adapter is going to extremely expensive, since they are produced specifically for this device
2) it's extremely annoying to have a wifi dongle hanging on the cameras
3) wifi is extremely cheap to integrate into consumer devices.($20 for OEM) with a camera this big and expensive, why not just throw the chipsets into the camera? Well i guess this way you can always upgrade the external adapter when a new standard come out...but the camera will be outdate by then as well...
This Sig is removed due to factual inaccuracy
Yes, and what does the sensor being the same physical size as a piece of 35 mm film have to do with it "reproducing the quality of 35 mm film?" The number of pixels and how they are handled has more to do with quality than the physical size of the sensor. Also, digital backs for medium-format cameras have been around for some time and are generally regarded as easily surpassing the quality of 35 mm film.
And, the Nikon D2h had wi-fi capabilities first. And, this is more a studio camera than something a sports photographer would use, so the Sports Illustrated reference is a bit off as well.
It doesn't "reproduce the image quality of 35 mm film." It makes it so that the CMOS goes in the same place, relative to the lens, as it does in a 35 mm camera. This means if you shoot something with a given lens, you'll get the same effect, digital or film.
Now, 11 megapixels, that's what allows the camera to "reproduce the image quality of 35mm film.
Now, what the 35mm image sensor does is it allows you to get the same lens effects. If you put a fisheye lens on my Canon Digital Rebel, ferinstance, you don't get nearly as wide-angle an image-- but if you're looking for zoom telephoto, my camera gets about 1.6x the "zoom" compared to a 35mm SLR with the same lens.
-JDF
Gizmodo ran this story last week. Check out the sample images from the Japanese site Yikes. 16.7 megapixels is a lot! It has some other cool features too, like "The accelerated image processing of DIGIC II combines with high-speed data reading from the imaging sensor to achieve fast continuous shooting at approx. 4 frames per second for maximum bursts of 32 shots in JPEG Large (11 shots in RAW)."
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
As sites such as Luminous Landscape (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/dq.sh tml) point out, we're already there on image quality. Digital and film have different characteristics that make a direct comparison difficult (there isn't really one measure of image quality), subjectively a good 6-8MP DSLR is about the same, and certainly something like a Canon EOS-1Ds is at least as good.
What is less common is having a 35mm-sized sensor, but even that is already available (in fact you can get digital backs for medium format cameras, if you have enough money).
An ad is supposed to quickly promote the best features of a product. An article summary is supposed to quickly highlight whatever is unusual or interesting about the subject. So there's a lot of overlap there.
That said, this DID read a lot more like sales copy than a tech review.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
16.7MP is nothing compared to the resolution/storage of my eyes/brain. I can store so many high res "photos." Thing is, I haven't figured out how to transfer them from the memory banks of my brain to my computer's hard drive. And for those of you going through the same transfer crisis, the human brain is very sensitive to USB cables, so plug in carefully.
I'm going to go create my own technology news site, with blackjack and hookers. You know what? Forget the news site.
"optional part that gives it both 802.11a/g and wired networking capabilities"
/.), but the review describes support for 802.11b and g, not a and g.
Not to nitpick (which is unheard of on
Ah, finally - a networked camera. I think this could come in very handy for reporting on protests, police brutality, or even celebrities: sure, you can smash the camera, but the images are instantly stored elsewhere, preferably someplace secret and safe.
*******
"What good is science if no one gets hurt?!" - Professor Chromedome
I can see photographers shooting sporting events with a 12" Powerbook in a backpack receiving images to its 80GB drive and automatically uploading them to SI.
I don't think this would be commonplace since Apple laptops go to sleep when you close the lid. The fast transfer speeds is aimed at studio photographers who want to take a lot of photos in quick succession. For ordinary consumers, Bluetooth is nice because it doesn't use too much battery juice, although Bluetooth adapters are expensive...
Despite the crazy high price of this camera, these developments and competition that is causing them, are driving down the prices of great DSLRs (and digicams in general).
You can buy a better 6mp DSLR today for about $800 than what was even available at $20,000 4 years ago. Pretty amazing. I suspect that within a year or two we will be able to buy a full frame DSLR for $1,000 or less. It used to be cameras didn't change that fast. Now with digital, things are changing as fast as with computers...
[Rupert Photo]
[FromTheMorning]
P.S.: What a waste of computing power, especially than you've got your PowerBook with you, and moreover, do you suggest the audio files to be uploaded wirelessly?!
"And with its full 35mm CMOS it is the first camera to effectively reproduce the image quality of 35mm film."
Film has far more resolution than a 16.7MP. Remember, MP is just what it says, MP or mega pixels. Film does not have pixels. So until they can pack in so many pixels that you cannot see a diagonal line as a series of stair steps, the resolution is not "35mm film quality."
Even so, don't forget that film is a subtractive medium (light is subtracted from full white when film is projected in a cinema or in a slide show). Whereas TV, PC, and digital cameras use an additive (light is "turned on" at various points or pixels to "form" an image). Kinda like bitmap versus postscript, at least as far as lineart goes.
"This means there's a multiplier that must be applied when computing f-stops".
No, the f/stop is the ratio of the diameter of the aperture and the focal length and has nothing to do with the size of the imager. The only thing that happens is that, with a smaller imager, less of the image circle the lens projects is used so there's an effective crop relative to full-frame, so the field of view is less. The f/stop is the same since both the focal length and the aperture are the same.
Most nature photographers shoot Velvia, which give about 16mp photoquality. So a 6mp digital camera just wont cut it there. However this camera just might.
On a medium format, Velvia provides anywhere within 35 to 50 mp picture equivalent. After that the challenge is to find the right drum scanner. So these 35mm equivalent SLRs are still faraway from medium formats.
Seriously, this is verging on medium format digital back territory. The resolution may not be quite as high, but it costs vastly less than an average digital back, and is much more portable.
This is going to make photos get to the web so fast that no one will have time to photoshop the blemishes and ugly faces. Pr0n will start to lose its appeal!
All those models are really 200lbs beasts with the image scaled 50%. Really... it's true!
Live forever, or die trying.
Except Powerbooks don't work when they're closed. Think Toughbook.
This has the potential to have a major impact on politics and law enforcement. It combines two pieces, and puts a tool once reserved to the establishment media in the hands of the general population.
Two pieces of background:
Item 1: The microwave-linked minicam (where the picture was on people's screens before the billyclub finished smashing the lens) made a MAJOR change in news reporting. No longer could a corrupt administration use its police or troops to block coverage of an event by siezing or destroying the camera that had recorded it.
(This first hit - big time - during the protests->police riot->general rioting associated with the Democratic Convention of 1968. The live images of the police brutalizing the protesters and reporters couldn't be blocked by camera-smashing. This turned the general population in mass from a "silent majority" going along with the war to a radicalized population appalled by the government's treatment of the anti-war protesters. It had a major effect on the presidential election and the ending of the Vietnam (un)War.)
Item 2: The amateur videocam footage of the Rodney King beating - taken from nearby - created a simlar outrage against the police involved. (And led to laws against photographing "public officials in the performance of their duty" to try to head off further such incidents. B-( ) But personal videocams and still cameras still suffer from the pre-minicam issue: Destroying or confiscating the camera prevents the distribution of the image. So while such photography has some potential to expose official misconduct, it is still limited.
A personal camera with a WiFi link can dump the image up a hotspot and across the net or to a nearby (and not easily discoverable) digital recording device. Now the image can no longer be suppressed.
Imagine a hundred thousand people armed with such cameras, feeding images to, say, The Drudge Report, Power Line, Little Green Footballs, Free Republic, Move On dot Org, politics.slashdot.org, and the rest of the political blogosphere.
In the next crisis this could be a significant step in the rise of the net as a news source and its replacement of the establishment media.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
it will have it's own online music store as well!
(joking, but with everyone else jumping on the online music train, who knows?)
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
... were you showing off your camera, or the hotties you get to photograph with it?
We'll probably have 30-50 megapixels cameras or high resolution motion cameras that use these censors to capture at 30 fps!
Some people seem to think that faster CPUs and bigger hard drives are not needed. They obviously don't play with this kind of stuff.
In maybe 10 years this stuff will be so cheap and common, you'll be able to photograph/film (film is an analogue word - doesn't apply anymore but I can't think of anything else) the pores on peoples faces with the right lenses and huge resolving power of these censors.
"to effectively reproduce the image quality of 35mm film."
u t.shtml) that compared the 11MP 1DS to medium format, and it was roughly equal. So, the 16MP 1DSII should be equal if not better than medium format.
Well not exactly, by most standards the 8MP canon 20D reproduces 35mm quality film. The 1DSII reproduces the quality of medium format film. There was an article at luminous-landscape (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/shooto
Did anyone see this ? :
....It is compatible with the EOS-1Ds Mark II, and with the EOS-1D MARK II and EOS 20D through firmware upgrades.
Wireless File Transmitter WFT-E1
Works with the old goods too ! Sweetness
Canon's WFT-E1 Wireless Transmitter reportedly also works on Canon's three newest digital cameras, including the 1DsmkII (as mentioned), as well as the 20D ($1500, 8mp, 1.6x crop factor, high end consumer level) and 1DmkII ($4500, 8mp, 1.3x crop factor, pro body).
Rob Galbraith has a much more information here, as Canon's site appears to still need an update.
For the non-pro enthusiast, the 20D looks to be a great camera. It can handle 5 frames per second, instant on, and has ISO 3200 performance that beats most ISO 400 digicams. They are finally trickling into the market, and Calumet likely has a few in stock (they have several kits locally here in Boston). Just give them a call.
you don't excite me no more...
You are kind of like penis enlargement... every month takes you a bit further to the mighty bigger...
Where are the good old 'size don't matter' times?
When I was travelling my girlfriend had a 4.1mp Cannon beast with usb direct connect.
She plugged the damn thing into her iRiver and unloaded pictures whenever she felt like it.
It proved pretty useful at Angkor Wat when my 3 SD cards were all full she had about 50 gigs free.
This is pretty awsome I can definitly see this being a huge selling feature, I know I wouldn't buy another digital camera (I'm in the market mine got stolen in Shanghai) without at least hotswap functionality with my Nomad Jukebox 3.
4800 DPI scanners yield over 34.5MP in 35mm format and fine grained black & white film can be scanned at even higher resolutions while showing more and more data. Large (analog) enlarger prints look better and sharper than printer reproduction still. Film is far from dead as the sharpest format. Soon, but not yet. And even once digital has as much data as film, the non-linear response will still be difficult to copy exactly. Some people still prefer tube amps to transistor amps in the music industry and likely always will and the same will be true for film, assuming we can still buy it.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
The submitter is a bit mistaken that the 1Ds Mark II will be used by "photographers shooting sporting events" as the 1D Mark II (with the higher frame rate and focal length multiplier HELPS for telephoto shots, plus about half the cost) will be the DSLR of choise for these folks ... whereas the 1Ds Mark II is targetted towared studio work ... although obviousely both would do well in either environment.
BTW, I've actually used a 1D Mark II and it is an amazing DSLR - scary how fast you can shoot pictures ... and I even caught a semi-decent sequence of my having a hack of a water skiing crash
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
But lacking a cell phone like my camera. Come on guys, at least get a PDA on that thing.
This is the only 35mm camera your home mortgage won't pay off.
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
I think he was looking for the most expensive, battery-draining, and inconvenient technology option.
The previous generation of the EOS 1Ds also has a full frame sensor, with 11 megapixel resolution.
a ns_hot_tub.html )
It's not as popular with sports photographers as the EOS 1D (also now at mark II). The current 1D is "only" 8 megapixels, but it has a burst rate of over 8 fps, compared with just under 4fps for the 1Ds.
The full-frame sensor may or may not be a win for sports photographers, since the smaller sensor makes lenses 1.6x longer without making them 1.6x heavier. Given the price of canon's sexier lenses (~$4,000 for the 300mm 2.8L, and ~$2,000 for the 70-200mm 2.8L) the cost of the body isn't so important.
As for 12" powerbooks; there's no need to skimp; crumpler photo/laptop backpacks can hold 17" pbs -( eg http://www.crumplerusa.com/products/camerabag/bri
the one feature that I was expecting and did not see (and saw on the Nikon offering) was automatic GPS meta-tagging. I do I lot of hiking and it's the primary reason I take pictures. I seldom pay attention to exactly where I am, it's more like the next stop for beer & food is (n) hours that way (shame the USians don't have that sort of thing), car is that way, &tc. I own a GPS but seldom use it over paper maps & trail markings. So with GPS met-tagging I could figure out where I took the picture of this unbelievable... water fall (close to Bruck a.d. Mur I think)
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Got details?
One micron resolution. This isn't to denigrate the achievement, but rather to contrast the fact that chemical photography still bests even the coolest CMOS CCD-- and doesn't require batteries, or a backpack full of a notebook-WiFi, and so on. Get a large format camera, and a good photographer, and even the best benefits melt away. Ok, I have a killer Olympus digital, but the old Olympus analog and antique cameras can produce jaw-dropping photos.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
It's ugly in the way that special-purpose devices are, which is to say that it has a kind of beauty forced upon it by engineering.
I think the "power winder" is the battery compartment.
That's really impressive. I have one question though- how many megapixels is real life? 20? 30? If it's 20 and someone builds a 40 megapixel camera, will we call it a 2x-reality zoom camera? Will it expose the spirit world?
Just wondering.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Perhaps...but mebbe that claim is a wee bit disingenuous.
.002 in. This assumption is most definately NOT supported by the better optics providers -- Leitz, Zeiss (for the Hasselblad) and a few others (not Canon, to my knowledge) use circles of confusion for their optical designs of at most (my estimate from experience).0008 inches. This is different than depth-of-field, but related to it.
I have worked in photography for several decades, back before Tri-X was developed, before Kodacolor.
There is a standard resolution used to calculate depth-of-field (hyperfocal distance) called the "circle of confusion" in optics, which refers to the human eye's supposed inability to discern features finer than
I have an HP laser printer that can "do" 1200 dpi, which looks smooth to my eye, where 600 dpi doesn't. So, to print a 16 MB image at 1200 dpi, the result would be on the order of 3 inches by four.
Any "enlargement" above this would mean either using "interpolation" (which reduces resolution, or texture), or adding noise and/or distortion/pixelation.
This is not professional or commercial 35-mm quality yet. But it is quite acceptable for most color snaphot amateurs who are used to "shooting" on low or medium-quality amateur 35s and getting 4x6es back from Walgreens, rather than those who process and enlarge our own film or who shoot for reproduction in another medium, like the printing press.
All that resolution, however, is wasted if the image is destined to be displayed on a website, where the loading time of such big images might be unmagageable even on a DSL or cable connection.
So it is a perfect high-end amateur device.
And it is a big step in the right direction!
Go, Canon! Go Nikon! Go Asahi, Fuji and Kodak! Go competition!
Just, please, tone down the rhetoric in the marketing, please.
Thank kew.
Gaaad. With a GBP/USD exchange rate of almost 2:1, it should be about £3,999. We get stiffed. Again. I bought an EOS300D, and I was thinking about going over the US to get it. If it wasn't for the warranty issues, I would have. And that was only to save £200, (when the flight costs were taken out).
Get your own free personal location tracker
I have seen a number of comaparisons of the original 1Ds with 11MPs and not in one of them did film prevail. In the luminous Landscape link below he also mentions that doing direct prints would give no benefit to film. Which is the film luddites refuge. I remember Mr Riechmann, before he went digital, figuring it would take 24MP before digital caught up. Like many old pros he changed his tune when he got a DSLR in his hands.
c ameras/ 1ds/1ds-field.shtml
s _35mm.html
. htm
Some of the comparisons(these are the 11MP comparions, not new 16MP which is better in every way):
Test with Imacon scanner 35mm vs 11mp 1ds:
But what can be clearly seen is that the 1Ds' image is significantly higher resolution than that of the the scan.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/
Test with 4800dpi scanner 35mm vs 11mp 1ds:
All the way through, we clearly see more details in the 1Ds pictures.
http://www.photographical.net/canon_1d
My opinion after doing these comparisons is that the Canon 1Ds 11mp DSLR exceeds 4000dpi 35mm film scan quality by a considerable amount. In fact, in most photographic situations 1Ds image quality is competitive with *medium format
http://www.sphoto.com/techinfo/dslrvsfilm
Its not analog, like REAL film.
I think ill pass.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Work hard at that...I just went through that very experience. HD failed and gone are all the pictures and videos of the kids. Very traumatic.
Why is Slashdot full of 2-month-old "news" used simply as an excuse to give Apple a plug? Why did the "photographer" in the "story" have to have a "Powerbook"? What's wrong with saying "laptop"? In fact, I submitted precisely this story 10 days ago (when it was actually news) and it wasn't accepted. Why? Because I forgot to include the magic words "Powerbook", "Apple" or "OS X".
Throw in another $8000 at least for the sort of lenses that can do justice to it. And don't forget the CF cards (Sandisk Ultra III, anyone?), the external flash, the Gitzo tripod, Acratech ballhead, ....
I do some sports photography (I shoot lacrosse when I'm not playing). With high-capacity CF cards a fraction of the cost of the glass you put on your camera, it doesn't make much sense to be continually uploading to a server just for additional storage -- CF cards swap out in a few seconds and I generally only need a few to shoot a whole game.
The big issue is what happens AFTER you shoot: Photo Editing. Typically, only 10% of the shots you take are usable, and of those, most need to be cropped in some way. That generally takes a lot of time, and in a publishing situation, gets done by somebody other than the photographer.
That's what's cool here. If the camera could stream the photos to a powerbook in the press box, you could have an editor working on the shots during the game, so when the game's over, everything's ready to go. Makes it a lot easier for a newspaper to go to press with images of late games and such.
I'm not impressed until it can read mail.
I have yet to see a digicam that has the responsivity necessary for action shots. While the Canon boasts a 4 fps "continuous" shooting rate, that says nothing about the delay between pressing the shutter release and acquiring the first image. And that's the spec that's most important for sports photography. Perhaps by using the camera's manual focus, one can speed up this process adequately; but I'd have to see it to believe it.
A 16 MP "25 mm" CMOS sensor results in lower quality photographs than a 16 MP "35 mm" CMOS sensor. This is due to the fact that the bigger sensor have bigger sensor-elements thus lowering the impact of thermal-based/other noise.
(of course a 40 mm CMOS sensor would be EVEN better) - however when you have 35 mm there is the added benefit that it is more user friendly for the photographs, and I would gess that if canon started using 40 mm sensors, or bigger, everyone would have to buy new lenses - as of today all canon digital SLRs can use the same lenses as the older SLRs.
I started with the Canon D30 (3 megapixel) DSLR 3 years ago and have upgraded to the D60 (6 megapixel) and the 10D body (also 6 megapixel.) I also shot thousands of frames of slide film previously and scanned them at 21.42 megapixels per picture. I've printed hundreds of prints at home, up to 12"x18" in size.
For 98% of the slashdot crowd, I'll assure you that 6 megapixels is enough.
Ask yourself, what is your goal? For probably half the people, it's a shot that looks decent on your monitor or in email. Well, even 2 megapixels will do that in style.
For the other half of the users, they want to be able to make prints. This is where resolution comes in, the more, the better. With the 3 megapixel cameras, I was able to do nice 8"x10" prints. Anything bigger and it for sure suffered when compared with a print from the 21 megapixel slide scans.
Since 6 megapixels came out, my 8x10 prints don't comparatively suffer next to slide scans printed at the same size. They both look killer.
Now, I like to make prints on Super-A3 sized paper ( at 12" x 18" ) and at that size, I can still easily see the advantage that 21 megapixel slide scans have over the 6 megapixel DSLR shots. But, the big prints are beautiful in either case and I still make them all the time and never feel too cheated resolution wise.
With this 16 megapixel camera, the results would be superb next to the big slide scans. There would be no problem printing at 12"x18" or larger. I would be seriously wanting one of the larger format Epson's that do 20" wide prints or even the 3 and 4 foot wide printers. This camera has the resolution.
So whats your goal? This is kind of a swag but:
computer screen/TV pictures: 2 megapixels
8"x10" prints: 3 megapixels and up
12"x18" prints: 6 megapixels and up
bigger prints: the more pixels the better
there is a 16-24mm ef lens (or something like that). it's only *1500.00*. not a good solution.
here's the weird part of the 1.6x multiplier:
i have a 35-70 and a 80-200 that i've used on my canon eos 1n for 9 years. there are several 'events' that i do on a regular basis.
i borrowed a canon digital rebel (6.x MP, small sensor) and it was a pretty good camera except it drove me crazy. i would be standing where i had stood many times before with lens i had used many times before and when i look through to take a picture my eyes were telling me that i was standing in the wrong place. mostly too close. mostly just an anoyance, but every once and a while it was just a PITA!
eric
It is difficult to compare the resolution of film to digital because film "resolution" varies greatly.
If we consider "resolution" to be the maximum size one can blow up an image before noticable grain (in the case of film) or pixelation (in the case of digital), low-ISO film still "wins". I still don't think this a fair comparison though because pixels are not grains.
Digital cameras, regardless of ISO used, output the same resolution across all speeds. Film on the other hand, changes. At higher ISO's, the grain becomes visible at much smaller print sizes.
There are some specialty films out there that can easily create a many meter sized print without noticible grain.
But, in the end, for general purpose film, even a 6 mp digital SLR camera will give you better performance. Especially at higher ISO's, if you shoot in RAW. The real catch so far has been competing with the likes of velvia...
-
Actually the 1Ds line, as opposed to co-existing 1D line (both are now at their Mark II), is the one that privileges pixel count over shooting frame rate. The "s" stands for "studio". A pro would make a very uninformed choice to bring a 1Ds MkII rather than a 1D MkII at a sporting event. And pros are the only one who in their right mind would pay into the 1D line.
Yay! Finally, a camera we can put into a Beowulf cluster!!!
http://www.dpreview.com/gallery/?gallery=canoneos1 dsmkii_preview/
Damn! My camera got a virus - now it won't stop taking pictures at random times and uploading it to the web!
Seriously - whats next? WindowsDC (Digital Camera)? Your gonna take a whole bunch of pictures and they will all turn out blue with radom HEX numbers all over the place.
Also, think of the implications this means for government. I'm sure they would love to get a trojan out there that let them take a picture from any camera at any time - Chicago can get rid of that silly plan to stick up all those video cameras! Sheesh.
Owell, if you can't fight it, join it. With this in mind: I for one, welcome our new camera overlords.
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
Here's a review of the original 1Ds from luminous-landscape. To sum it up (it's rather lengthy), the author favorably compares the 1Ds to medium format film.
its nice to use the whole lense especially when its sharp to the edge.
I agree with you and have made similar explanations for camera-shopping friends, but I've started being swayed by the cropping crowd.
Basically yes, nearly all hobbyist photographers will print 8x10 or smaller, and 3 or more megapixels will give you a great 8x10. But what if you want to blow up just a quadrant of your frame to that size? Then you want enough sensor resolution to give you at least 3 megapixels in that quadrant.
With consumer lenses, optical resolution will start to lag sensor resolution, but pro SLR glass will almost certainly beat sensor resolutions up to 20 or 30 megapixels. Being able to print sharp 8x10's of a sixth of your entire image is kind of appealing.
Of course if you're a former slide photographer and believe that what you frame and shoot is the photo, then cropping is distasteful to you. But the option is there.
You tell me how "whilst" differs from "while," and I'll stop calling you a pretentious jackass.
And with its full 35mm CMOS it is the first camera to effectively reproduce the image quality of 35mm film
Wrong, wrong, wrong....
First, this isn't the first camera to have a full-frame sensor, as others have pointed out.
But let's look at resolution, which is far more important and what people are talking about. And lets convert so we can compare oranges to oranges.
Let's limit our discussion to color negative film... Color Transparency, Black and White, and high resolution (Technical Pan or Gigabit) films are even higher resolution and will cloud the issue.
Film resolution is measured in Line Pairs per Millimeter (lp/mm)... and most consumer color film resolves from 40-65 lp/mm. Doing the math, this equals 1000-1625 lp/inch. To resolve a line pair, you must have 2 lines with a space between them, and to resolve 1 line pair from another, you need to discern a space between the line pairs.... so you need 4 points to resolve a line pair, the equivelent of 4 pixels giving us an effictive film resolution of 4000-6500 pixels per inch.
Continuing the process, a 35mm film frame is approximately 1x1.5 inches, so the effective resolution of normal color film in digital terms is on average 24 to 64 megapixels. Let's take just below the middle and say that Film has an effective resolution of 40 megapixels.
Let's now look at color depth.... The camera actually resolves 8 bits per pixel, and interpolates up to 12 bits from there. Actual depth is only 8 bits or 256 colors. Each grain of film however can register a 1000/1 contrast range, across it's spectrum of sensitivity. If you just consider the single grain you get a 1000 color depth. Since multiple grains are involved in one of the effictive pixels, the reality is closer to 3000 colors per pixel.
References to data avilable upon request.
I'm not a film snob..... but we're still years away from digital resolution approaching the resolution and color depth of film.
why is it whenever I have mod points I can't find anything worth while and when I don't then I don't have the points anymore?!?
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
"I wonder if it plays mp3s too ..."
Someone kill that guy. This is a camera, goddamn it! Even the fact that it's a digital one causes me pain in the stomach.
What's really significant about the EOS-1d (the original as well as the Mark II) is that the physical size of the image sensor is the same as a 35mm film frame. This means that your lenses cover the same angle of view as they do on a 35mm film camera... no 1.5x "crop factor" as on almost all other digital SLRs.
Yeah, and I can also see a geek with a zaurus grabing the photos as they float around the stadium, and posting them on his/her sports blog before SI can go to press.
It's weird that no matter what other features they'll put in their digital backs, they just don't seem to want to add ECF (eye-controlled focus). But at the same time, they aren't killing it off: the Elan 7 has a much-improved ECF system.
Yeah, I know they don't put ECF in the 1 series, but you'd think they could put it in *some* digital back. From an EOS-3 (or even a recent Elan) these don't entirely feel like upgrades: different format, gain some features, lose some features. (And, unless you shell out for a 1Ds, all your lenses get cropped.)
Is 45-point area AF really that useful if the only ways you can use it are "fiddle with the little controls on the back" or "let the computer decide"? When I'm shooting (sports, especially) option #2 has failed me, and option #1 only seems feasible if you disable most of the focusing points first.
Lord, not this crap again.
Your entire argument hinges on lpm measurements. These measurements are, of course, taken on high-contrast black and white targets -- typically 1000:1 contrast ratios.
Now, it is true that when you are taking pictures of closely spaced 1000:1 contrast black and white lines, film still kicks the crap out of digital. But suppose, just suppose, that the average photographer will NEVER IN HIS ENTIRE LIFE take such a picture. The performance in such circumstances might then be pretty meaningless, huh?
The simple fact is that film's resolution is highly contrast dependent. It shows extremely high resolution while dealing with extreme-contrast targets, but performs much worse in real-world conditions. Digital sensor resolution, on the other hand, is largely insensitive to contrast. For real-world scenes and not 1000:1 test targets, a 16MP sensor absolutely annihilates 35mm film in terms of overall image quality.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
[Radio Announcer]Now you too can have your camera hacked! Come on down, supplies are limited.[/Radio Announcer]
What were they thinking? Now snipers can steal images right off a photographer before they even know it.
Yes, I am a smart ass; it's better than the alternative.
Wrong. So wrong. Nice imposing numbers and stats, though.
In the real world, on print, where it matters to 99.9% of all users, high-end digital capture equals or exceeds film capture. My images run full-bleed across large-format layouts in W Magazine, Vogue, and you can't see the difference between the shots I used to take on my RZ67 and the ones I now take on my 1Ds. That's all that matters. You will never meet an editor who asks you what kind of line-pair resolution you can provide.
Could I get a theoretically sharper result with large format and film? Who cares? I've got a job to do, and digital does it better than film did. It's only about where the rubber meets the road.
Nope, maybe the first to have a 35mm sensor. But, there have been a number of cameras out with medium format sensors for quote a while now. Even at 6mp, a medium format sensor will outperform a smaller sensor with a higher pixel count because there will be MUCH less bleeding of light across pixels.
Check out the products from Creo such as the Aptus or the much larger MP Valeo family.
--JLockard - "Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps." - Emo Phillips
Who cares about shitty 135 film anyway.
What I do need is a fullsize CMOS for 120 film cameras.
Would be neat with my hasselblad.
60 x 60 mm CMOS with the same density as the Canon.
To some degreee, the reference confirms my point. Because the comment is referring to the inability to distiguish a digital image versus a scanned film image.
A better comparision would have been a head to head shootout of a film slide projected head-to-head with a DLP or similar image of a digital image.
That film has a much better dynamic range than a CCD/CMOS censor. Second of all, film has all 3 colors (layers) at every location. This camera doesn't have 16M RGB sensors. It has 8M G sensors, 4M R sensors, and 4M B sensors. This it is really only capable of 4M fully-resolved color pixels.
In other words, film doesn't have Bayesian interpolation issues.
This sensor, although great, and even better than film in some ways, cannot match the sheer resolving power of film.
Really, the reason why film is 35mm is because you can only fit so much grain per cubic centimetre (200 ISO has chunkier grain than 100 ISO, and is thus more sensitive to light). When it comes to electronics, every extra cubic centimetre increases costs greatly. Larger sensors also need larger, heavier lenses. Nikon's standardized on their DX format, which is like 35mm with a 1.5 field-of-view crop (18mm DX lens == 24mm lens).
This guy has a good rundown about sensor sizes. (IMO, the guy has strong opinions/biases. As always, make your own judgements when reading stuff on the web).
He also points out something obvious that most people don't think about. You need to quadruple the megapixel value in order to get double the image size. A megapixel is 1000 wide by 1000 tall; the megapixel measurement is an exponential (square) function.
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
Very true. Just look up National Geographic "Flight" issue. All photos were taken with a "crappy" 6 Megapixel Nikon D1X.
[...] the smaller sensor makes lenses 1.6x longer [...]
:-)
Really? It stretches them or something? Whoa. Keep those digital sensors away from my lenses!
Given the price of canon's sexier lenses (~$4,000 for the 300mm 2.8L, and ~$2,000 for the 70-200mm 2.8L) the cost of the body isn't so important.
Actually, the 70-200 2.8L is about $1100. (Even the 70-200 2.8L IS is only $1600.)
Outrageous! Well, er... Raise your hand if you've ever spent that much on computer equipment.
The PowerBook or PowerMac you've bought for editing (or the film you go through in a year) is probably more than even those sexy lenses. Photoshop alone is $650.
(Gimp, oh Gimp, when will you get color management?)
I think this may have been posted to Slashdot long ago. However, if you're really interested in SI's digital workflow, it's documented in excellent detail here.
It's been said before, but those wireless transmitters really seem more at home in the studio. Guys in the field like to keep the number of images they put on a piece of media relatively small to mitigate the effects of device failure. A dead 512MB card loses a lot less images than a dead 4GB card. Of course, the larger cards will be needed as the megapixels go higher, but the number of images on them won't go much higher.
I SEE SO MANY FUCKING CAMERA STORIES [...edited for content...]
When the camera stories stop, then you can look forward to the "photography is dying" stories.
computer screen/TV pictures: 2 megapixels
8"x10" prints: 3 megapixels and up
12"x18" prints: 6 megapixels and up
bigger prints: the more pixels the better
You have low standards. To make quality 11x14 prints and bigger, I use 4x5" large format film. Although 6x7cm medium-format film would work just as well up to 16x20". In my opinion, a 6 megapixel camera does not make a good 11x14" print...especially some B&W fine art prints.
Of course it is all subjective.
But he stated that his estimates were for 98% of the /. crowd, not Large Format hobbyists
"I can see photographers shooting sporting events with a 12" Powerbook in a backpack..." That is until the laptop overheats.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
------- In the end there are no begining
You are wrong. Firstly, the sensor does indeed resolve 12 bits per pixel (at least on my camera) which is evident when using the RAW sensor data for image manipulaton. When the sensor data is passed through bayer interpolation algorithms you may actually increase the resolution some above the individual 12bit sensor elements.
Secondly, you confuse dynamic range and resolution. Dynamic range is the difference between the darkest and brightest spot captured simultaneously. Resolution is how many steps there are between two the two extreemes.
There are other very important differences. On the digital camera the pixel elements are evenly spaced where on a film the pigments are not. Even though a single colour pigment on the film is very small, the randomnes of their location makes the resolution lower.
I do not know what the dynamic range is for film or cameras, nor have I seen a objective comparison of the two.
Canon won't take my Nikor lenses... waaaaah!!!! (Yes, I know: duh!, but still.... waaaaah!!!!)
You could've hired me.
If you have a bright sunlight and a deep shadow you will easilly go beyond 1000:1.
PowerBooks G4 are designed to closed lid operation. Apple says so.
No offense, but do you actually ever shoot photographs of anything?
My 6MP canon *easily* beats regular 35mm. Why? GRAIN!
Just take a picture of the sky on your favorite slide film, and then take the lens off and put it on a 6MP camera and take the same picture.
It's like night and day. Or rather, like a clear blue sky and a gravel driveway.
Any resolution advantage in film is KILLED by grain.
Some nice work on your web site.
:-)
But the site itself is VERY frustrating!! Light gray on white is hard to read, stuff reloads randomly, all the links open new windows, the URLs are javascript or something... Just wanted to let you know that.
Great photos though.
Ritz Camera is selling it for $8000, and gives its list price as $9000.
in the same sense as a lens. Larger sensors will give you much less noise however, as they're calibrated to require much more light before they're considered lit pixels. You'll also get better luminance range.
Smaller sensors with small photosites receive much less light, and thus are susceptible to stray photons (particularly infrared) from the electronics and ambient air. This is why your point and shoots have a max ISO of 400 and look utterly terrible, while a DSLR can go up to ISO 1600 or higher, and have considerably less noise!
This is why a 6 megapixel DSLR has pictures vastly better than one of those new 8mp.
Or check out the nasa rovers.. large sensors, excellent optics, superb electronics, but with only 1 megapixel. Ultra sharp pictures!
-
Those would be, what, 8x10 images with a 150line screen? I'd sure hope that a good 6MP camera would produce good results.
BTW - for most applications, this is effectively 35mm resolution or better. You won't convince me it can replace medium format, but then I'd expect to be able to make larger prints from my 6x7 images. And, though a totally different beast, it won't make me throw out my TechPan stash.
Right now, I'm waiting for a digital F-mount body to take over the place of my F4s, but it's going to have to be pretty noise free. Noisy ccd's really bother me for some reason...even more than golf-ball sized grain. Kind of like being able to watch TV with analog snow isn't as bad as the artifacts on some of the high-compression DirecTV channels.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Hey, I wont argue with you. Individual tastes vary, and lots of photographs which undoubtably are "fine art" are anything but high resolution.
And don't misinterpret my standards to be "low". I love high resolution. I love the look of my 21MP slide scans printed corner to corner on 12x18 paper. Like I said, I can see that my 6 megapixel can't keep up with the resolution. But I'll show those prints to 9 out of 10 people and they'll be more than happy with the resolution.
And, if I could, I'd make 11x14 prints using 4"x5" large format film as well. Unfortunately the cost of the camera, lens, film, development and printing would have me affording about 1 print a month
In comparison, digital photography is a breath of freedom. I've shot 11,000 frames on my Canon digital cameras. Zero added cost per shutter click. At my local pro-lab rates with 35mm Fuji slide film, that would have been over $5,000 in slide film and development. Instead I've spent about $500 on Epson Archival Matte paper and ink.
Your goals and your pocketbook are undoutably different than mine, but don't call my standards low.
Good resolution charts include low-contrast targets, usually 25% gray vs. white. lpm measurements are often divided into "low" and "high" contrast numbers. Good, complete data on a particular film type always includes both. A valid, data-based comparison is possible.
A few questions: What does noise look like on photographs? What causes noise when you take photographs? Why are digitals better at handling noise?
Depending on whether you're talking about a digital original or a film original, noise looks different from one to the other. On a digital original, noise shows up as "blotchiness" for lack of a better description. Shoot a field of something that's generally the same color (a baseball field at night, for instance) on a digital camera at its highest ISO setting. If the noise is noticeable (which it is on most digital cameras), you'll see random patches where the color doesn't quite match.
Noise in film is different. I'm no photographic expert, but as I understand it film noise is usually caused by the grain itself obscuring some of the detail in the photograph. The shape of the grain is not 100% uniform, and neither is the orientation of the individual grain particles. So you won't get consistent detail throughout an image. I might be wrong on this, but that's my understanding. Regardless, the higher the ISO of the film, the higher the noise level.
Keep in mind that even those photographers who shoot film usually end up needing to get those film negatives scanned so that the photographs can be digitally manipulated. It's a rare photographer these days who can shoot, develop, print and enlarge exclusively with optics and chemicals. The scanning process itself introduces some noise into the photo image, further reducing the quality of the film image, and even the best optics introduce some noise into an image, so people using optical technologies stick to first-generation copies whenever possible.
In a digital camera, the sensor has a fixed amount of light-gathering capability. At higher ISO equivalency settings, the effective sensitivity of the sensor is increased by amplifying whatever signal is detected. The signals are amplified somewhat at all ISO settings on most digital cameras, but the amplification level is higher at higher ISOs. It's this amplification process that introduces noise in a digital camera.
BTW: Digitals aren't automatically better at handling noise than film cameras. It depends on the sensor in the digital and the film used in the film camera.
The larger the sensor is in a digital camera, the more native light-gathering capability it has, and the less amplification is required to get a usable signal from the sensor. This leads to lower noise in the image at any ISO. For instance, Canon's Digital Rebel (EOS 300D) digital SLR has an APS-C-sized sensor (370 sq mm) with 6.3MP, while Sony, Olympus and even Canon sell "prosumer" digital cameras that use sensors that are 2/3" in size (58 sq mm). The 2/3" sensor's got about 1/6th the total area of the 300D's APS-C sensor. Factoring in the difference in resolution, that means that the 300D's APS-sized sensor has a little more than 8 times the area per pixel for gathering light than does a "prosumer" 2/3" 8MP sensor. This adds up to dramatically lower noise for the 300D at any ISO, as I can personally attest. I bought a KonicaMinolta Dimage A2 and returned it because the noise at virtually all ISO settings was objectionable (all my pictures looked blotchy). The Canon 300D has lower noise than the A2 at all settings, and the noisiest the Canon ever gets (1600 ISO) is still lower than the noise levels I saw from the A2 at 400 ISO.
Now, imagine going from an APS-C sized sensor (370 sq mm) to a full-frame 35mm sensor (864 sq mm). That 35mm sensor is about 2.3 times bigger than the APS-C sensor. Even with 2.7 times as many pixels, the 35mm sensor still has enormous light-gathering power per pixel. In addition, I'm betting that Canon's putting its most advanced sensor technology in the 1Ds Mark II, meaning that the sensor is more sensitive than the sensors used in most other cameras, again requiring less amplification and thus generating less noise.
Compared with a comparable Canon 35mm body with the same lens, a picture sho
I'd say 3 is probably good enough for 95%. I have a Nikon Coolpix 3100. It's not a photo geek's dream, though I as a regular geek have taken some stunning photos with it -- enough for people to question that I even took some of them.
My only wishes;
The improvements introduced in the 3200 -- plus...
Better low light support (if the camera doesn't get too bulky).
Raw image support.
From what I've read, Cannon rules if you want to control every aspect of your shot. The Nikons are point and shoot with many pre-programmed modes -- so if you already have your hands full with other tech, it's the way to go. (Something that came to mind as I wrote this.)
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
No pro photographer will shoot in jpg, you are just making shit up to support your argument. I don't pay 10 grand for a camera to take shitty jpegs, all photos are taken and archived in RAW. This allows corrections to be done without the extra quality loss, as well as using the pictures for things that need better than jpg quality, like lots of print work.
I not sure about digital... I'm still shooting slides and scanning them in with my SLR. I also have a 3 megapixel point and shoot and I can't get a decent prints at 4x6 let alone 8x10. I just see too much digital noise in the shadows event at 4x6. I'm still waiting it out till they have a 20 megapixel full frame DSLR.
The multiplier doesn't help. The image is just pre-cropped. If anything you're losing information.
I had a digital camera for a while and quickly forgot how great it was to hold a set of glossies in my hands. I mean, after screwing around with JPEGs and Photoshop and all that, the images from a disposable camera blew me away. I really had forgotten just how good an image could be, and that was the part which struck me; that I had forgotten so easily.
Having to be sitting in front of a crappy CRT or a TFT to view a photo? Lame. Very lame.
Oh, but color printers!
I repeat: Lame. Very lame.
Nothing looks cheesier than some crappy inkjet output. Even a good color copier can't hope to compare to a nice photo print.
Yeah, yeah, everybody's heard the whole, "You can't curl up with a computer," argument before. But the fact is, this is an analog universe. Digital is a tool and a toy built on soulless approximations. Very useful and lots of fun, but when all is said and done, nothing beats sitting on the deck with the girlfriend going over your holiday snaps.
--You know, out in the sunlight and fresh air. Where humans don't turn into pasty Morlocks.
Time in the cave and time out doors. Balance is everything, and all these damned computer toys make it easy to forget that.
-FL
Wireless digital cameras. Hmmm. I see the greatest Super Bowl moment getting snatched from an SI reporter by a guy from ESPN Magazine.
Seriously -- makes you wonder how photo rights could be challenged if people find easy ways to snatch photos from your camera while you're downloading at the end of a sports shoot. I'm not a pro photographer, but I would suspect that many of them gather together in press booths/boxes or down on the sidelines after sporting event and maybe do an inventory of what they shot and their equipment.
Throw in wireless, and you gotta perfect time to do some snarfing and grabbing that ultimate cover shot for your magazine -- from someone else.
On the other hand, are sports photographers (or any event photographers) that low that they would choose to abuse the technology in that manner?
Thoughts?
IronChefMorimoto
- Nobody needs that much resolution for photojournalism. The Nikon D2H is a really popular photojournalist's DSLR (released last year, and it has had a WiFi expansion card available that long, too). It does 6MP, which experience has shown to be more than adequate. (It also costs half as much as this Canon camera.)
- The Nikon D2H, IIRC, shoots 8 or 9 full resolution pictures per second, and has a burst buffer of 40 images. This is way more important for a photojournalist than 16MP.
The summary of these points is that, for this application, it's a better use of bandwidth to transmit more "good enough" pictures than fewer amazingly high-res pictures.Are you adequate?
In my experience, people making statements like this don't consider a print "quality" unless they can look at the print with a magnifying glass and see detail you can't see with the naked eye...
... $7999, you too can get your hands on this!
Erm, raise your hand if you have $7999 burning in your pocket.
It will be nice when the price drops. =) Certainly looks cool, that's for sure.
I would certainly expect to be happy with my pictures if I were to spend $2000 dollars on a camera!
The only problem is that most people aren't professional photographers with access to thousand dollar equipment and expensive processing labs. The pictures I was enjoying on that sunny porch were taken on a very cheep film camera with a lense factory-locked at infinity. The results were beautiful.
The truth of the matter is that most people are simply going to lose another battle to the soulless maw of the digital paradigm as cheep film cameras and processing slip out of vogue. People are going to look at crappy images on crappy monitors, and print them out with crappy printers on crappy paper.
They are going to forget what the world can be, what it was before the 'assistance' of computers. And their kids won't even have the option of forgetting. Their world will be crappy right out of the box.
True, there is always the matter of choice. One need not accept crappiness if one doesn't want to. But it's shaping up to be the default position in a world where it needn't be the case. It's a shame that every inch must be fought for.
Feed the Hobbits shit, you get shitty Hobbits. They don't know any better, but I'd prefer to live among a happy population.
-FL
....It will be extremely unlikely that Playboy magazine will do a centerfold shoot with a digital camera, even with the latest Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II.
Playboy has a tradition of using view cameras with photographic plates to do such shots, and given the extremely high resolution of photographic plates used on view cameras, such a camera is necessary for pictures that are sometimes is printed at the equivalent size of four pages at the page size Playboy uses!
Nikon's D2H has supported WiFi since last year. And Nikon just announced support for 802.11g in addition to their existing 802.11b WiFi for both the D2H and the new D2X. And support for the new autoconfig proposed standards. (But while Canon will try to sell you a copier while they're at it, Nikon can sell you a nice electron beam etcher...)
So what are you doing with the laptop exactly when you shut the lid?
Most of the time, nothing. So Apple optimized (as they so often do) for the common case.
Furthermore, Apple also realized that at some point you might want the computer back again and open the lid. And when you did so, you'd want the computer to be ready right away.
So, they optimized for that case as well and made sure the laptops wake up as fast as you can open the lid. I have seen and used Windows laptops that NEVER woke up, and guys carrying laptops around the halls at work with screens open terrified to close them lest they go to that dark sleep, never to reawaken.
Seriously, the instant-on wake is one of the major reasons why I initially chose a Powerbook over any other laptop. You say it's great can tell your laptop not to go to sleep - but the reason they added this is to solve a problem, not so much to help you out for an uncommon use of laptops.
And as others have noted you CAN tell an Apple laptop to keep working with the screen closed. And it works that way naturally with a second monitor, the only major use I can think of with the screen closed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I guess that's the "buttery smooth" ISO 1600 everyone keeps talking about... (it was said ISO 1600 in the exif, 1/64 shutter at 17mm).
I also thought there was quite a lot of noise.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So if you were printing a 100 lpi halftone you only need a 150 dpi image. For the best stuff we had to print, we rarely exceeded 150 lpi, which would require 225 dpi, at 11x17 = 9,466,875 pixels, about 9.5MP.
Yes, but the change in contrast will be spread out over a distance much farther than it is in these test targets, so the image is still quite unlike the test images, and digital will probably perform as well as or better than film.
I like to make prints on Super-A3 sized paper
what's super A3? surely it's either A3 or it's not A3?
dave
Sample 1
Sample 2
- 4r0g
Check this lower left chart for super A3 size info.
...but each 'pixel' in a 16 megapixel camera is R, G or B rather than being full colour. The different colour pixels are arranged in a matrix and the 'true colour' is interpolated from surrounding pixels. You're also right that there is are more green pixels than red or blue. So you don't have 16 million full colour pixels, you have 8 million green, 4 million red and 4 million blue. (Sigma/Foveon are an exception in that they have a sensor that can actually sense all three colours in one location by stacking the sensors, as the depth the light travels varies according to its wavelength.)
A RAW image isn't like a TIFF, where each pixel is true colour, it's simply a raw dump of the actual sensor matrix - the interpolation can then be done on the computer rather than in the camera.
... a beowulf cluster of those!
Uhm, I might be wrong but ... isn't the CCD a lot bigger in the 35mm version? Hence the need for more pixels.
As the megapixel count goes up, the need for zoom lenses goes down. Suppose you shoot the finals of a 100m race with a 6 megapixel camera and a 300 mm lens. Let's say that the winning sprinter takes up about 50% of the frame, so 3 megapixels of detail covers the sprinter.
With a 12 megapixel camera, you can use a 150mm lens, and get the same 3 megapixels covering the sprinter. With a 24 megapixel camera, you can use a 75mm lens. With a 48 megapixel camera you can use a 33mm lens. When a certain resolution has been reached, a good quality 50mm or so lens is all most people - even professionals - will ever need.
Cover a tennis event, and crop out a full-page spread of Agassi from a shot that framed the entire court and most of the audience. Crop out half-page shots of any celebrities you spot among the audience from the same picture. Wildlife photographers will be able to make full-page prints of birds they didn't even see when they took the shot, etc etc.
1. Attach remote control shutter release to camera
2. Mount camera on a kite or model airplane
3. Enjoy pictures delivered to your laptop
But only if you are not worried of dropping your 8000 dollar apparatus...
The first image (if it's still there) shows bad optics -- the vertical columns on the left of the picture have telltale green edges on the left sides and red edges on the right sides, suggesting misalignment between the colour channels.
The outdoor shot looks better.
Sure, I'd love to have one -- a regular film camera has a density of about 11 megapixels; to have a digital camera that beats film, and it's wireless too? How cool is that?
Go to an art fair sometime and look at some prints from large-format photographers. You won't realize the lack of detail until you actually see it for yourself.
To resolve a line pair, you must have 2 lines with a space between them, and to resolve 1 line pair from another, you need to discern a space between the line pairs.... so you need 4 points to resolve a line pair
A "line pair" is one black line and one white line, just two pixels, not four.
There are some informative comments in this thread, but yours is not one of them.
No offense, but do you actually ever shoot photographs of anything?
Why yes.... I do actually shoot photographs of things. I show my work internationally, have had solo and group gallery shows on the west and east coasts (including New York and San Francisco) and have gallery representation. Thanks for letting me plug it.
Yes.... 35MM film has grain, and setting aside for the moment that sometimes grain can be used to great effect, the speed, type, and processing of the film can affect the size of the grain.
However....
Digital has pixelation. Yeah.... you can overcome much of the pixelation at larger print sizes by interpolation ("Genuine Fractals" does a spectacular job) but this only goes so far.
And.... you want less grain?? Go to Medium Format... or my personal preference, Large Format (I shoot primarily 4x5 film these days) Or if you don't want grain on your 35mm film? Shoot Kodak Technical Pan film, and process it in the developer only from the C41 process. I challenge anyone to find grain on that on any print smaller than 16"x20"
I never said that it automatically led to that conclusion. I was just pointing out that the lpm argument is meaningless, and then stating my own conclusions.
FWIW, my wife is a professional digital photographer. She shoots with a Nikon D1x (a "mere" 5.5MP). I have seen plenty of high-end-digital-against-35mm comparisons, and my preference has always been digital.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
As I said at the end of my post, that's the only case where I can see a real need to do so - which I also do with my Powerbook when docked (though having it be a second monitor can also be handy).
I guess you're too busy patching windows viruses to read a whole couple of paragraphs though.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That is a reasonable request, I'll admit that GPS software on the Mac is a little thin. There are some solutions but it's not as straightforward as the stuff the PC has yet...
Sorry the iBook didn't meet your needs as well as you had hoped.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You tell me how "whilst" differs from "while," and I'll stop calling you a pretentious jackass.
They DO differ! "Whilst" is a later form of while, created by a grammatical confusion in southern England. It's currently only used as a more formal version of "while" in England, and by pretentious jackasses in the US.
THERE. Now quit it with the name calling.
Kodak had an ultra-high pixel count SLR a while back that was generally judged to be a dog because of battery life problems. The machine took so long to turn on it was only useful if you left it on all the time but if you left it on all the time the battery died in an hour. Not good.
Anybody have any idea what the battery life is on this Canon? The specs say 800 pictures at a freezing ambient temperature, but I'm going to be curious exactly how much they're exaggerating.
In the real world
For what you do, Digital capture is where it's at. If I were doing photojournalism, sports, weddings, most forms of portraiture, I'd use digital... PERIOD. For what I do I can't use digital (well... capture or final output at least). I use 4x5 film (sometimes larger), scan the negative, output an 11x14 negative and contact print from there using platinum.
It's only about where the rubber meets the road.
And your destination is different from mine... so must our tools and techniques. Did I make generalizations? Yep... but the original story made a blanket statement that this camera produced the same quality as 35mm film due to it's technical specs, and you and I BOTH know that the technical specs mean nothing in the final result. The tools for an efficient workflow may be different for us, but it's our BRAINS that determine the final quality.... not the electronics (or lack thereof) in our tools.
Cheers and good success.
Lord, not this crap again.
Well... we could argue the high contrast issue, after all, the ISO standard for film resolution tests does specifiy a far lower contrast ratio than 1000:1
But the rest of your post harkens back to the last one I responded to, and makes a valid point. The real issue is the right tool for the right job. I'd argue that "the average photographer" isn't going to use this particular camera, but then again the average photographer isn't going to use the camera-lens-film-processes that I use either.
But the blanket statement that this is the right tool for every job since the quality matches or exceeds 35mm film is false. It's false on a technical level, many feel that it's false on a subjective level.
It's the Linux/Windows debate... it's the AMD/Intel debate.... it's the Wintel/Macintosh debate, the Palm/PocketPC debate... ad-nauseum. What's the best tool for you to accomplish what you want/need to accomplish?
By the way.....
You do some really nice work!
Makes me want to finish getting my site updated and current. If there were only 27 hours in a day.
Cheers.
I know a guy with a clown camera. I've seen the prints from it. For the sizes you were talking about, I can't tell a difference unless he breaks out a magnifying glass. I generally look at a picture, not parts of it through a magnifying glass.
For large prints there is definately a difference, but for the smaller sizes you were referring to I can't.
I think we're on total agreement on the philosophical aspects here. That every job has a tool, and that those tools should only be judged based on real-world qualitative criteria, not lab and manufacturer specs. My real world experience has shown that compared to analog capture, digital quality behaves as if it were one format better than it is. In other words: APS digital=35mm film, 35mm digital=medium format film, and medium format digital=4x5 film.
As prices continue to come down, even for small volume and boutique operations, even large-format art photographers like yourself will make the switch, for qualitative reasons. I can see in your work (which is beautiful by the way) that it would be great to be able to capture digital, retouch, and output back to 11x14 neg for platinum printing, removing the loss of quality and waste of time associated with the film/scan/film dance you need to do now.
Off topic, have you done any experimenting with digital infrared?
And with its full 35mm CMOS it is the first camera to effectively reproduce the image quality of 35mm film
I highly doubt that the CMOS chip's resolution even approaches the analogue quality of real film. What the "full frame" 35mm CMOS chip really means is that you can use all your old lenses from your 35mm film SLRs, and there is no conversion factor for the zoom rating.
Basically, if you had a wide angle lens for a film SLR, and you put it onto a Digital Rebel (which has a less than full-frame chip), it would become less of a wide angle lens because the sensor is smaller and it's effectively "cropping" the image relative to what you'd expect of the lens from 35mm film. This camera doesn't do that.
You'd be surprised. Over the years, I've seen plenty of pictures of people with money toting cameras that were, for them, ridiculous. It's almost a joke in the used camera world how second-hand Linhofs (incredibly expensive, breathtakingly well-made cameras) always seem to be in such great condition because they were bought by rich doctors who thought such a fancy camera made them look cool. That it will do, but they never ran more than a few rolls of film through them before the cameras got stuck in a closet and forgotten. For goodness sake, I actually saw a television story with footage of that talk radio DJ, Don Imus, using a panoramic Linhof to take family snapshots. *Really* expensive cameras have always sold well both to pros who need their advanced capabilities and big-money dunderheads who want an 8-thousand-dollar ornament to hang around their neck.
Don't underestimate the coolness factor. Don't underestimate the "some people got more money than sense" factor.
My real world experience has shown that compared to analog capture, digital quality behaves as if it were one format better than it is.
I wish I could say the same thing. Have you ever noticed the difference on television between taped and filmed shows? The videotaped shows have an edge... a harshness that filmed shows just don't have. The resolution of tape and film both are higher than the final output, and the output resolution (NTSC) is the same, but the look and feel are distinctly different to me. I would assume it is as well for most people as more and more television is filmed.
Digital image capture and output is that way to me when compared to "Analog" image capture and output. I can walk into a gallery and 99% of the time I can spot which are digital and which aren't... Since I go to galleries with other photographers, I know they can too, as can my wife (who isn't a photographer BTW). On the other hand, some images really benefit from that feel IMHO, such as fashon and most product photography.
As prices continue to come down, even for small volume and boutique operations, even large-format art photographers like yourself will make the switch, for qualitative reasons.
Maybe.... Maybe. Of course they said the same thing about painting when photography made it's debut. I'm more inclined to think that it's as it is today.... they're two different but similar art forms. Some expressions of that art can use Digital to great effect, while other expressions cannot. History saw the same with Painting vs. Photography... or the one that no one seems to argue is the possibility of Digital Sculpture using one of the interesting stereo-lithography tools. Just design your sculpture in Autocad, ship it off, and get a perfect sculpture in return.
I can see in your work (which is beautiful by the way)...
Thank you for the complement. I'm really wishing I had some more of my current work up on my site.
that it would be great to be able to capture digital, retouch, and output back to 11x14 neg for platinum printing, removing the loss of quality and waste of time associated with the film/scan/film dance you need to do now.
Again... you may be right. I actually tried doing that with some scans from a BetterLight back that I rented for my Bronica, but when comparing that to a TechPan negative processed in C41 developer, or APX 100 in ABC-Pyro that was scanned and output to a larger format... the Digital capture just didn't have the smoothness of tone that the film does. It could be that the scanned 4x5 negative is a lot higher resolution than the capture from the back, but I'll also admit that I may just be jaded... But hopefully I'm not as jaded as some who completely discount Digital and don't admit that it's the right tool for some jobs.
Off topic, have you done any experimenting with digital infrared?
Honestly? No. but I'm sure you noticed that I have some IR work up on my site. I've seen and read several articles on the subject, and it just doesn't have the look and feel that I look for. On that same note, I've also worked with Illford SFX, Konica's IR film, and the line of Maco black and white IR films, and frankly I don't like any of them. They don't have the look and feel of the Kodak HIE/HSI which seems to work best for me and my style. Problem is the formats available... Kodak discontinued HSI in 4x5, and bulk-loading the 70mm for medium format is a pain, although I do it (note: I don't use the re-spooled 120 cut-down that's available on the web, I use a 70mm film back for my Bronica). I really wish I could get what I want in 4x5 or 8x10.
both canon and nikon have committed to to APS frame sized lenses that newer DSLR's are using. While canon is sticking with 35mm full frame with the 1DSmk II, nikon's new D2X is APS sized. Canon's lower-end DSLR's also use APS sized.
The history of the 35mm film format is a weird one. Its continuing existance is mainly due to inertia.
Theres a bunch of reasons for APS. First, you don't lose much in the way of absolute resolution. at 27mm vs. 35mm. Second, the chips are MUCH cheaper to produce. The cost of a full frame CCD has not gone down at all in a decade. They've crammed more pixels on them, but the cost remains the same for production - exorbitant.
Also, your lenses can be more compact and lighter weight. But, with APS you can still use 35mm styled lenses decades old.
-
You have never seen an 8x10 contact print. They are beautiful.
People use 8x10 cameras for a reason...not because 4x5 doesn't give good enough enlargements.
I have comparable 11x14 prints from a 35mm negative and a 4x5 negative. The difference is stunning even when viewed from 5-feet away.
Then you either have the eyes of a hawk or something else was effecting the image quality of the images you were comparing.
How many samples have you seen? You said you saw a guy with a "clown camera". Bad technique can spoil large-format more easily than other formats.
There is a reason why people still shoot large-format and that there are still numerous manufacturers of equipment. It isn't because the amateur desires a 30x40 print.
Just look at the value of used equipment. The prices 6x4.5cm medium-format gear is plummeting. This is because good digital gear can do pretty good compared to 645. But the value of 6x7 and large-format is still stable.
Granted 10 years from now, this may not be the case. However to get the detail from a 4x5 negative will require a sensor that can capture over 200 megabytes.
The low-hanging fruit of CCD and CMOS sensors has been grabbed. It will be much harder to make cheap sensors with even 30 megapixels. They are getting too noisy. Sony's 8mb sensor is terrible with noise. Canon is doing better but their full-frame sensors are pricey.
I can walk into a gallery and 99% of the time I can spot which are digital and which aren't...
It's funny, I hear this all the time. Actually, it was just such a situation that finally made me switch from film to digital for the preponderance of my work. I had a gallery exhibition of large prints made primarily from my drum-scanned 6x7 transparencies. These prints were 4x6 feet. I mixed in a few images, of exactly the same subject matter and lighting, but that had been shot originally with a Nikon D1x (not a huge capture by any standards)
As an experiment, I asked everyone if they could spot the digital captures. No one could with any consistency (they basically were just guessing.) Even my service bureau couldn't pick them out, and they had printed both!
It was then that I realized that digital had passed the "good enough" test. Not perfect, but "good enough". I'm sure it's just a question of time till it passes your "good enough" test too.
Of course they said the same thing about painting when photography made it's debut.
Actually, I think a better comparison would be the transition from Victorian era plate processes to modern cut film techniques. We're not dealing with a new art form here, merely the next generation of the same art form. Dedicated artists, archivists, and craftspeople will still use the old materials, be it for artistic effect, or nostalgia. Just as you can still find artists using cyanotypes, and, in your case, platinum. But the vast majority of artists will transition to the new materials, and the art will evolve (as it is).
Thanks for the lively discussion!
Many cameras, even at the consumer level, have been doing this for years--it's known as "dark frame subtraction."
Cheers,
Jeremy
As an experiment, I asked everyone if they could spot the digital captures. No one could with any consistency (they basically were just guessing.) Even my service bureau couldn't pick them out, and they had printed both!
Ahhh.... but don't forget that your comparison was made to prints "...made primarily from my drum-scanned 6x7 transparencies". Digitally captured and printed. I notice a difference between 11x14 prints made from my scanned negatives, and 11x14 prints made from traditionally enlarged negatives, same exact origin, same final output. Try your same test using traditional Fujichrome prints.... well... maybe not as there's always something lost in the translation in Ciba- or Fuji-chrome prints.
Hard to compare apples to apples here I suppose.
It was then that I realized that digital had passed the "good enough" test. Not perfect, but "good enough". I'm sure it's just a question of time till it passes your "good enough" test too.
You may be right..... But keep in mind that I went to contact printing because enlargers weren't good enough to suit me, and I went to platinum because silver wasn't good enough either. But I suppose you're right.
I think the argument for "new art form" vs. "evolution of an art form" is a bigger debate than either of us want to get into.... I can see easy arguments for and against both sides... and if you couldn't tell I always try to play the devil's advocate no matter what my real personal opinion.
Thanks for the lively discussion!
Indeed. I've enjoyed it!