Dslrnewsshooter.com joined with F-stop academy’s Den Lennie to bring you this brief hands on video with the sparkly new Canon EOS-1D Mk IV.

Brian Worley is Project manager – Photo Education and Canon Europe and we were very lucky to get time with him and the 1D Mk IV, we talked to him about the camera and it’s video functions. We also had a good play with the camera ourselves.

Den and I were able to see that the high ISO performance is definitely improved over the 5DmkII – as Vincent Laforet has already ably demonstrated with his film ‘Nocturne’. The rear LCD screen also seemed to give a much nicer image than the previous Canons, working really well with the Zacuto Z-finder I test with it. The activation of video shooting using the FEL button by the shutter button seemed quite intuitive for news shooters trying to get video clips in between stills. The build quality is as expected with a 1 series body – which is to say better than on the 5DmkII and 7D, it feels solid. It shoots all the same resolutions and video sizes as the 7D so basically it does PAL friendly 1080P/25 along with 24P and 30P plus 720P 50 and 60fps so for news its pretty adaptable to your workflow. I’m glad Canon recognised the importance of 25p and 50p PAL rates as like many other newspaper video people I often have to cut Reuters or AP video PAL footage into my finished films, messing around with multiple frame rates on a timeline can be a real pain. The 1.3x crop remains from the previous 1D Mk III – I’d have preferred full frame – but many will not see this as a disadvantage.

We also tested the camera with a couple of video support rigs from Redrockmicro and Zacuto along with a Genus mattebox and bars setup, all worked fine. I was worried the extra weight of the camera compared to the 5DmkII would make these lightweight rigs less usable but actually found that if anything it actually improved handling – with short lenses at least. Audio is the main area where there has been little change, with the minijack mic input still being limited to automatic gain control – we didn’t have time to test any audio adapters like the Beachtek or Juicedlink but I have no reason to think they function any differently to the way they do with the 5DmkII.

This camera rounds out Canon’s video capable D-SLR range, users of pro 1-series bodies can now choose to do the same other Canon users, there is no excuse not to give video a go. I think that with Canon and Nikon now offering video in their top end pro cameras there are very interesting times ahead for the news industry – convergence between video and stills is now technically possible for many assignments, the question is whether the likes Reuters, The Associated Press, Getty Images and the larger newspaper groups will choose to move it forward.

A big thank you to Den and F-Stop academy for shooting this video with me and editing it – he’s a top guy and I’d recommend you to drop by his site. I hope we can do more with him in the future. Thanks also to Felix Clay for helping out during the shoot.

I’m just back from the UK after speaking at the Canon Pro Solutions Expo in London. It was really great to meet those who managed to attend and good to catch up with some old friends, too. I finally met the very talented 5DmkII shooter Danfung Dennis and got to see a bit more of his upcoming documentary from Afghanistan – it’s looking seriously good.

The main attraction at the Canon show was of course the 1DmkIV; I managed to have a pretty good look at the camera’s video functions and in the next day or two should have more for you.

I met F-Stop academy’s Den Lennie at the show; he showed me the company’s latest 5DmkII and 7D training DVDs. For me, these plug a huge hole for anyone wanting to learn about how to shoot pro video with these cams. Previously you’ve had to spend a long time scouring the net for all the answers – now you can learn what took me months just by sitting down with F-Stops classes which lay everything out in a simple way.

I also have some new toys to test. First up are a duo of Panasonic Micro 4/3rds HD capable cameras – the Lumix GH-1 and GF-1. The GH-1 can shoot 1080p and 720p with full control and a mic input, while the smaller GF-1 is only 720p, but has a much cuter form factor. These are much smaller than the 5DmkII or 7D and can still take an interesting variety of lenses. Both cameras shoot AVCHD but have a relatively low bit rate – not sure how that’s going to work out but I plan a more comprehensive review at some point in the future.

Next up is the new Thinktankphoto Airport Takeoff rolling camera bag that converts quickly into a backpack. I’ve loved Thinktank bags since they came out a few years ago and use their rollers, backpacks and pouches frequently, but I always thought the lack of a backpack/roller was a serious omission. Now they’ve taken my favourite backpack and added wheels and a handle – great stuff. It will carry my full 5DmkII video kit including two bodies, and 300mm lens and my Macbook Pro. Again I’ll be giving this one a thorough working out and will report back. If your in the UK and can’t wait for a full review then you can head over to Snapperstuff to pick one up now.

Gadget three is the new 5DmkII fitting camera armour. I’ve been waiting for this one as the original 5D armor made famous by Vincent Laforet to disguise the 5DmkII during filming of ‘Reverie’ doesn’t fit the MKII well. The new version is a snug fit and gives a really chunky rubber bumper around much of the camera’s body. Whilst it’s a little cumbersome to leave it on the whole time I will put it on the camera for really rough environments or during remote control shoots where the camera is left in a vulnerable position like a soccer goal mouth.

Gadget four is the Litepanels MicroPro LED light – no time to play with this at all yet so no firm opinion; I’m assuming it’s a better, more powerful version of the little Litepanels LPmicro – which I love – but again I’ll report later.

Lastly, I’ve picked up a lovely Manfrotto video monopod from Bogen imaging. The 561BHDV (who makes up these catchy names??) . It’s a monopod with added fluid head and little pop out feet at the base to give extra stability and some smoother panning motion. I tested it a few days ago and found that with wide to moderate length lenses it was very easy to get stable shots. The little feet were easy to use and although you can’t stand the monopod up on them alone they do make the base feel more rooted to the ground and stop it from slipping around. I also tried attaching my Redrockmicro rig to the it and used the handgrips for extra stability; this worked really well. My only gripe is that it’s quite heavy and would benefit from a carbon fibre rather than aluminium leg, although I guess that would push the price up. I think this monopod will be going with me in future unless I’m close to my airline weight limit, when I might switch to a carbon fibre one instead.

Anyway, enough new toys. Hopefully back to some serious shooting this week.