In action at Singapore Turf club with the Canon 1DmkIV, 300mm f2.8 lens

The Beast - A 1DmkIV all tricked out with Genus Mattebox and follow focus

When Canon Singapore contacted me to see if I wanted to test drive a pre-productin shiny new Canon 1DmkIV I jumped at the chance. Up till now I’ve had to lay down my own cash to try the 5DmkII and 7D so this was a great opportunity to form an opinion about the camera without going bankrupt and I was due to be in Singapore anyway for an event at Cathay Photo. I had a few days to really put the camera through it paces shooting mainly at night to see if it lived up to the hype. I’m glad to say that the short answer is that it does and its low light video is truly stellar, easily beating my 5DmkII and 7D.

The film you see here was filmed in just one night of horse racing at the Singapore Turf Club. Shooting at between 1600 and 6400 ASA under just the floodlights I got results that were far cleaner than I’d expected. The rolling shutter effects seem to be improved over the 5DmkII too, its still there but you need to look much harder for it. The one thing that is still evident on the pre-production model I was testing is aliasing, personally I didn’t find it too distracting but make up your own mind.

Canon 1DmkIV _ The races from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

I had not one but two 1DmkIV bodies from Canon to play with along with a selection for lenses from a 14mm right up to a 300mm f2.8. I wanted to test not just the low light but the slow motion capability as well so I shot this whole film on 720p/60 and then slowed it down to 23.98 fps using Cinematools, before editing in Final Cut Pro. The final footage you see here is ungraded and pretty much straight from the camera. The picture profile was set to neutral with contrast and sharpness reduced to min. If I have time I will try and grade this piece later and re-post it.

Shooting with a prototype Singapore made high quality slider and the 1DmkIV with 14mm lens

I should mention that the LCD screen somehow seems to be better than that of the 5DmkII or 7D, it is the same resolution but I found it easier to focus with. Which brings me on to one of the other new gadgets I had to test. The LCDVF viewfinder from Estonia, although I am used to the more expensive Z-finder from Zacuto, this little gadget worked quite well. It doesn’t have a diopter adjustment but I didn’t find that to be a problem with my eyesight. I actually quite like the image it gave with the 1DmkIV, being slightly smaller than the Z-finder it was still a breeze to focus. I did have one annoying problem though, the magnetic frame that attaches to the back of the camera kept falling off, I didn’t have long to allow it to set on the back before shooting and it was damned hot so maybe that caused the fault. LCDVF recommend a certain way of applying the frame which I had no time to do so maybe I’m being a little unfair. It is also possible that the new LCD on the 1DmkIV has a slightly different coating to the 5DmkII that is less sticky, who knows? sadly I had to give the 1DmkIV back so someone else will have to figure that one out.

I also tested the camera with a new as yet unreleased prototype heavy duty slider by local Singaporean designer Lee Kang Swee, this is like my original Glidetrack slider but far more heavy duty and probably better suited to the weight of a fully loaded 1DmkIV. I used it for all the slider shot you see in this film, I’m going to keep in touch and see how this product develops.

Lastly, I couldn’t have done it without the help of Singaporean photographer and filmmaker Wee Han Yeo who organised the shoot and assisted me throughout, you can see his great work at www.tripeaksimagery.com

Not one but two Canon 1DmkIV cameras out on the track

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.