Canon 1D Mark IV first experiences

Although I'm currently running at the rate of one expensive DSLR a year - a farcical renewal rate - I finally took the plunge and got the new 1D Mark IV (1D4) in early May. Since it saw only limited service the first weekend I didn't get a feel for the camera until a couple of weekends later. It goes without saying that the camera is fast, but from the AF point of view and also in terms of overall handling and motor drive speed. In line with the 1D Mark III it's more difficult to take single shots with this camera. Not impossible, but it requires attention.

But what about the image quality ? In pixels/mm² this outranks my previous favorite - the 5D Mark II - by 27.2 full-frame equivalent pixels to 21.0 megapixels. This is around the same margin that the 5D2 bested the 1D3 (21 vs 17.1) but of course the 1D series tends to have a heavier aliasing filter. And so it is: eye-balling of the pictures suggests that for wildlife the 1D4 has around the same image quality as the 5D2, at best very slightly better. This is no bad thing, since the 5D2 produces very nice images.

Noise on the 5D2 still seems to be a little lower than the 1D Mark IV - perhaps the natural trade-off between pixel size and noise hasn't been overridden by technology advances this time. But the new Lightroom 3 beta 2 has a quite effective noise reduction filter that largely renders the difference moot. While I'd not choose the 1D4 over the 5D2 for low light landscape work, for wildlife work the fast AF on the 1D4 and the APS-H crop factor wins out in most circumstances.

Gotchas: the AF is a little cranky, since with the left-right AF assist points set and using the center focus points it liked to grab the background rather than the subject; the video option is buried in the menus unlike with the 5D2 where I can go into Live View and into Video mode with two button pushes.