Canon defining the future of DSLRs
It started with a leak from Amazon.com yesterday, and ended up with Canon making the official announcement today. The 40D and 1DsMKIII are now official, as well as a new 14mm wide angle lens and a new smaller simpler 4 stop IS system in two of their low end lenses. If pouring through numbers is your thing, then DP Review has all the info you need.33
Obviously most of the buzz is around the new 21 mega pixels of the 1Ds, and of course the average Canon user is understandably happy that they now have an option that competes with Nikon’s D200. For me however the interest is in the IS, and most importantly the 14bit RAW files.
More Bits Equals More Detail
The 1DMKIII was the first Canon camera to come out with 14 bit RAW, and with the release of these new camera’s it is clear Canon intend for all their camera’s to have this from now on. For those that don’t know why this is a big thing, you need to understand how the camera stores the image. When the photo is taken, the sensor, which is actually an analogue device, needs to have its signal converted to a digital representation for storing. The resulting digital information used to be restricted to 4096 levels of brightness per pixel. While this seems like a lot, you need to understand that the levels are not linear. The brightest stop has half of these, with the next stop having half of what remains, and so forth until you reach the shadows where there are very few levels of brightness. This results in less shadow detail and is why many digital photographers suggest exposing to the right (another words exposing the image so that it is as bright as possible and then bring it down in post processing).
Now 14 bits goes from 4096 levels to 16384! This translates to better detail and tonality and one hopes, a noticeable increase in shadow detail. With Canon now having 14 bits as the norm, we can hope the other manufacturers follow suit, and in the end we all benefit.
IS for the caffeine lover
Canon’s new IS appears to be much smaller, and we hope cheaper, than the existing IS solution they have. They claim it’s effectiveness is equal to the old IS, and from the lenses they have decided to release it with, it seems clear that they intend to make IS available to as many people as possible.
I’ve been avoiding buying IS lenses due to the cost, but when these come out, my willpower may well be sapped.3
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Tags: canon, digital photography, DSLR, Hardware, News
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