DVPhoto

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.

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.

DPReview have their K10D review up now, and it is definitely worth the read.

It seems Pentax may well have a winner here, though not so much a winner that Canon and Nikon have to worry. From the perspective of a photo taking device, it is simply superior to everything in its price range. I won’t go into the long list of features, you can read about them at DPReview; but it seems that Pentax have thought of so many little features that help the photographer out in the field, that one has to wonder what the other players design teams have been doing during the last few years.

Then comes the image…

In this day and age of pixel peeping at 100% on large LCD’s, a camera is going to be judged first and foremost on its image quality! The K10D unfortunately seems to fall down in its jpeg image output, with the images being noticeably softer than the competition. Thankfully this disappears when shooting in RAW, and using ACR to process the RAW images produce nice sharp images that compete well with the competition. Since I shoot RAW almost exclusively, this wouldn’t be a show stopper for me, but I’m sure it would for others.

Then there is the dynamic range of the camera. It’s a full stop less than all of its competition, and that is not something you want. With blown highlights in digital looking so terrible, dynamic range is incredibly important, and to drop from 8 to 7 stops of light recorded will be the death of many shots taken.

I’m sure that many people will love this camera, and with it’s selection of pancake lenses and its upcoming supersonic range, the camera will no doubt bring Pentax back into the digital war. But it hasn’t made me regret having a Canon.

Edit: Luminous Landscape have another review (much less technical much more photographer oriented).

Well if there was any doubt that Sony is serious about becoming a world leader in the dSLR business, they are trying their hardest to put those doubts to rest.

While their new α (alpha) dSLR will already be able to use any of the 16 million or so Konica Minolata compatible lenses that have been sold to date, Sony have announced that they will be releasing 20 new lens models over the next year. I’m sure this will be a great relief to those who have invested heavily in the Konica Minolta system, since it seems Sony is going to make a concerted effort to become one of the major players. Read the rest of this entry »

Sony has officially announced their DSLR camera, α. Slated for summer release this year, the DSLR will be using the Konica Minolta lens mount. While details of the camera are minimal, the large selection of existing lenses available to it will give it a good start. Of course given Sony’s usual strategy of tying the user into comparatively expensive Sony peripherals (ie. memory stick duo), we’ll have to wait and see just how successful they can be.

Read more on Sony’s website.