In this video we share our first impressions of the Canon EOS R5’s impressive video specifications, as well as some other features that might get lost in the headlines.
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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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As part of today’s ‘Imaging Unleashed’ virtual press conference, Canon has announced the Canon C300 Mark III, its latest Super 35mm cinema camera with a new Dual Gain Output (DGO) sensor and a modular design based on the same frame as Canon’s C500 Mark II.
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If the outside of the Canon C300 Mark III looks both different and familiar, there’s a reason why: it uses the exact same body as Canon’s C500 Mark II camera. This design not only allows for more modularity within the C300 line but also means all accessories designed for the C500 Mark II will also work with the new C300 Mark III. Canon has also added anamorphic desqueeze support for 2x and 1.3x lenses, as well as a user-swappable lens mount accessory that makes it easy to swap out lens mounts without the need to take it to a service center (it comes with an EF mount, but can also use EF cinema lock and PL mount lenses with the optional kits).
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| An illustration from Canon’s virtual press conference that shows how each pixel on the sensor is split into two different diodes. |
At the heart of the C300 Mark III is a new 4K Super 35mm DGO sensor powered by Canon’s new DIGIC DV7 video imaging processor. The new DGO system allows the sensor to capture up to 16 stops of dynamic range by splitting each pixel into two diodes that simultaneously capture two images at different gain levels. Helpfully, this is a completely different ‘dual gain’ concept to the one used by most other camera makers, in which all the sensor’s pixels use one of two gain modes.
These two diodes within each pixel are also used to power the phase-detection of Canon’s Dual Pixel CMOS AF, which will now work at up to 120 frames per second (fps) with the new C300 Mark III.
Also new is support for Canon’s Cinema RAW Light format, which Canon first announced alongside the EOS C200. The Cinema RAW Light format is a more lightweight version of its Cinema RAW format that captures Raw video data in files as little as 1/5th the size of a standard Cinema RAW file. Canon Europe has a great breakdown of its Cinema RAW Light capture format.
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The sensor is capable of recording 4K DCI/UHD video at up to 120fps, as well as 2K at up to 180fps with 4:2:2 10-bit XF-AVC recording. Canon has also included Canon Log 2 and Log 3 support, 12G-SDI output over a single BNC cable, timecode I/O, genlock input BNCs as well as User LUT support for applying custom LUTS in-camera and two CFexpress card slots.
Without the included grip, the modular frame measures in at 183mm (7.2”) for both width and height and 149mm (5.9”) deep with a weight of roughly 1750g (3.9lbs).
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Canon says the camera will be ‘available later in 2020’ with an estimated retail price of $ 10.999. The camera will come with 13 accessories, including a 4.3” LCD monitor, the GR-V1 grip, a BP-A60 battery, a battery charger and more. It is currently available to pre-order on Adorama and B&H.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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The Canon EOS R5 is making waves thanks to its impressive video specifications. Not since the days of the 5D Mark II has there been this much enthusiasm from videographers around a Canon DSLR or mirrorless camera.
Canon practically launched the DSLR video revolution. It owned the marketshare and, more importantly, the mindshare, of DSLR video enthusiasts, yet lost that momentum over the next few years. It often seemed as though video simply wasn’t a priority, or that Canon’s innovation had slowed and it was content to rest on its laurels.
However, there’s a bit more to the story and it may help explain why we didn’t see much progress from Canon for a few years: and why it may finally be back and ready to go big.
It turns out Canon was almost as surprised at the 5D II’s success as a video tool as everyone else, something confirmed to me by Canon’s Senior Technical Advisor for Film and TV Production, Tim Smith, and that success helped solidify Canon’s decision to enter the cinema market.
It turns out Canon was almost as surprised at the 5D II’s success as a video tool as everyone else.
Over the next few years Canon took a side trip and developed an entire line of motion picture products, called Cinema EOS, which undoubtedly entailed a lot of risk, investment and innovation.
It even built a technical center in Burbank, CA, in the heart of the Hollywood film industry. As Smith explained to me, that move wasn’t just so that Canon could support its Hollywood customers, but so that it could learn from its customers in Hollywood.
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| Canon built a facility in Burbank, California, in order to forge relationships within the industry. |
Canon cinema products are well regarded and have been used for numerous feature films and TV shows. Strategically, Canon took a long-game approach by targeting up-and-coming filmmakers to build future market share. That strategy seems to have paid off, as evidenced by the cameras used to produce films appearing in prominent festivals like Sundance. It’s an impressive performance considering Canon wasn’t even in the business ten years ago.
During these years, Canon’s seemingly forgotten, and sometimes maligned, DSLRs saw relatively few significant video improvements. Canon was still innovating; it was just innovating elsewhere. Unfortunately, it wasn’t sharing that technology and know-how with DSLR users, deciding they didn’t need it, didn’t want it, or that it might cannibalize Cinema EOS.
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| Canon’s first full-frame mirrorless camera, the EOS R, had lackluster video specs compared to many competitors. |
Meanwhile, competitors jumped in. Panasonic, Sony, Nikon, and even Fujifilm – a company whose video once produced moiré so colorful it inspired technicolor fever dreams – all earned significant street cred with videographers.
Which brings us back to the EOS R5. With the R5, Canon appears to have pulled out all the stops for video. On paper at least, it sets new class leading standards, something we haven’t said about a Canon’s main EOS line in quite some time. It’s difficult to believe that the R5 wasn’t heavily influenced by Canon’s experience developing cinema products.
It’s worth emphasizing the ‘on paper’ part; we all know that spec sheets don’t tell the whole story and we haven’t tested the camera. We’ll do that, I promise, but assuming there aren’t any serious gotchas, let’s look at how the R5 potentially raises the bar for cameras in its class.
On paper at least, it sets new class leading standards – something we haven’t said about a Canon DSLR or mirrorless camera in quite some time.
The R5’s headline feature is 8K video. You may or may not need 8K video, but let’s acknowledge Canon for the technical achievement. After all, if it was easy other manufacturers would have done it already. From a marketing perspective, just having ‘8K’ on the box goes a long way.
However, it looks like Canon is trying to do more than check a box on a marketing punch-list. The camera uses the full width of its sensor to record up to 8K/30p in 4:2:2 10-bit color using the H.265 codec. It will include Canon’s C-Log gamma and, for HDR capture, HDR PQ. Like the recent EOS 1D X III, it will also record Raw video internally.
What’s more, Canon says that dual pixel autofocus works in all 8K modes, unlike some other models that don’t support this feature in the best video settings.
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| The R5’s headline feature is 8K video, with dual pixel autofocus available in all 8K modes. |
We would be pleased to see these specs on a camera that shoots 4K, but Canon has done it with four times as many pixels. What’s possibly more impressive than resolution is what Canon must have done under the hood to pull it off. This level of video processing requires serious bandwidth and computing power.
There are still big unknowns. One would expect a camera with these specs to generate a lot of heat and the R5 doesn’t appear to have a fan, something that’s common on high end video cameras. Heat, battery or card capacity will put a limit on it, and potentially not a very high one.
4K video is standard at this point, but 4K/120p is notable. It’s the first time we’ve seen it on a mirrorless camera, and even the list of models supporting 4K/60p is relatively short. 4K/120p translates into 5x slow motion on a 24p timeline without dropping down to HD resolution and will be useful to a lot of people. It also raises expectations for other cameras.
Not everything on the R5 is cutting edge. One notable area where it plays catch up with competitors is 5-axis in-body image stabilization (IBIS).
Canon historically relied on lens-based IS, which isn’t surprising considering the EF lens system was originally designed for film cameras. In contrast, the RF-mount is an all-digital system with no film legacy. Even so, IBIS feels like it’s overdue. It’s hard to give Canon extra credit for adding it, but we warmly welcome it to the IBIS club.
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I’m pleased to see that R5 has dual card slots. It’s a pro-level camera and legitimately deserves two card slots. However, by making one of those a UHS-II SD card slot, Canon has essentially made the R5 a single card video camera, an odd choice for a camera with so much emphasis on video.
Finally, let’s not forget that the R5 is also a stills camera, and one that should be competitive in resolution against the Nikon Z7 or Sony a7R III. Given the improvements we’ve seen in Canon’s sensors of late, we expect it will deliver great image quality, particularly when paired with the impressive RF lenses Canon has been turning out.
In recent years, Canon has often been criticized for lack of innovation or for holding back video features to protect its Cinema EOS line. There’s some truth to that, and users have rightly challenged Canon to do better. It appears that with the R5 Canon is trying to do just that.
This is the company that owned much of the early mindshare among DSLR video shooters. If Canon’s goal is to recapture the magic of the 5D Mark II in the mirrorless camera world, the R5 makes a pretty strong statement.
If Canon’s goal is to recapture the magic of the 5D Mark II in the mirrorless camera world, the R5 makes a pretty strong statement.
However, the landscape has changed since 2008. This is a crowded space with solid competition and it may be hard to convince some to return. Additionally, as impressive as 8K is, it’s simply not a priority for many. However, Canon has a habit of playing the long game, as evidenced by its Cinema EOS strategy, and it will be interesting to see how it plays this one.
What may be most exciting is that Canon seems to have gotten its mojo back and is beginning to mix things up a bit. Even if you’re not a Canon user that should be good news: healthy competition results in better products for all of us.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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Last week, winners and finalists of the 6th annual Fine Art Photography Awards (FAPA) were announced. Dutch portrait artist Ewa Cwikla won $ 3,000 in prize money and the title of Professional Fine Art Photographer of the Year for her photo ‘Candy Smoke.’ Greek photographer Ioanna Natsikou was declared Amateur Fine Art Photographer of the Year. She received $ 2,000 in prize money for her series ‘Interlude in the Blue.’
The competition received 4,300 entries from 89 countries across 20 categories including abstract, architecture, night photography, and travel. Winners and nominees were selected by a panel of international judges including Marietta Varga, Per Schorn, Simon Åslund, Julien Palast, Ekaterina Busygina, Per Kasch, Dainius Sciuka, Aleksei Boiko, and Salvatore Matarazzo.
FAPA is now accepting entries for their 7th annual competition. In the spirit of discovering emerging talent, per the organization’s press release, it is open to professional and amateur photographers from all countries. This year’s full professional winners gallery and full amateur winners gallery are currently available to view on FAPA’s official site.
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Artist statement:
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Artist Statement: ‘Interlude in Blue’ is a body of work that portrays the female figure in personal spaces enclosed in a world of silence and desire, touching upon themes of loneliness, isolation and alienation.
Through the repetitive process of ‘iteration,’ the viewer can see all these phenomenologically identical, yet different unidentified female characters unfold; an attempt to puzzle out, discover and understand the enigma and the complexity of identity; how many different personas can I/we be on the ‘stage’ of everyday life?
This series seeks to engage the viewer in a private world of reverie and self-absorption.
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Artist Statement: These images are an exploration of the varied and incredible patterns In Tepee Canyon Agate from South Dakota USA using a 10 power microscope objective and focus stacking to gain depth of field. I have always been amazed by the patterns in agate that are not visible to the human eye. When I discovered Micro Photography it opened up an entirely new range of possibilities and discoveries with my photography.
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Artist Statement: In my ‘Building Constructs’ series of work, my intention is to focus in on individual buildings, their architectural form and defining features, accentuating these elements through distortion and manipulation. This allows a freedom from concern for logistics and practicality, but the images are nevertheless a tribute to the minds that go into creating functioning superstructures, a celebration of the boundaries being pushed by the evermore gravity-defying architecture of the world.
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Artist Statement: Rays of Light showcases the astonishing annual aggregation of mobula rays off the coat of Baja Mexico.
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Artist Statement: ‘The fire within’ is a story about emotions penetrating physical structure and setting blood vessels aflame. It is about adaptation to one’s self and the new habitat. The flame is a metaphor of purification and rebirth, and ascendance to one’s true self.
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Artist Statement: The intention behind this series is not to show crime or poverty, this is obvious. The idea behind these photos is to generate empathy and understanding for people in other life situations and to break down prejudices against others.The series shows the daily life of a family living illegally in the electromagnetic field of overhead power lines in Playa del Carmen / Mexico.
Flor and Romero, originally from Chiapas, have arrived 5 years ago, together with their 6 sons to ‘Las Torres’ a squatter settlement under high voltage towers in Playa del Carmen / Mexico. It is an area that has been invaded by 700 families in the right-of-way of the overhead electric power lines and spreads over 10 km. The series shows moments of their lives under this ‘charged’ circumstances.
A life in a legal blackhole which makes it one of the most dangerous parts of the city, neither police nor ambulances dare to enter. Due to the Mexican law, that forbids housing under the electromagnetic field of the high voltage cables, the government doesn’t provide basic requirements, like water, electricity and a sewerage system.
Giving up is not an option.
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Artist Statement: The Cham girl is returning home with herds of sheep in Ninh Thuan, Vietnam.
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Artist Statement: The presence of plastic in the sea represents a serious problem in our habitat. The purpose of this photography is to represent the sea through plastic sheets, but from a creative point of view.
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Artist Statement: Poetry of rocks and sand in Death Valley.
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Artist Statement: The sun had set in the Wadden Sea. Suddenly out of nowhere the girl came on the Icelandic horse and rode out into the sea where there was low tide. Beautiful picture with insight into the infinitely changing moods and expressions of the Wadden Sea in Denmark.
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Artist Statement: The magic influence of the Water in the Nature.
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Artist Statement: Dominique created this series out of her passion for the dramatic landscapes of the Swiss alps. To her understanding, it is crucial to persevere this region that gives
us air to breathe, water to nourish our bodies and beauty to caress our souls.
Rushing portrays the speed with which our competitive society is racing through their lives.
In rush we are barely able to hear our surroundings.
In rush we are barely able to see what is in front of us.
In rush we are barely able to comprehend what our behavior causes.
Rushing not only blurs our sight, but all of our senses.
We are numbly rushing into an unknown future…
For this series Dominique travelled across Switzerland portraying dramatic landscape scenes to encourage people to see beyond their accelerated every day life routines. She suggests it is time to implement more harmony into our lives and respectfully treat them as one of our most important relationships.
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Artist Statement: Hi, my name is Manuel Martins, I’m a 27 years old Portuguese national living in Lisbon. With my street photography I like to create beautiful, surreal or even puzzling constructs, that have reality, it’s scenarios from our daily lives and light and it’s absence as prime matters. Along with this I also try to distill who I am, my life experiences, my feelings and perceptions of reality into the photograph itself.
By nature I’m an introverted and shy person, and for those same reasons, I’ve never been able to fully understand society and find my place in it. That changed though, on the first time I picked up a camera and found street photography. This series then, ‘The pursuit of being and belonging,’ is my homage to street photography and what it means to me.
Because when I’m out, slowly walking the pavement step by step, I not only pursue photographs, but also a way of belonging in our world, by being there with the camera on my hand, to tell my story and to show the hidden gems of our day-to-day world, those that many manage to disregard and so hopefully, bring some magic back to the viewer’s lives.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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If you’ve never heard of Roland Barthes, congrats – clearly you were never forced to study structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstructionism or semiotics. Lucky you.
It was as a semiologist that Barthes (b 1915 – d 1980) was best known, and in simple terms, semiotics is the study of signs, symbols and their meaning. For obvious reasons, academic texts that deal with semiotics (and structuralism, and post-structuralism, and deconstructivism) tend towards the abstruse. When the king of the deconstructionists Jacques Derrida (of whose work ‘abstruse’ would count as a highly charitable description) passed away in 2004, satirical website The Onion ran a single sentence headline: Jacques Derrida “dies”. That joke (and variations on it) are, trust me, the only funny thing that has ever come out of semiotics, structuralism, post-structuralism or deconstructionism. Reading the work of certain semiologists is like trying to argue with a hungry 3-year old who has an MA.
The reason I’m writing about Roland Barthes on DPReview is that Barthes was fascinated by photography, and wrote one of my all-time favorite books about it – ‘Camera Lucida’, published in 1980. Photography didn’t attract much academic interest until the 1970s and 80s, and ‘Camera Lucida’, alongside Susan Sontag’s ‘On Photography’ is among the most influential (and enjoyable) books of its period to deal with photography as a cultural phenomenon, not just in the obvious way, as an art and practise. You do not need to know anything about philosophy to read ‘Camera Lucida’ and you might actually enjoy it more if you don’t.
Photography is an odd kind of art-form. You can’t ‘read’ a photograph like you can text (which is the kind of thing that annoys the hell out of semiologists), and being by its nature infinitely reproducible, a photograph doesn’t have the uniqueness of a painting. Consider also that to ‘make’ a photograph takes no training. In many circles, photography is still considered the poor cousin of ‘real’ art and it’s easy to understand why. Just remember Kodak’s famous slogan: “You push the button, we do the rest”.
As Louis Daguerre said, the photograph “gives Nature an ability to reproduce herself”
Barthes thought that photography is actually closer to theatre than to painting (because of its direct line of connection to life). He was not a photographer – “too impatient for that” – and had no interest in investigating photography as an activity. He wanted to get to grips with what photographs are and what makes them unique.
In perhaps his most famous statement on photography (made before he wrote ‘Camera Lucida’) he suggests that the photograph is a semiotically unique, paradoxical artifact – unique because it is a “message without a code”. It doesn’t need a code (or shouldn’t) because in theory, the message of a photograph is reality itself. This is the photograph as a purely representational artifact – the product of light rays, entering a camera from the surface of a tiny corner of reality. As Louis Daguerre said, the photograph “gives Nature an ability to reproduce herself”. And he ought to know.
That’s the theory, at least. The problem (the paradox) of course is that despite the fact that a photograph is a mechanically-created object, it’s very hard to imagine a photograph that isn’t highly coded. Everything from how a portrait subject is posed, to the photographers’ choice of background, or camera angle etc., can affect how we feel about a photograph, and ultimately what we take away from it. It’s actually very difficult to conceive of an example of what Barthes calls the ‘brute image’; a hypothetical photograph free from any kind of connoted meaning.
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| One of a collection of images taken by a relative of my grandmother and grandfather on a honeymoon trip around England in late summer 1939 (you can read more about the project and see more images here).
Because of when they were taken (just weeks before the outbreak of WWII) and how (they were shot on then-rare color film) they’re all rich in what Barthes called ‘Studium’. For me, the ‘punctum’ in this shot is my grandparents’ cat (bottom of the photograph, in front of the tent, facing the camera) which – apparently – traveled with them. |
In ‘Camera Lucida’, Barthes suggests that there are two elements to every photograph. Borrowing from latin, he calls these the studium (‘study’ – think application or commitment) and the punctum (‘point’ – think puncture or prick).
In simple terms, the studium is all the information which can be gleaned from a photograph which derives from the cultural context in which it exists. As such, the studium is experienced according to the viewer’s personal, political and cultural viewpoint. A good example of a kind of photography which is rich in studium would be traditional western photojournalism. Assuming you’re familiar with the culture in which they were taken, such photographs are pretty easy to ‘decode’ when we see them in our daily newspapers. We know what they are ‘of’.
The punctum, on the other hand, is an element (or elements) of a photograph which don’t necessarily contribute to their overall meaning or intended message, but which grab or ‘prick’ us for some reason. Barthes gives the example of a 1924 photograph by Lewis Hine of a developmentally disabled child in a New Jersey institution, with a bandage on her finger. For Barthes, the ‘punctum’ is the bandage – an “off-center detail” which catches his attention and which provokes a “tiny shock”. The studium, in contrast, is “liking, not […] loving” – a “slippery, irresponsible interest one takes in [things] one finds ‘all right’ “. The bandage has nothing to do with the studium of the Hine photograph, but it interests him more.
Most of us take pictures of places, people and things, without spending a lot of time thinking about their content beyond whether it appeals to us aesthetically
This might all sound very abstract, but it’s actually a really useful way of thinking about how we take photographs. Try categorizing your own work by Barthes’ definitions. Are you someone whose photography is all about the studium? I suspect that most of us are. Most of us take pictures of places, people and things, without spending a lot of time thinking about their content beyond whether it appeals to us aesthetically. We can learn from photographs like this, but it’s generally (literally) surface-level stuff.
The punctum is more valuable, says Barthes, because it’s unexpected. Uncoded, and more interesting. And to return to the comparison with painting, a punctum of the kind that Barthes describes could only exist in a photograph, because of the unique way in which photographs are created.
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| By the time I was able to really know my grandparents they were old (and my grandfather died when I was in my early teens). For me, working on these images offered an amazing opportunity to encounter them them as young people. In Barthes words, I was “gradually moving back in time” with these people, both of whom are now dead.
Thanks to a DPReview reader, I even know what happened to the car. |
Even in translation. Barthes is a great writer. He’s smart (obviously) but also funny. He’s wonderfully catty about types of photographs and photographers that he doesn’t like, and he correctly identifies one of the most creatively destructive traps that you can fall into as a photographer: thinking that just because you took a picture of something, it must be important. Ouch.
To me, the main appeal of ‘Camera Lucida’ is that it’s much more than just an academic dissertation – it’s a deeply personal, very emotional book. Less philosophy in many places, and more biography.
The latter part of the book, especially, contains some quite beautiful writing. This is highly unusual in a work of philosophy (trust me). Perhaps the reason for the switch to a less academic and more personal mode of writing is that while he was working on ‘Camera Lucida’, Barthes’ beloved mother Henriette died. And after she died he went looking for her. Not literally, but emotionally, hoping to find the essence of her in family photographs.
He talks about this process in terms of a “painful labor”, “gradually moving back in time with her, looking for the truth of the face I had loved”. He describes “straining towards the essence of her identity, […] struggling among images partially true, and therefore totally false”. What he was finding in the photographs, to his frustration, were merely “fragments”.
And then, finally, he made a breakthrough. He found what he was looking for in a single photograph of his mother as a young girl. Among a mass of pictures of Henriette as an adult, it was in this photograph of a five year-old child – a child of course who he never met in life – that he truly recognised the person he had known and loved.
Barthes doesn’t exactly admit defeat in ‘Camera Lucida’, but he does concede that maybe things are a little more complicated than he once thought.
In the final chapters of ‘Camera Lucida’ (it’s a very short book, most chapters are little more than a single page) Barthes revisits his central premise of the studium and the punctum, and revises it, suggesting a third element. Specifically, another type of punctum, not of form, “but of intensity”. This second punctum is Time.
In ‘Camera Lucida’, Barthes the famous philosopher gives way to Barthes the grieving son. Yes, much of the first half of the book is more or less standard fare for someone with his academic preoccupations (and indeed it picks up from his earlier work on the same subject, exploring the photograph’s potential as a purely representational object) but he’s not just flexing his intellectual muscles for the sake of it. Barthes is writing about time (he has a wonderful description of cameras as ‘clocks for seeing’), memory, and death. When it comes to the ultimate challenge of ‘penetrating’ photographs to find their meaning, Barthes doesn’t exactly admit defeat in ‘Camera Lucida’, but he does concede that maybe things are a little more complicated than he once thought.
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| A girl bathing by Stiffkey bridge, in Norfolk. August 1939. Looking at this picture I can’t help thinking who she is, what kind of life she had, and whether she’s still alive (if so, she must be in her late 80s or 90s now). |
‘Camera Lucida’ may not make you a better photographer (it might actually make you pause before picking up your camera again!) but it will probably make you a more thoughtful one. There is a reasonably good chance, too, that it will make you cry. There’s a a lot of post-war Continental philosophy that might have the same effect, but for very different reasons.
I hope that after reading my incredibly shallow analysis of it, you do read ‘Camera Lucida’. And if you do, I hope that it will remind you of the unique role that photography has in our lives, and of its power. Photographs let us travel back in time, and in that way they enable us to maintain relationships with people that we’ve lost. In the end, it’s a book about love.
Is there a particular book which made a difference to your life as a photographer? We’d love to hear from you – and you might even get featured on the DPReview homepage. Leave us a short note in the comments and if you have a longer story to tell, send it to us, and we’ll take it from there.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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Check out our sample gallery from the Nikon Coolpix P950, the perfect camera for social distancing thanks to its 24-2000mm equiv. zoom lens.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Nikon’s Coolpix P950 features an incredible 24-2000mm equiv. zoom lens. But other than taking closeup photos of the moon, what’s this camera that looks like a small bazooka good for? Quite a lot, it turns out.
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Sample photos from this episode
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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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This article was originally published in 2017 as part of our ‘Throwback Thursday’ series.
A few months ago I wrote a short article about the Canon EOS D30. The D30 was a groundbreaking camera in its day, being the first ‘affordable’ DSLR and the first to feature a large-format CMOS sensor. Yes, its autofocus system was woeful, and the LCD display on the back was about as useful as making a sketch from memory, but back in 2000, everybody wanted one.
I was definitely curious about the D30, but given that in 2000 I was a first-year undergraduate student, such an expensive camera was far beyond my reach. It would be another couple of years before I saved up enough money to buy my first DSLR, and the camera I eventually settled on was the successor to the successor of the EOS D30 – the counterintuitively named Canon EOS 10D1.
The break with Canon’s previous naming convention was appropriate, though. The 10D was a substantially new camera compared to the models that preceded it, and it replaced the D60 with an almost indecent haste (the D60 had been on the market for little more than a year before the 10D came along). Compared to the plastic-bodied D30/D60 it was better built, featured a far superior rear LCD (with a usable magnification feature) offered a more rounded styling, closer in spirit to the EOS-1D series, and was much quicker in operation.
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| The 10D was a thoroughly modern camera in 2003, and remained on the market for some time. Canon took the basic form factor of the D60 and modernized every aspect of that model’s performance and styling. |
The 10D’s DIGIC processor drove a blisteringly fast (ahem…) continuous shooting rate of 3 fps, operation was snappier, including reduced shutter-lag, and the 10D’s 7-point autofocus system was a huge improvement over the 3-point system in the D30 and D60, which seemed prehistoric even back then. Although the 10D’s 6MP CMOS sensor was based on the one previously used in the D60, Canon had refined the manufacturing process in the meantime. Consequently it offered slightly better resolution than its predecessor, superior noise performance and a wider ISO span, topping out at a grainy but usable ISO 3200.
Remarkably, despite all of these improvements, the 10D was also $ 500 cheaper than the D60.
Although it definitely wasn’t in the same ballpark as the EOS-1D in terms of speed or construction, the 10D beat the pants off Canon’s then-current pro sports model in terms of image quality. Significantly, the core specification of the 10D was close enough to the EOS 30 / Elan 7 that film holdouts didn’t have to feel too badly short-changed by the costly jump into digital.
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With the EOS 10D’s accessory grip attached, it was almost possible to believe that I was shooting with an EOS-1D.
Almost… |
So, to recap – the 10D offered a very usable sensitivity range of ISO 100-3200, 3 fps continuous shooting, 7-point AF system, magnesium-alloy body shell and a substantial price reduction. In 2003, it all added up to a hugely desirable camera.2
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Because it was so popular, the 10D was pretty scarce for several months after its introduction. After saving up my wages for an entire summer (a story told in more detail here), I ended up purchasing mine from a ‘big box’ high-street retailer, because it was out of stock everywhere else – something I later came to regret.
I decided to pull the trigger on a 10D for several reasons. In a rare attack of foresight, I determined that this digital thing probably wasn’t a fad, and with ambitions to become a photographer of some kind, it seemed sensible to dive in as soon as possible. And while previous DSLRs had felt like too much of a compromise, the 10D seemed to meet my most important criteria.
As a budding theatre and live music photographer, I was hitting the limits of what I could do with film, both technically and practically. Technically speaking, high ISO film exposed in marginal light and processed at your average high-street pharmacy simply doesn’t look very good – especially if you’re talking about high-speed color emulsions. From a practical standpoint, development and printing turnaround times were a problem if I wanted to get images to people quickly. And forget about serious commercial work – by 2003, the magazines and websites I was interested in working for were increasingly insisting on digital file delivery.
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| A typical monochrome conversion of a shot taken in the Assembly Rooms Theatre. The 10D’s highest ISO settings were grainy, but perfectly usable – especially when converted into black and white. |
The first quasi ‘commercial’ work I ever did was head-shots and performance images for Durham University’s student theatre. Student productions rotated every few weeks, and every production wanted some prints to display outside the theatre. I can’t remember the first production that I shot digitally (was it Harold Pinter’s ‘The Caretaker’?)3 but compared to film, it was vastly easier. Ironically, I was a sort of caretaker for the theatre at the time, since I lived in a small flat above the lobby. Being able to shoot a dress-rehearsal in the theatre, then head upstairs to make my edit and print the images – sometimes all in the same evening – was a revelation. I can’t remember how much I charged for my services, but I made enough over a couple of years to buy a couple of new lenses.
And for a while it seemed like it was lenses that were the problem. Initially I had two lenses for my 10D. A 50mm F1.8 (of course), and a 24-70mm F2.8L. Later I added a 70-200mm F2.8L and a 17-40mm F4L (all purchased used). The 10D worked perfectly with all of them, except the 24-70mm. For whatever reason, camera and lens did not get on at all. Chronic back-focusing was apparent even through the 10D’s viewfinder, and this was before the days of AF micro-adjustment. The 24-70mm was simply unusable on my 10D, but it focused perfectly on other DSLRs that I borrowed from friends, or rented in an increasingly desperate attempt to figure out what was going on.
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| A live shot from one of my first proper commissions – a major awards show tour that came through Newcastle in 2005 – not far from where I lived at the time. It looks like I benefited a bit from someone else’s flash, in this shot. Thank you – whoever you were. |
The retailer I bought my 10D from wasn’t particularly interested in helping, so I sent it back to Canon at least four times during the first year I owned it, shooting on film during the long intervals when it was away for service. Every time it came back as ‘up to specification,’ but the back-focusing problem remained. Finally, after a lot of back and forth, I send the 10D in with the troublesome 24-70mm, and was rewarded with a ‘fixed’ camera, complete – funnily enough – with a new serial number. Knowing what I know now, I should have sent the camera and lens back together in the first place.
Even this frustrating experience wasn’t enough to dull my excitement at owning and using the 10D. It really was a fantastic camera at the time, and it helped me gain a footing in the not-at-all-lucrative world of performance photography. My first magazine commissions were shot with the 10D. I learned about the benefits of shooting Raw with the 10D (albeit rather belatedly). The first camera I ever had confiscated at a music venue4 was the 10D. It was my main camera for a couple of very formative years, before being relegated as a second body beside to the truly magnificent EOS-1D Mark II (which I’m hoping to write about at a later date).
The 10D couldn’t do everything (it choked up when shooting several Raw files in a sequence, and in low light its off-center AF points were little more than decorative), but it opened up a completely new world for me.
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| One of my favorite bands of the mid-2000s was ‘Hope of the States’. I probably photographed them more than any other band, for a while. This shot is from another awards show in London in 2005. Despite the off-center composition, most likely I used the central AF point for this image, since the 10D’s off-center points didn’t work very well at all in low light. |
And it’s a world I’m still living in. Without the 10D, there is no doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t have become a music photographer, and if I hadn’t become a music photographer, I probably wouldn’t have ended up as a photography journalist. Whether or not that’s a good thing is something I’m happy to leave to the commenters to decide.
Did you own a 10D? Let us know.
Read Phil Askey’s review of the EOS 10D (2003)
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1 – A note on Canon’s confusing naming convention. The ‘D30’ because it was a digital camera with 3 million pixels. The D60 because it was basically a D30 with a new 6 million pixel sensor. And the switch to 10D because – I assume – Canon and Nikon’s lawyers had a little chat.
2 – In fact, just about the only people who weren’t singing Canon’s praises at the time were recent D60 owners.
3 – The Assembly Rooms – it’s still there, and this being student theatre, there’s every chance that they’re currently staging a production of Harold Pinter’s ‘The Caretaker’, too.
4 – It was all just one big misunderstanding. Specifically around two people’s definitions of the word ‘permission’.
If you have a piece of gear that you’d like to write about, we’d love to hear from you – and you might even get featured on the DPReview homepage. Leave us a short note in the comments and if you have a longer story to tell, send it to us, and we’ll take it from there.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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Swiss camera manufacturer Alpa has won a case in the Chinese courts against a company that was making and distributing cameras and accessories copied from its own models. Chinese brand GuoZh has been told to pay damages to Alpa over its FY-2015 camera which is a direct copy of Alpa’s A12 series models. The company had copied the camera, backs and accessories and was selling under its own name, and had even started camera clubs for users of its copied products.
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| Copied Alpa camera and accessories shown on the GuoZh website |
Some of the products produced by GuoZh were branded Alpa and sold as convincing counterfeits to Alpa users, while others were branded with the GouZh name and sold in China to potential Alpa users at a much lower price.
It looked at one stage as though Alpa would not win its case as it hadn’t applied for protection under China’s complicated copyright law, but in the end the company was able to file a claim that Alpa cameras come under China’s ‘applied art’ rules that state that everyday objects can be seen as art.
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| Genuine (left) and fake (right) Mamiya roll film backs |
According to an article on the case by Swiss newspaper NZZ GuoZh owner Guo Zhonggen was nonchalant during the final hearing and tried to give the impression that he owned the intellectual property, which helped move the judge to rule against him. At the end of the final of three hearings he was ordered to pay ‘six-figure damages’ and to apologise on his website, as well as to cease producing Alpa cameras and copies of them. At the time of writing though GouZh is planning an appeal and is still adverting it’s products on its website.
Andre OIdani, Head of Products at Alpa, is quoted as saying “It’s a good feeling that you’re not powerless in the giant system of China after all,” according to NZZ.
The case will give some hope to other photographic manufacturers that feel their products are being copied and sold cheaply by Chinese companies. The report in NZZ says that the Chinese courts are becoming more interested in copyright claims as China’s own products improve and become subject to copies themselves. Journalist Matthias Kamp also says that judges now have better training and are being paid better salaries, but none of the judges is independent as a communist party committee can always step in to have the last word in any case.
For more information on Alpa cameras see the Alpa website.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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Amid ongoing social distancing efforts, both VSCO and GoPro have announced major business changes resulting from the economic downturn. In a post on his LinkedIn account, VSCO CEO Joel Flory revealed that his company had to lay off 45 employees this week. The announcement was followed by a similar message from GoPro, which revealed that it will be reducing its number of employees by 20%.
Many companies are struggling to stay above water as a number of states and countries implement lockdown measures. Many businesses have been forced to temporarily close down, and while others remain in business, a drop in consumer purchasing has left some companies struggling to keep their revenue up.
In a post on his LinkedIn account, Flory said that VSCO had expected 2020 to be ‘a year where we would continue to forward invest into our business.’ However, things didn’t go as planned and Flory said, ‘Overnight our environment changed. We realize that we would need to shift towards running a self-sustaining business.’
The company is giving its laid-off employees a minimum of two months of healthcare coverage and seven weeks of severance pay, according to Flory, who says that the company is also assisting them in other ways. VSCO plans to continue releasing new features this year, though details on what the company has planned weren’t revealed.
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GoPro, meanwhile, published its preliminary Q1 financial requests on April 15 and withdrew its 2020 guidance in light of the pandemic. The company said that it is restructuring its business model to focus on direct-to-consumer sales and that as part of its global restructuring, it plans to lay off more than 20% of its workforce.
These layoffs will contribute to a $ 100 million reduction in operating expenses for the year, according to GoPro, which plans to shed another $ 250 million in operating expenses next year.
Company CEO Nicholas Woodman said that GoPro’s distribution network has been hit by the novel coronavirus pandemic and that as a result, the company must expedite its shift to a ‘more efficient and profitable direct-to-consumer-centric business’ model this year, something GoPro had already been pursuing. ‘We are crushed that this forces us to let go of many talented members of our team,’ Woodman said, ‘and we are forever grateful for their contributions.’
Though GoPro will primarily sell directly to consumers, the company says it will continue to make its products available through ‘select leading retailers’ in only ‘key regions’ for consumers who prefer to buy items indirectly and at physical stores. Other planned changes include reducing office space in five different locations, reducing its sales and marketing throughout this year ‘and beyond,’ as well as cutting spending in other unspecified ways.
Despite the changes, GoPro said that it still plans to move ahead with its 2020 product roadmap, which will include releasing new software, subscriptions and hardware targeted at action camera and smartphone owners. Woodman has voluntarily decided to skip the remainder of his 2020 salary, according to the company, which says its Board of Directors has also made the decision to avoid any additional cash compensation throughout the remainder of the year.
Via: PetaPixel
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)