It arrived yesterday, my new Canon 1Ds Mark III. Graduating up from a 10D is like graduating from a slide rule to a computer (does anyone still remember slide rules or have I limited the people who will understand that analogy to pre-baby boomers?) I spent about two and a half hours last night going through the instruction manual. Yes, there are people who still read the manual, at least in some situations and this was one.
There are so many things that amaze me just from first impressions. The first thing I noticed was that it was actually much lighter than I expected. But my first impressions were made before the battery was installed. 😉 But even with the battery installed it was lighter than I expected. Then I put my 24-70 f/2.8L on it and it got heavy.
The camera is one delight after another. One was the grip and complete set of essential controls (shutter, AF point, AE lock, etc.) on the bottom of the camera (referred to as the Vertical Grip). That way you don’t have to throw your elbow and shoulder out to take a portrait shot. Very cool.
The three (yes, three) LCD screens are nice. One is on the top and two are on the back. The large one, the monitor, has numerous display modes including a RGB histogram. Wow!
It took a while to find some of the functions I’m familiar with on my 10D (about a half hour into reading the manual) but the important ones were there. As with such a complex piece of equipment, one capable of doing so many things, I’ll take another quick pass through the manual in a couple of days.
The next thing to do is to get shooting. There are a couple of functions I’m especially interested in exploring
- Live view
- Long exposure noise reduction
- High ISO speed noise reduction
- Highlight tone priority
From there we’ll move on to HDR and ‘High Speed HDR.’
Stay tuned.
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