1D - Am I wrong to be disappointed?

[NickWilcoxBrown]

Hi Folks,
Like most of us I have been waiting for this camera ever since my D30 arrived. As a magazine photographer, I bought the '30 knowing that it would only do half the job and eagerly awaited 6Mpix or more to cover A4. What do we now have? 21x14cm @300dpi for UK£5500...
OK, the autofocus will work, I can use a TTL flash again and I won't have to send it in for service when it rains, but 4million pix and NO zoom preview .... the pix on Bebit do no favours - Death valley has so many colours on the sand that it looks like its from a compact digital.
Can anyone who has used this camera relieve my extreme disappointment and make me leave my name on the waiting list (where it has been for 9 months)?
Thanks,
Nick

[JohnDevereux]

No, I don't think you're at all wrong to be disappointed. I too was hoping for around 6mp.
It looks to me like the 1D has been *superbly* optimised for speed: perfect for rapid fire, rapid delivery news reporting. I guess we could maybe still hope for a slower but higher megapixel version, like Nikon have done with the D1X and D1H ??
In the meantime, maybe check out the new Contax 6mp? See it here: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0007/00...xn1digital.asp
Or see it in the flesh at the Digital Photography Show in London this Saturday.
All the best
John

I should have posted this here. I too am disapointed. Also you won't be able to use ttl again, read the Canon web site, no ttl or a-ttl.

Major disappointments:

My first is that this camera has not ttl. The Nikon was blasted for it's D1 which was improved in the x. Canon has no ttl or a-ttl. AHHH!. Please don't give me the "you have to be a pro to use this camera autoflash and batteries not included" line. This is a huge oversight and will probably cause me to choose Nikon.

4 mp? Again huge oversight, If Canon needed farm it out then let them use a higher res chip. To compete they at least had to have resolution that matched Nikon. It should have been 6Mp A big blow to portrait shooters. To its credit this was chosen to give 8fps and 1.3 multiplier. Both great features but not at the cost of resolution, IMHO this is out of balance and should have been sacrificed for a resolution higher than the new crop of prosumer cameras.

No USB! Ahhhh! How will I connect it to my laptop (without expensive pcmcia cards). What were they thinking? Nikon made this mistake as well but the cost of usb is negligible and makes it easier for portable interface. (this is a minor grip but hey, they should be ahead of the curve building on Nikons shortcomings)

No video out again a minor grip. But I would choose the voice recording over video out any day if I could only have one, nice feature .

Price, image quality, and focus speed will be deciding factors but it is not looking good for the Canon's flagship (for me). Only time will tell. My only hope the price drop on the D-30 means a new model is to be released shortly, perhaps one that will focus better than a Rebel. My sisters wedding is just around the corner and I will buy one a digital SLR for that occasion. Hopefully if there is a d-30II before then. If not then the EOS-1D will have to blow my socks of for me to get one and it doesn't look good so far.

[ September 26, 2001: Message edited by: RichardM ]

[Paul_Gero]

While I admit I wish the camera had a six mp chip, I am incredibly psyched by this new offering. I think it addresses a huge need, in that digital cameras need to fire like film cameras to truly satisfy the pros. I know I miss many "moments" because the d30 is busy or it just won't keep up with what I'm seeing.
I think Canon came up with this camera specifically to target the sports shooters coming to Salt Lake for the Olympics. What a better place to showcase a new release. And, it'll be the perfect cameras for sports shooters. They'll actually get to make more than one frame of skier racing down the hill.
It wouldn't surprise me one bit, if Canon has a 6mp (or more!) camera waiting in the wings that also with be housed in this new body. Who knows, maybe it'll be a CMOS chip with less fps, but a huge file to satisfy the non-sports shooters, mag shooters, etc.

I am anxious to try this new camera..and glad to see Canon come roaring back...
paul

[Andrew_Scott]

No USB?! Who cares? It has firewire! USB is for amatuer cameras, it's just too slow for a professional grade camera.

I care and I should have make this point a little clearer. It should have included usb2 support which is has been on some computers for 3 months (if they can do it so can Canon). The were backwards compatable with usb1 until the details were ironed out and now they upgrade firmware for full complinacy. At least until then we would have usb1 which by the way is 12mb and would suffice until 480mb for usb2 came along. Again I said it was a minor grip but the computer industry is competitive and on the move. Once again, Canon has proved to me that they are not cutting edge or inovative, they struggle behind the offerings of Nikon when they could have had some foresite and made a dismal resolution 4mp camera shine in other areas to convince me to part with my money and convince me that event though resolution is low, they have other features to buy thier product. They have not done this. The fast capture rate and large buffer are not enough. Perhaps image quality will impress me (not from what I have seen so far) or metering/wb/color accuracy will win me over but at this point Nikon is looking pretty good. But again the jury is out, they may still blow our socks off and I may be premature. I will still have to get over no ttl, which is not a grip but a huge oversite. It seems Canon cannot bring a camera together, the d-30 cannot focus and the 1D has eliminated ttl. What a shame.

[Steve_Mason]

USB, Firewire?
How many photographers actually plug their cameras into the computer? I suspect it's a small percentage. I haven't even unpacked the cable that came with my D30.
It's much more convenient, and loads faster to pop the CF card/microdrive into a reader, or laptop slot.