It's been nearly two weeks now since the Canon 1DXMarkII came out and I ordered one for my camera bag. It really was love at first sight with this incredible machine. The box screams sexy when it came in the mail. I unwrapped the camera body strapped in the battery and fired it up. Having been very comfortable with Canon Camera bodies I was able to easily get my bearrings and set up a few test shots. Naturally the first thing I did was up the ISO to over 51,000 but only because I could and take a test shot. I was impressed with the amount of detail still in the photo with an ISO that high but wouldn't recommend shooting at that for portrait work and didn't expect to be able to I just wanted to see if it was really true.
I was able to play around past 10,000 ISO with not enough noise on the screen to concern me so this excites me for future shoots. I shot a few portrait sessions with the camera last week and over the weekend shot my first wedding with it and it did not disappoint. The biggest difference to note is within post processing, the resulting images feel closer to film images than any other Canon camera bodies I have worked with. Shooting with a pair of 5D3s until now this camera had big shoes to fill and it has exceeded my expectations.
While I didn't expect to have any sort of video edge with this camera nor was I looking for it being a still image photographer, this camera is incredibly intuitive when it comes to shooting video. The screen becomes a touch screen and will keep in focus what you want utilizing the square space outlined (that you can actually change with your finger!?!), how cool is that?
The downsides....I have been completely spoiled by reading my exposure meter from the top of the camera and this is a feature that as of yet has not been made available on this camera body as well as a handful of other recent Canon bodies. To me saving the few seconds to bring the camera up to eye level adds up and keeps from having to lift the camera as often but alas that is not an option at this time. I am used to the weight having gripped camera bodies so the new weight didn't bother me but not being able to take any kind of ballpark reading from the top is taking some getting used to. This feature does work when not shooting in Manual Mode but I shoot 100% Manual Mode. Speaking of Modes, there is no auto! I have a love/hate relationship with Auto and I love that this camera doesn't have it but would have been nice in a pinch to have in place if I ever had to hand the camera off to someone to take a shot with that didn't understand camera settings... There is Program Mode so that would suffice in a pinch. The biggest problem is the battery! I went through almost an entire battery during my wedding last Saturday. While I did purchase a second battery with the camera and had it ready to go, I was not expecting the battery life to die so quickly on this camera. It is possible there is a setting turned on or I have something running besides standby but I was not impressed with the battery life span on this and equally not as thrilled that it takes 14 hours to charge the batter to full from dead.
Needless to say I am a smitten kitten with this machine of a camera and look forward to all it has to offer during future work. Here are a handful of images taken over the past week with it.
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