Canon EOS-1D Mark II image gallery posted!
By
Dave Etchells
(Monday, March 29, 2004 - 13:46 EST)
My assistant Luke and I did a little shooting with the EOS-1D Mark II this weekend...
The full review is still a ways (!) off, but I thought people would appreciate seeing some sample pics shot with Canon's new speed (and resolution) demon, the EOS-1D Mark II. - I haven't seen any other samples floating around out there, so figured I'd at least post a few random shots for people to look at.
Here's a link to the 1D Mark II Gallery
The results look very nice: Great color, low image noise, very good tonality. All the images had the characteristic Canon softness to them, (I think) the result of very conservative in-camera sharpening. My uncertainty about the sharpness is because the only lens I have to shoot with the 1DMII currently is a 16-35mm zoom. - I'd really like to see results from the 100mm f/2.8 macro before making any pronouncements about image sharpness, as that's a very sharp lens that I'm well familiar with. - I'll try to get one from Canon to work with, and will report what I find.
(UPDATE: While remarking on the softness of the images, I neglected to note that they hold up very well under strong unsharp masking in Photoshop(tm). Reader Lin Evans took the time to download one of the images, and apply some careful sharpening to it, to see how it did, and found that the results look very sharp indeed. She's posted the sample image that she sharpened here. She's also posted an example, using fractal sharpening, which you're invited to download as well. But note that this second file is 7 megabytes in size, so most non-broadband users will probably want to give it a pass. - Thanks, Lin!)
As noted, it's likely to be a little while before I get the Mark II's review done, as I've got a *lot* of other cameras in the queue ahead of it. Just on the basis of the little playing around with it that I've done so far though, I think it's safe to say that Canon has another real winner on their hands here. The combination of speed, resolution, and excellent image quality make this the closest thing to a "universal" d-SLR that I've seen yet. - Enough resolution for even fairly high-end commercial photographers, yet enough speed for sports shooters and photojournalists. Pretty amazing!
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