Canon Professional Services (CPS) sent me, on loan, a new Mark IV camera body to test out. I will have it through the 25th and am going to carefully compare it to my current Mark II bodies. I'll post my results and personal opinions here.
I came across these and thought I should DEFINITELY post them. They have helped me - not only with getting the right settings on my 1D Mark II for sports, but Peter Read Miller from Sports Illustrated went and posted his settings for the 1D Mark IV on Sportsshooter.
Here are the two (2) CSD files that you simply put onto a memory card, insert into your camera and "Load Camera Settings". Then, you're ready to go.
Canon 1D Mark II - Camera Settings File
Canon 1D Mark IV - Camera Settings File
7/15/10 - Day One
Didn't really have much chance to test anything today but I have a few "first impressions" of the camera...
First of all, it seems lighter. The battery size probably is the difference. It is approximately 1/2 the size of the batter that the 1D Mark II uses.
Writing different formats to different cards. This is a pretty cool fact. I never owned a Mark III, so I am not sure if this is available on that model, but the camera allows you to write a RAW (.CR2) file to the CF card and a JPEG (.jpg) version to the SDHC card that is also inserted.
This is pretty cool for a couple of reasons. With me, I use a Eye-Fi card a lot. So, I can now write a RAW file to the CF slot and a small JPEG to the Eye-Fi card in the SD slot. Then, the JPEG gets transferred wirelessly for a real-time slideshow (Photo Mechanic) and I still have the RAW format for later editing.
I can also see this being useful if you have to get JPEG versions of your "take" to an editor immediately and have time to fully edit your images later.
The sutter is as fast as the Mark II but doesn't seem to vibrate the camera as much. This may not be very noticeable to some photographers, but I am constantly firing off 10-20 frames in a burst and maxing out the 10 frames-per-second. This much shutter action does cause some vibrations that are more annoying than anything that affects the image quality. I am sure that, over an entire day of shooting, this lack of vibration could help lessen the fatigue that we all go through.
ISO Performance seems to be pretty impressive. I only took a few shots in a dark, poorly lit room with the ISO set to auto and it was grabbing a lot of ambient light at 1/60 and the shots were coming out amazingly bright. It'll be interesting to crank it up tomorrow at the Pittsburgh Pirates game and see where the ISO starts to get noisy.
