What is that all about? Why a special tax rate? Can't the camera just save 29:59 clips and then stitch them together...
A tax on an integer seems to be a bit silly.
Apparently if they made it r/w in the EU it'd be classed as a VCR and have a big tax applied or something, so they had to cripple it.
These sort of laws need to go away.
The technology filtering down to consumer level in a couple of years is pretty exciting, though as elithrar noted, the exposure is going to be difficult as it's hard to tell between "dark area you want to see" and "dark area that's the background".
You'd be surprised how clean some of these things are, especially so if you don't plan on blowing things up big. Plus, with NR software these days, you can easily get usable 12,800 ISO & 25,600 ISO shots if you expose them well.
The real trick to shooting in low-light is nailing the exposure; too dark and you'll have dirty highlights, too light and you'll have blotchy, noisy shadows.
What this has primarily done for me is to make non-studio flash for fill and separation, depending on the situation - to control the subject to ambient ratio, in other words. I do still use it for other routine work, but only where it makes the resulting shot easier to take and get a high-quality result.
ISO/noise-reduction is the most important thing to me as I don't like using a strobe. However, as I like having a reasonably portable camera, I hope they make an upgrade soon to the 5D line. How many non-sports/war shooters need this kind of frame rate anyway?
I'm still waiting for something with a high-dynamic range out of the box, preferably with wide spectrum coverage. I'd love to see how post-production goes with a little near-infrared and low-ultraviolet information in the mix.
This is a major step upwards, but I think I'm going to pass for now and wait another five years for the next major step upwards. The difference between shooting 12MP and 18MP and the difference between shooting what I have and ISO 204,800 just isn't enough for me to make the jump.
But I wonder why they decided to announce the 1D X so early? I suppose this will hurt their pro body sales for five months. (The new body will not ship before March 2012.)
This much leadtime on a prominent release is common, and right now the only camera that the 1D-X is going to cannibalize is the 1DmarkIV, which was already becoming quite scarce _before_ this announcement. Canon Direct lists it as out of stock, same with B&H. Adorama and Amazon seem to have a few each, though. Still, what sales are being hurt here? And mind you, we're talking about a relatively massive investment, you could buy ~10 T3i's for this sticker price, not an investment made lightly or made often - Canon probably doesn't mind waiting a few more months, and if you are in the market for something like this you are paying attention to the rumor mill anyways.
Just think, wouldn't you be pissed if they HADN'T given this much lead time, and you went and tracked down a now-rare 1D-IV, only to see this come out a few months later? I know I'd be quite irate.
Just my 2c...
I understand why they're still making CF cameras, but I wish the effort were going into either optimising SD or producing a rugged, fast, generic replacement.
Because they are announcing something that looks likely to be a pro 35mm video camera on November...same day as Red releases Scarlet and Nikon releases...something.
Personally, I'll wait until the 5DmII successor arrives. I like the images and video it produces now and I don't need the tougher body of the 1 series.
These two companies seem to trade-off on features every other generation (tic-toc). I think they had a common history, some decades back.
"Their friendly rivalry" speaks to this, in a way. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20071226a7.html
If a 5DmkIII arrives early next year then both the full-frame series for each company will be updated.
1dx seems pretty evolutionary, it is likely that the D4 will also be similar.
Given that 1% create, 10% curate and 90% consume, unless you're in that high art 1% of photographers, the iPhone 4S is your man. Or woman.
