Canon has been holding some kind of national meeting here in Salt Lake City this week, and today I had an opportunity to visit extensively with three senior members of their Professional Products Marketing Division.

   If you haven’t read my bio page (which isn’t up yet, so you probably haven’t), I am the CEO and co-founder of a national chain of portrait studios, called Kiddie Kandids.  We moved to a 100% digital solution company wide in June of 2001, and currently have 172 studios, and company wide do over one million sittings each year.  Our current 300+ shooting bays all use either a Canon 20d or 30d camera for capture.  We actually wear the cameras out, and have probably purchased over 600 cameras since the introduction of the 20d.  As such we are a fairly large end user of Canon cameras, and several times have been able to meet with them to discuss ideas that would help us (and other studio photographers).  Since the new 40D may have some implications in our workflow, they were kind enough to come by with one.  While much of the discussion centered around things that affect us, they were more than happy to discuss anything, so naturally the new 1DsMark III, the new G9 and the new ipf5100-6100 printers came up.

     It was a great meeting with some good information.  The 40d is the surprise to me ... a significantly improved camera with features that some pro photographers will appreciate.  The 30d has proven to be a popular camera in the people side of professional photography, with plenty of resolution and quality for weddings, schools, sports, and even some portrait photography.  Certainly most high end studios choose a better camera, but Canon has decided this market is large enough to “beef” up the camera to make it more suitable for this class of professional.  There are plenty of places to read about this camera, so I thought I might just mention a few things I thought may apply to this group.

Sensor. (Warning ... I’m somewhat tech savvie, but this kind of stuff can get over most peoples head pretty quickly ... I’m not an engineer).  Canon’s goal was to increase pixel count and still decrease noise.  Keys to doing this are a smaller “electronics package” for each pixel (each pixel has it’s own 14bit A/D converter), thus reducing overall electronic noise.  In addition, they were able to reduce the space between pixels, so the new 5.7µm pixel pitch (which is the distance between pixels, not the size of the pixels) didn’t result in the same proportionate reduction in pixel size.  An improved micro lens over each pixel allows each pixel to gather nearly the same amount of light as the previous sensor, maintaining a high signal/noise ratio.  Add to that the DigicIII processor and you have a 25% increase in resolution with better noise characteristics.  Add in the fact that it is 14bit instead of 12 bit capture (thats about a 400% gain in levels), a nice upgrade.

Ruggedness.  The downside to this camera for a pro has been durability.  We found we could wear a 20d shutter out in a few months in our studios, and though the 30d improved on that quite a bit, it still is an issue.  The 40d has an improved shutter that has a 100,000 cycle rating.  Many other parts of been redesigned to make the camera more durable.

Lens cleaning.  Powering the camera off or on vibrates the  IR cutoff filter in an effort to free dust.  If you kill power to the camera rather than use the switch, the cleaning system can’t operate, but if you restore power while the switch is on, it does. Two other changes they claim make this system better than competitors.  Apparently imbedded in a channel around the IR filter is some type of sticky substance, with the idea that some of the newly freed dust will settle on it and be trapped permanently.  In addition, apparently they have found  dust on the sensor is often not a product of the environment, but actually are particles from the camera itself, coming from wear of parts in the mirror and shutter movements.  Seems logical ... our cameras are always indoors, the lens is never removed, and yet every camera will eventually accumulate enough spots to warrant cleaning once or twice a year.  They have re-engineered many of those parts, including the shutter, to help reduce these particles in the camera.  I guess we’ll see.  In addition DPP can now “map” dust and automatically fix images.

Live view.  At first I wasn’t very interested in this feature ... I just couldn’t see it being very useful.  However, after listening and playing around with it we may test the concept.  The implementation of live view is slightly different in the 40d than the 1d series.  When you enable live view, you can still use auto-focus pretty quickly by pressing a second button (a function that can also be accessed through a cable of some type, though they say they are not planning on making it so you are on your own). The mirror pops down, the camera focuses, beeping when ready - and it was pretty quick.  You can keep the button down allowing the camera to refocus, but as soon as it beeps you can release it, the mirror pops back up and the image is again visible.  Using this would be akin to the old days of shooting on a tripod while doing a sitting ... pose subject, focus camera, then work for expression/shoot.  If the subject moves, you would refocus  ... with this system you would work in a similar fashion.  The live image is available through a video out connector as well as USB and wireless with the optional wireless adapter.  Currently we employ a small “camera” attached to the viewfinder to allow viewing for our studios.  The resulting image isn’t very good, but adequate enough to compose and crop the image.  We may be able to employ this live view as a way to replace that.

Focusing.  The focusing sensors are all improved cross hatch type sensors, and the camera seemed very responsive.  In addition, they have also incorporated some software that examines an extremely out of focus image to determine which direction the lens needs to move.  The idea here is to get the camera moving the right direction to start with, improving focusing speed, and preventing the typical back and forth searching that normally occurs when the lens is dramatically out of focus when auto-focus is engaged.

Highlight tone priority.  Available only at ISO 200 and above, this feature supposedly doesn’t expand the dynamic range, but it sort of expands the dynamic range (I know, didn’t make sense to me either), maintaining detail in the highlights. I haven’t had time to study exactly what they are doing to achieve this, so I’ll refrain from saying anything else other than if it works as advertised, wedding photographers will rejoice ... much easier to keep detail in that all white dress they deal with in almost every capture.  More later after I play with it.

As far as the 1DsMarkIII, most of the information is readily available.  It incorporates much of the technology already mentioned, and despite the increased pixel count, achieves lower noise. The main discussion centered on the “focusing” issues of the 1DMarkIII.  The explanation was interesting ... and they feel most of the issue is user related.  Supposedly only 28 cameras out of thousands that have been sold have been returned for service for focus issues.  The claim is the focus is far more sensitive than the previous camera, and can quickly refocus on something moving into the image.  Apparently this sensitivity can be turned down so it operates more like it’s MarkII predecessors  One is on the way shortly so I can play with this myself and see how true I think it is... sounds fun.

    Also on the way is a new G9.  I’ve been looking for a decent small camera that could actually capture raw for unplanned moments.  Playing with all 3 cameras should be fun. (Maybe my P45+ will finally show up and I can play with all 4 at the same time).

Last item we discussed extensively was the ipf5100.  They sent me an ipf5000 shortly after its release last year, and after testing it for about a month, it has been gathering dust. I will admit it is a good printer, and if I had a need to switch from matte to photo black often, I would have tried much harder to make it function in my work flow. Since I don’t have that need, I just got tired of all the issues and gave up.

     The changes in the 5100/6100 are pretty significant.

1. 1. Paper feed.  This has been a real issue with the 5000, especially with the “optional” roll feed assembly.  The feed system has been improved dramatically, handling skewing better, and providing a built in roll feed assembly that is more reliable.
   

2. 2.Black inks.  We had a nice discussion about inks.  Some may have seen comments by myself and others regarding Wilhelm not releasing information about these inks ... wondering if something “fishy” was going on.  According to them, for Wilhelm to publish their data the manufacturer has to pay a very hefty sum of money.  Canon claim does their own testing, and their internal standards are even higher than Wilhelm, especially with gases.  Since Wilhelm already provides information about the Lucia inks anyway, providing that information in a different printer doesn’t seem necessary especially for the price.  When he described Wilhelm’s fee, he went something like “they charge a lot ... a lot ... a lot ...”, repeating “a lot” 3 times for emphasis.  I have no reason to doubt them, so I feel quite a bit better about the longevity.   However, internally Canon wanted to improve gloss differential and metamerism , so the new black inks were designed to address those two things specifically.
   

3. 3.Grain.  Many will deny this, but when using high resolution printing the ipf5000 will exhibit some grain issues not seen in an Epson printer at similar resolutions.  It is doubtful  the grain is a real issue, since it normally takes magnification to see it, and a firmware update improved it, but it was enough of a concern to Canon to make changes.  I’m not sure what those changes are.  Currently I feel that while the Canon printer is faster, the Epson printers work flawlessly bi-directionally now, while the Canon printers still show a slight variation and loss of quality when used bi-directionally, negating some of the speed advantages.  It could be the changes improve on that as well ... I forgot to ask.
   

4. 4.Firmware/software.  I was told ... and I hope it is true ... that many of the frustrations of actually using an ipf5000 from a user interface perspective are vastly improved. We’ll see.
   

5. 5.Calibration.  Even a slight change in dot pattern of the printer invalidates a profile.  Internal sensors allow the printer to be calibrated to a known “baseline” so the printer is more stable and variations between printers are minimized.  This means profiles made on one printer will work just as well on another.  Since I have never worked with more than one, I don’t know how big a deal this is, but since they are making it a big deal, I’m guessing it has been an issue.
   

6. 6.Last but not least ... a new ipf6100 is on the way for me to evaluate.  It will be a lot of fun, since I believe it will arrive about the same time my new Epson 11880 is scheduled to arrive ... another week or two.
   

So lots of new gear to play with ... I may have to skip out of work for a week or two!