August 29, 2012
Least Chipmunks and a Sharp-Tailed Grouse in Custer State Park, South Dakota, And More About The Canon EOS 1D X

There's a nice rock in Custer State Park that I call "chipmunk rock" because I've photographed Least Chipmunk on it several times. I was photographing chipmunks near and on "chipmunk rock" yesterday morning when two got up on the rock and interacted. It's not often that one sees chipmunks interact, and I was quite happy to capture it. At the end of the day, after the sun had officially set, I came across some Sharp-Tailed Grouse by the side of the road. It was pretty dark, but the environment was nice and with the good high-ISO performance of the 1D X I thought I'd try to photograph them. Is it a BBC-winning image? Probably not. Am I happy with the image? Heck yeah! This is an image I wouldn't have even tried to capture using my old bodies.

Canon EOS 1D X

After two days in the field, I'm really loving my new Canon EOS 1D X! The grip, which is still not as comfortable when holding the body with all four of my fingers on the grip, is quite comfortable with my index finger by the shutter when I'm shooting.

What I really like about the body is the 61-point automatic selection AF mode. As part of the face-recognition system, you can select any one of the 61 AF points to train the system for a particular subject. Then the camera will continue to do its best to focus on that "face." What really makes this system useful is that the active focus points are shown in the viewfinder, even in AI-servo mode. In previous bodies, feedback was only given in One Shot mode. This focusing system is a game changer! Have you ever been frustrated while photographing a subject that keeps changing where its head is within the frame? I know I have, and after trying to move a single AF point to keep up with the moving eye, I would usually switch to all points, aka the "ring of fire," and hope that the AF system would focus on the correct part of the subject or that the depth-of-field would be enough to get the eye in focus. With the new 61-point AF system and face recognition, it's possible to see where the camera's actually focussing so you know it's time to retrain it if it keeps focusing some other part of the subject.

Image Quality

As I mentioned in the blog entry for August 28, 2012, the problems I reported with the RAW files were due to Capture One (v6.4.3). When I processed the RAW files with Adobe Camera Raw (ACR, v7.1.0.354), the results are as expected.

The following image is a composite of the high-ISO test images that I showed on August 26, 2012. The top row shows the results as processed with Capture One, and the bottom row shows the results processed with ACR. The two images from ACR are very similar to each other, and I prefer them more than the ones from Capture One. The resolution test images also look much better when processed through ACR. The following two images show the whole frame, and they look very similar to each other. The following two images show the center 750x500 pixels, and the detail from the 1D X looks rather good. After up-sizing the images to be 20x30 inches at 360 ppi, the detail from the 1D X also looks rather good. The edges of significant features look crisper with the 1D X, but there's a slight loss of very fine detail.

Conclusion

The Canon EOS 1D X is an incredible body for wildlife photography. It has about an additional 1.5 stops of usable ISO, and the new 61-point AF system with face recognition is a game changer. The only down side compared to the 1D Mk IV is the loss of the 1.3x magnification factor.

Is the 1D X also an incredible body for landscape photography? Almost. It's 18.1MP won't provide quite the same level of detail as the 21.1MP of a 1Ds Mk III or 5D Mk II or the 22.3MP of a 5D Mk III, but for moderately-large prints, like 20x30, I feel the 1D X is acceptable. One of the biggest improvements for landscape photography is the new auto-bracket flexibility. Previously, you were stuck with three (3) shots, and now you can select 2, 3, 5, or 7 shots. Plus, now the baseline exposure compensation can be adjusted to ±5 stops, whereas previous 1-series bodies were limited to ±3 stops. The built-in level is another nice improvement.

For a mix of wildlife and landscape photography, the 1D X is in fact the one body to rule them all. If you'd like to test one out before you buy, they're available at lensrentals.com. Yes, I'm pretty certain that once you test the rental body in the field, you're going to want one for yourself.

Addendum

There is one downside to the 1D X compared to all previous 1-series bodies: it cannot auto-focus when the maximum aperture is f8. In other words, auto-focus will not work on the 500 f4 or 600 f4 with a 2x extender nor the 800 f5.6 with a 1.4x extender. This isn't an issue for me, but for some folks it could be a deal-breaker.