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Canon EOS 1Dx first impressions

Mike Lane FRPS

It is always amazing how quickly new camera products turn up second hand. The EOS 1Dx has not been on the market very long and already I have seen a dozen used ones for sale, mostly on Ebay. The first one cost me £4000, but the seller sent a tea coaster instead. Three weeks of filing police reports and chasing Paypal got the money back. A slow learner the next one on Ebay I got for £3750, but I picked it up in person and paid cash.

The first noticeable point is the layout of controls and buttons is different to the Mk1 to Mk1V EOS 1d range, which means a learning curve even to do something simple like review your pictures. This is not really a problem, it will just take time, but it also means using my Mk1v as a second camera will be difficult. I will keep hitting the wrong button when in a rush. Since my early days in photograph I have always had cameras in matching pairs. Two Olympus OM1’s were followed by two Om2’s and so on. With the EOS id range this was not necessary until now. I could  use a Mk2 and Mk3 as they were the same.

The noise levels are better, but not by as much as I had hoped. A side by side test with the Mk1v shows a one stop improvement in the 400-800 iso range. Maybe at higher iso settings it is a stop and a half better. It is not always so easy to make the judgement.

It is in the autofocus that the big improvement comes. Within two minutes of trying it out on flying ducks the difference was obvious. It is a drastic improvement. If I could keep the bird in the frame the AF locked onto it, even against trees. Finally AF does what we always thought it should and could not understand why it didn’t. Using the Mk1v again would seem like going back to the dark ages so I guess it will have to go.

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