You may be a Canon loyalist, or you may shoot strictly with Nikon DSLRs. But be honest: you’ve probably wondered what the other has on offer, haven’t you?
We certainly have, so we decided to start with the top dial. In our latest photography cheat sheet, we looked at the shooting modes on offer from two of the most popular DSLRs on the market: the Nikon D3100 and the Canon EOS 550D.
In-camera effects may be seen as a bit of a marketing gimmick by some, but the ones offered by your EOS DSLR form a powerful and creative set of tools that has the potential to save you time and improve your photography.
There’s a lot to be said for a simple, uncluttered control system but, for immediate access to wide-ranging shooting parameters there’s never been a substitute for banks of buttons, or at least not until recently. The Quick Control screen on your Canon DSLR isn’t a brand-new development – cameras like the EOS 50D sported this feature – but it comes into its own on new Canon cameras, beginning with not-too-distant offerings like the EOS 550D, delivering a raft of essential adjustments behind the camera’s refreshingly consolidated button layout.
Compared with the older 450D, the new Q (Quick Control) button takes the place of the White Balance button on the back of the camera. Even so, you still get dedicated buttons for accessing white balance as well as ISO, exposure compensation, drive mode, and autofocus options, and for selecting various picture styles like Standard, Portrait and Landscape
The optical viewfinder in your Canon DSLR offers a bright, crystal-clear image of the scene you’re photographing. Easy on the eye, it makes photo composition and focusing a breeze. The one thing it can’t do, however, is give you a totally accurate picture of the final image you’ll capture.
What you’re looking at through the viewfinder is the scene as it is in reality, not how the camera ‘sees’ it. As light enters the lens, it’s simply reflected by a mirror onto the viewfinder arrangement. The effects of exposure, ISO, white balance and other camera settings aren’t visible in this image, as these are only applied once the mirror flips out of the way to expose the camera’s imaging sensor to light when you take a picture.
Canon UK has said that shipping of the 5D Mark III has temporarily stopped while it investigates problems with the top LCD causing exposure issues.
The fault has been widely reported online, and appears to show the exposure value changing as a result of the top LCD plate light being activated when shooting in very dark conditions.
Canon UK has admitted the fault, and issued the following statement, “Canon has identified that when the LCD top light is switched on in very dark situations, the displayed exposure value may change on the EOS 5D Mark III. Canon is now investigating the issue and will announce further details on the Canon support page in due course.
We’ve featured the handywork of Jason Bognacki before when he combined his Canon 5D Mark II with a 1919 Piccolette Contessa-Nettel camera. Since then he’s done another Canon mashup; this time it’s a Canon 5D Mark II with a 7-inch f/2.5 Kodak Aero-Ektar lens attached to it removed from a K-24 aerial recon camera. These lenses were built by Kodak for aerial reconnaissance photography and most were made during World War II. There is even some dispute that these lenses are radioactive as they contain Thorium. Holy smokes.
First sales of the Canon EOS-1D X have been pushed back to June 2012, according to Canon.
Canon says a delay to the start of mass production is the reason for the revised EOS-1D X release date.
It’s here: the long-awaited Canon EOS 5D Mark III review. Our testing team has put the Canon 5D Mark III through rigorous challenges, both in the lab and out in the field. You can read all about these full scientific results over on our sister site, TechRadar. However, if you want some of the key points from the full test and the final verdict on the Canon 5D Mark III, here is what our head of testing had to say…
Rarely before has a camera provoked such speculation, soul-searching and anticipation as the Canon 5D Mark III. Its predecessor set the bar for all new cameras and created a generation of filmmakers.
One of the signature features of the new Canon 5D Mark III has been its silent shooting mode, which quiets the sound of the shutter down to a whisper to allow you to work without drawing attention to yourself. When the review sample came in, we thought we’d put this feature to the ultimate test. But how?
Finally, we asked ourselves: is the Canon 5D Mark III in its silent continuous shooting mode quiet enough not to wake a sleeping baby? Watch the video inside to see how it performed.
Canon has expanded its range of EOS cameras with the launch of the EOS 60Da, a high-resolution DSLR built for advanced night photography.
The Canon EOS 60Da is based on the specifications of the Canon 60D and succeeds the EOS 20Da in the Canon lineup.
The Canon EOS 60Da is designed for astrophotography and can capture rich red colours produced by emission nebulae, with a modified low pass filter that makes it more sensitive to hydrogen-alpha (Há) wavelengths of light, Canon says.