Just seen the announcement from Canon about there brand new flag ship model. The Canon EOS 1D X.
Copyright Canon
First thing I noticed is the insane ISO 204,800!!! One more stop than the Nikon D3S. This is quite truly insane ISO numbers which just seem a bit folly to me. My Nikon D60 looks…. OK at ISO 3200 (which is it’s maximum) but when I got my D7000 it doesn’t look much better at ISO 6400 and looks truly horrific at 12800 and 25600. I notice that they call them Hi 1 and Hi 2 for D7000 and the same with the top two for the new Canon. I suspect this is just a ploy to stop people buying the cameras and complaining it looks painfully bad at super high ISOs. Calling them Hi 1 and Hi 2 makes them look different from the rest of the ISOs.
Another crazy number is the amount of focus points on the camera. 61! I really don’t understand the advantage of having quite that many myself. On my D7000 it has 39 but you can turn that down to just 11. Even with 11 it’s still plenty dense enough for focusing. If I’m manually selecting the focus point with 39 it’s like wading through treacle just to get to the one I want.
I think a few ISO tests are in order (and no it won’t just consist of take one exact scene at different ISOs like a lab). Keep your eyes peeled.
PS. Also why do the ISO numbers stick to the powers of two (times 100)? You don’t get 1/4096 of a second. Film probably didn’t help by having 1600 and 3200. Can’t we do like the shutter speeds and have 1500, 3000, 6000, 12500 ect…