Engadget believes they have found the Canon 400D, but believes its a replacement for the 30D. The camera seems most likely to be a replacement for the 350D, uses a 10.1 megapixel CMOS sensor, and is quite awesome.
Update: I was right, it is a 350D replacement.
The EOS-1Ds Mark II is a very nice camera, 16.7 megapixels, 35mm CMOS sensor, almost $7,000. This is the elite of digital cameras. Canon describes the body of the camera as…
Durable Magnesium Alloy Body: The EOS-1Ds Mark II meets the demands of professional field photographers. Lightweight and highly rigid, its magnesium alloy chassis & external covers (top, front, rear & memory card slot covers) contribute to excellent durability and electromagnetic shielding. Moving parts are tightly sealed to ensure water and dust resistance on a par with the EOS-1Ds.
What Canon is really saying…
Our Armageddon Hide armour plating will ensure protection from even the fires of Hell itself. No foul Demons from the Pit will tarnish your images of our final days.1
I soooo want one. Anyone need a kidney? I’ll sell mine for $7,000.
[1]: As said by Jon “Salty” Hall.
Canon has a series of products under the “Glossy Photo Paper” name, with the formula identification number of GP 401. They used to make many different types of paper under this formula, but now it seems they only make the credit card sized paper.
The paper is flawed in that it has a slightly reddish tinge, which makes pictures a tad warmer than they should be. Compared against Canon’s PR 101 Photo Paper Pro (which is an almost neutral white, very slightly on the warm side), GP 401 can be described as pink.
This pink color shifts flesh tones and anything that uses magenta ink to print out to be shifted over to the pink side as well. Unfortunately, the only way to get Canon branded credit card sized paper is to use this paper.
So, I just spent the last two hours slowly tweaking an existing ICC profile for a similar paper (Canon’s Photo Paper Plus, which isn’t nearly as red) to work correctly with this paper.
To get you close to the correct colors, set your “Media Type” to “Glossy Photo Paper”, and use the manual color adjustment dialog (click “Color Adjustment: Manual”, and click on “Set…”) to increase cyan to 35, magenta to 10, yellow to 25, and decrease intensity to -10. These alone increase the quality of output on GP 401 a lot, and make it similar to Photo Paper Pro.
Also, if you’re using Photoshop, or any similar professional printing application, disable ICM and use “Print Type” set to “None”. In Photoshop, you typically use Photoshop’s built in color management.
To use said color management, use “Print With Preview”, and select “Color Handling: Let Photoshop Determine Colors”, “Printer Profile: Canon i9900 SP1″, “Rendering Intent: Preceptual”, and turn “Black Point Compensation” on.
Now, this isn’t as good as just having an ICC profile for the GP 401, but it is about the best you’re going to get, it seems.
Inspired by a comment from someone reading my review of the Canon Rebel XT, I realized that a lot of people just don’t know how to fully use the potential of their camera and Photoshop. In a four easy steps, you can improve the apparent quality of your shots without even needing to resort to Photoshop (yet):
These steps alone increase apparent picture quality boatloads. No more will you have noisy, dark, blurry pictures that look like they were taken with a bad webcam! Now, here is where Photoshop comes in:
Step 1: Since you are using Raw pictures now, you have to use a special plugin to load these images, which can be downloaded off Adobe’s website. This plugin allows you to load Raw pictures from tons of cameras. To get the best performance out of this plugin, under the Detail tab, set Sharpness to 0, and Color Noise Reduction to 0 (We’ll do color noise reduction next). Also, under the Curve tab, select a Linear tone curve.
Step 2: Pictures taken with a CMOS sensor (such as the Rebel XT’s) are often described as “butter smooth”, in as such as there is no obvious pixelation that CCDs cause. They are also low noise, and any noise that does show up (as such with high ISO speeds) looks a lot like film grain, and appears as color noise.
To clean up the little bit of noise that creeps in, use the Reduce noise plugin, using the settings shown to the right. Be careful, however, setting it too high, and you risk removing color detail, and setting it below 5 doesn’t do anything that can be noticed without zooming in 500%+.
Step 3: Now, many shots you take are probably very sharp. However, there is a neat trick that doesn’t involve real sharpening at all, but (ab)uses the Unsharp Mask tool instead. Using the settings shown to the right, you can easily increase the apparent sharpness without increasing the actual sharpness at all.
Increasing Amount allows you to increase the effect, but decreases the subtly, and this should be a subtle effect at all costs. Increasing the Radius changes the effect itself; above 25 and you start changing the overall contrast of the picture instead of specific areas, but below 15 it pushes small details more and it becomes very hard to notice any change at all.
Now, here is a before and after showing what just using simple noise and sharpness management does using the three steps I outlined. Easily, you can tell the image is much clearer than before.
NR + UM 1:1
Original 1:1
NR + UM 1:3
Original 1:3
I’d like to thank the person who originally came up with the Unsharp Radius 20/20 trick. Unfortunately, I can not find where it came from, but whoever came across it originally found a real gem. Thanks you, whoever you are!
As promised, I’m going to finally review my Canon Rebel XT, aka Canon EOS 350D, aka Canon Kiss n Digital (of which, was advertised in Japan with a family painted like KISS, the band). This camera is Canon’s entry level professional DSLR, in their long line of SLR cameras; replacing the original Canon Rebel/EOS 300D. I am not going to review any software that came with the camera, as I exclusively use Adobe Photoshop.
Caution: This review contains technical terms, and often gets off topic and rants a bit. It also gets into the merits of professional photography, which directly effects the usage of an advanced camera such as the Rebel XT.
Features:
6 Month Review
So, as you can see, I do like this camera. Paired with my Canon i9900 photo printer, I’ve been printing out perfectly saturated, sharp, amazingly looking photos. Even at 13×19″ (the printer’s maximum size), photos look just as sharp as they do at 4×6″.
During the past six months, I’ve taken 1562 pictures, and have seen everything it can possibly do. The camera, as much as I love it, is not perfect. It shouldn’t be, either, otherwise how would Canon sell the 20D, a camera that costs almost $500 more; plus all the other higher end models. But any flaws can be easily corrected.
Typically, I shoot in IS0 1600 only. The camera has settings from 100 to 1600, and I’ve found that lower ISO settings, not just on this camera but on any camera, although increasing brightness in dark scenes, causes blurry photos. The only way to negate that, of course, is exclusively use ISO 1600 and use a brighter exposure level (I’ve been using +1/3rd). You get bright, sharp, low noise pictures; and any unwanted noise can be cleaned up in Photoshop.
Of course, being able to configure ISO, auto-exposure, and using a custom exposure level setting (cameras usually use a 1/2 f-stop scale, not 1/3rd, and the Rebel XT defaults to 1/2), is a testament to it’s configurability. I also use raw picture output instead of the default standard JPEG compression, to get the full 12-bit precision out of the sensor, and to prevent typical JPEG artifacts. I also use the AdobeRGB colorspace instead of the default sRGB (which monitors use) because it closer reflects the sensor’s output.
Typically, changing ISO, increasing auto-exposure, using raw output, and using a colorspace that better reflects the camera is what most professionals do automatically. They want the get the best picture out of the camera to begin with. I’m also using a post processing profile in the camera that disables any post processing (Parameters 2 in the parameters menu; its on the Camera 2 page).
“But Patrick, doesn’t that mean you’re basically using an entirely different camera than what’s out of the box?”
No. The camera is setup by default to be easy to use, and to give users images that look good without any additional mucking with. And that it does. It has multiple settings, that all you do is twist the mode knob on the top of the camera, and get what you want. Want to take a picture of a mountain? Use the outdoors mode. Want to take a picture at night? Use the night mode. Want to take pictures of fast moving objects? Use the sports mode.
However, it has additional modes that disable automatic features. The least automatic mode (and the most advanced) is a photography enthusiast’s wet dream, and allows you to do pretty much anything you can think of. If you want to be a professional photographer, you use one of the advanced modes, not one of the basic ones.
That said, being able to configure the camera to basically work totally different than what’s out of the box is a good thing. The ability to configure this camera to fit my workflow instead of the one Canon set by default is one of the largest strengths. No point and shoot gives me this level of configurability.
However, if you want the camera to do everything for you, and take great pictures, it will. I was using basic modes for the first 500 pictures or so, and they’re quite amazing looking; they still beat the pants of off higher end point and shoots, and still look sharp, low noise, and saturated with color.
Additional Notes
I recommend as your first purchases for anyone that owns a Rebel XT, or any Canon DSLR, is a clear UV lens filter, and a stable three axis tripod. The UV lens filter (I use a Sigma EX Multi-coated UV Filter, 58mm) will prevent scratches and dust on the lens. If you irreparably scratch the UV filter, just go buy another one. If you irreparably scratch the lens, you’re out hundreds of dollars. The UV filter also increases the quality of “blue sky” shots, and also reduces haze in hazy environments.
As for the tripod, I suggest you get one that does all three axes1 (rotation, pitch, and yaw), and is stable enough to hold your camera. Good ones for beginners cost $30 and up, but it is well worth the investment.
Also, to go with your tripod, I suggest a wired remote trigger. The Rebel XT has a little 2.5mm stereo plug on the side to plug a wired trigger in, that works exactly like the one on the camera itself: half-press to focus, fully press to take a picture. The one that goes with the Rebel XT is the Canon Remote Switch E3. I’d avoid the wireless ones because you have to be in front of the camera to use them.
Last, but not least, eventually you’ll want a better lens. Sure, the kit lens is great, but you’ll eventually out grow it. Buying a new lens is on my to-do list, and I’ve decided to replace it with Canon’s EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM, a lens that is amazingly sharp, silent when focusing (due to the Ultra-sonic Motor (USM)), and increases sharpness when holding the camera due to Image Stabilization (IS). The zoom range is larger than the kit lens’, and is overall well worth the $425 or so.
Of course, now I’m going to go have to buy a new UV filter… that lens uses 72 mm filters.
Summary
I have to say the Canon Rebel XT is well worth the $950 I paid for it, and this camera is probably going to stick around for the next four or five years because of how well made, and featureful it is.
[1]: Axes is the plural of axis, pronounced “axe ease”.