Topics

1

EOS Bodies / What 5D Mark III is Canon shipping now?

« on: May 01, 2012, 03:08:07 PM »

Are they shipping serial numbers that have "1" or "2" as their sixth digit, that have been repaired (i.e. with the white dot on the battery door)?  Or are they shipping "3" serial number cameras?

2

EOS Bodies / 5D Mark III light leak advisory gone from Canon website....

« on: April 23, 2012, 05:18:39 PM »

I wonder if this means they’ve determined how they’re going to fix the issue and will be posting a new advisory, or (hopefully not), they’ve concluded that it’s not an issue they want to address.  I’m kind of surprised they’d just remove the advisory altogether.

3

EOS Bodies / So what exactly does the 5D Mark III lack in terms of video?

« on: April 22, 2012, 08:29:35 PM »

I have never used any of my DSLRs to shoot video, so I know next to nothing about it.  This is a topic about which I’m quite ignorant.

A lot of people complain that there are a lot of things the 5D Mark III lacks in terms of video.

I know that it doesn’t have uncompressed HDMI out, which (I’m guessing) means that you can’t hook it up to a TV and see the video in its full resolution.

What else does the 5D Mark III lack with regard to video?

4

EOS Bodies / Light leak on 5D3 IS a big issue, and should embarrass Canon

« on: April 18, 2012, 01:55:31 PM »

I had been mulling over the choice between the D800 and the 5D3, and went with the 5D3 for a number of reasons - one of which being the fact that I like the Canon ‘design’ altogether more than Nikon’s.  And then this light leak issue creeps up (which I confirmed just now on my 5D3).  I’ve been hearing people saying things liked “it doesn’t matter in real-world shooting”, or “it’s easy to avoid it by just not lighting the LCD in dark environments.  1. This just isn’t true - if light is leaking in and altering the metering, you get (slightly) altered photos.  This has been confirmed by many.  And 2. whether most of us shoot in really dark environments or not simply doesn’t matter.  We shouldn’t have to take precautionary measures when shooting photos to work around a design flaw.  We as customers should not be the solution to a product’s design problem.  And no matter how easy the solution is, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a design flaw.

I remember watching The Tonight Show many years ago and during one of Jay Leno’s monologues, he said, “In other news, the FDA came out with new rules regarding fecal matter in poultry.  Now folks.......this is the new rule?  Shouldn’t this have been the old rule?  Shouldn’t this have been rule #1??”

(....Of course, he went on to say “I sure hope this doesn’t mean Colonel Sanders is now down to only ten secret herbs and spices in his fried chicken”....but that’s beside the point.)

Similarly, a camera properly blocking out light should be rule #1.  A camera is supposed to block out light....just in case we decide to shoot in extremely low light environments (which many already do).  And for a fairly-dim LCD backlight to alter the metering in a dark environment is just plain scandalous.  That kind of thing suggests that Canon pushed this camera out before testing it thoroughly (or maybe they knew about it and decided to ship it out anyway and hope for the best).

Either way, I’m returning mine, and will consider buying it again after Canon has satisfactorily addressed the matter.  Shipping a brand-new camera back to Canon to have it modified or repaired is completely unacceptable, and utterly out of the question.

5

EOS Bodies / Something peculiar from online retailer

« on: April 17, 2012, 09:18:52 AM »

I ordered a 5D Mark III kit (i.e. with the 24-105 lens) from Beach Camera, and what is being shipped to me is the non-kit body and the 24-105 lens, both in their own boxes.  Basically, they didn’t have any kits so they decided on their own to send me the body and lens as separate items, but only charge $4299 for them.  If one were to purchase them separately, they'd pay about $4650.  That’s a $350 price drop for Beach Camera.

I certainly don’t have a problem with receiving these items separately, but I am a little curious as to how they can do this.  When they buy these items from Canon, it costs them more to buy them separately.  So clearly they must be losing profit by giving me separate body and lens units for the price of a kit.  Could they be sending me something that has been bought and returned, or gray-market products?  Or do they just really want my business?