1D Mark IV Update

Ah, there’s actually a review here http://blog.planet5d.com/2010/02/canon-eos-1d-mkiv-review/, or linked from there anyway, that has the details of it.

I think that’s the issue, the spot focussing is meant to not be useful for fast moving objects (which is why users are discouraged from using it as an option for sports etc in the 7D manual), and yet the ONLY lenses that it is compatible with are the longer telephoto lenses, which you’d mostly use for sports or wildlife. At the moment, spot focussing is really only useful for peeping toms, private investigators or paparazzi. Or maybe other things whose names start with the letter “p”.

The 7D manual goes further to say that the area for the spot metering focus point is too small to track fast moving objects.

The point of the reviewer is that this is fine, because it IS good for focussing on subjects in very low light, compared to the normal auto focus points with the 1D Mark IV.

A question that might be asked is why they’d “gimp” something in the 1D Mark IV and not in the 7D. The answer could be that it doesn’t function as well as it could, so it stays off the pro body. The 7D, while being a robust camera with autofocus, is still a prosumer body, so doesn’t need the absolute reliability of a smaller focus point. The inability to focus in low light, however, is more of a limitation than a complete failure.

I found the spot focus didn’t work as good on my 1d3 after it was put through the last big overhaul of updates.

Maybe they are concentrating more on continuous AF for ‘sports’ cameras.