G
Grummbeerbauer
Guest
Motivated by the thread on how desperately the 60D needs AF microadjustment (see http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php/topic,127.0.html ), I would like your opinions and suggestions on how to best motivate Canon to finally bring an adjustable auto ISO upper limit (or even more sophisticated configuration options) to the 7D.
I am perhaps not the only one that was surprised when what was originally considered an exclusive "pro" feature by Canon (being only available in the 1D/1Ds series, AFAIK, and, erm,... well in virtually any crappy 150+€ P&S from any serious manufacturer, aside from Canon, of course), namely an adjustable auto ISO upper limit, suddenly "leapfrogged" over Canons enthusiast level cameras (7D, 5DII) and suddenly appeared in a lowly Rebel.
While this might seem like an unimportant feature to some, it is critical for people that would like to use auto ISO on a regular basis, but are not satisfied with the noise levels the 7D gives on its fixed auto ISO upper limit of ISO 3200. For example, I would rather prefer to have an upper boundary of 1600 most of the time, and maybe even 800 or 400 for critical subjects.
Some of you might say "I don't need auto ISO." Of course you can always set a fixed ISO level manually. However, in quickly changing shooting situations it is highly practical to have sufficiently fast shutter speeds on the one hand but only as much noise as is really needed on the other hand.
And you should ask yourself: do you not need it, or do you actually not use it because you don't like the pretty useless way it is implemented in the 7D/5DII?
Now that this feature has appeared in both the 550D and the 60D, it is really about time that Canon added this feature to the 5DII and 7D -- after all, all these cameras share the same Digic IV processor and consequently their firmwares are likely to share a large common code base. So the code for this feature is definitely there, they just need to add it when they build the next firmwares for the other bodies.
What do you think? Maybe we should write emails to our respective national Canon representatives and make our point about how adding such a highly useful feature would not only be incredibly nice of them, but would also show that Canon actually cared about their customers even after they parted with their money.
We know that this is possible, just remember the considerable upgrade the 5DII's video features received "due to public demand".
And while we are at it: I would be interested in sharing some ideas how additional configuration options could help an auto ISO feature. One thing I don't like (aside from noise levels at ISO 3200 ) is that the auto ISO function seems to follow the venerable exposure time = 1/35mm-equivalent focal length rule by the book, without considering circumstances. How about if we could modify the parametrization of this rule, not only for auto ISO, but also for any of the other auto modes?
For example, we could have a setting that allows slower shutter speeds if an IS lens is mounted (and for IS lenses known to the body, this could even factor in IS effectiveness, i.e., 1-3 stops for 100-400, 3-4 stops for 70-200 f4 IS or f2.8 IS II, etc.). Of course we would only enable this feature when shooting static subjects. Further, we could allow adjusting a factor to this rule to compensate for very steady (or very shaky) shooters, or for people that think that the old rule gives too slow shutter speeds for pixel-sharp images on 18++MP bodies.
This would only be two settings ("Shift exposure when IS lens detected", "Exposure rule factor") which are easy to grasp and use, but already add a lot of flexibility.
I already posted some other ideas of an even more sophisticated exposure configuration in some other forums, but I would like to hear your ideas first. Feel free to contribute.
I am perhaps not the only one that was surprised when what was originally considered an exclusive "pro" feature by Canon (being only available in the 1D/1Ds series, AFAIK, and, erm,... well in virtually any crappy 150+€ P&S from any serious manufacturer, aside from Canon, of course), namely an adjustable auto ISO upper limit, suddenly "leapfrogged" over Canons enthusiast level cameras (7D, 5DII) and suddenly appeared in a lowly Rebel.
While this might seem like an unimportant feature to some, it is critical for people that would like to use auto ISO on a regular basis, but are not satisfied with the noise levels the 7D gives on its fixed auto ISO upper limit of ISO 3200. For example, I would rather prefer to have an upper boundary of 1600 most of the time, and maybe even 800 or 400 for critical subjects.
Some of you might say "I don't need auto ISO." Of course you can always set a fixed ISO level manually. However, in quickly changing shooting situations it is highly practical to have sufficiently fast shutter speeds on the one hand but only as much noise as is really needed on the other hand.
And you should ask yourself: do you not need it, or do you actually not use it because you don't like the pretty useless way it is implemented in the 7D/5DII?
Now that this feature has appeared in both the 550D and the 60D, it is really about time that Canon added this feature to the 5DII and 7D -- after all, all these cameras share the same Digic IV processor and consequently their firmwares are likely to share a large common code base. So the code for this feature is definitely there, they just need to add it when they build the next firmwares for the other bodies.
What do you think? Maybe we should write emails to our respective national Canon representatives and make our point about how adding such a highly useful feature would not only be incredibly nice of them, but would also show that Canon actually cared about their customers even after they parted with their money.
We know that this is possible, just remember the considerable upgrade the 5DII's video features received "due to public demand".
And while we are at it: I would be interested in sharing some ideas how additional configuration options could help an auto ISO feature. One thing I don't like (aside from noise levels at ISO 3200 ) is that the auto ISO function seems to follow the venerable exposure time = 1/35mm-equivalent focal length rule by the book, without considering circumstances. How about if we could modify the parametrization of this rule, not only for auto ISO, but also for any of the other auto modes?
For example, we could have a setting that allows slower shutter speeds if an IS lens is mounted (and for IS lenses known to the body, this could even factor in IS effectiveness, i.e., 1-3 stops for 100-400, 3-4 stops for 70-200 f4 IS or f2.8 IS II, etc.). Of course we would only enable this feature when shooting static subjects. Further, we could allow adjusting a factor to this rule to compensate for very steady (or very shaky) shooters, or for people that think that the old rule gives too slow shutter speeds for pixel-sharp images on 18++MP bodies.
This would only be two settings ("Shift exposure when IS lens detected", "Exposure rule factor") which are easy to grasp and use, but already add a lot of flexibility.
I already posted some other ideas of an even more sophisticated exposure configuration in some other forums, but I would like to hear your ideas first. Feel free to contribute.