What surprises does Canon still have in store for the EOS-1D X Mark III?

[Don Haines]

When you have access to a BILLION DOLLAR+ Aerospace company's compute resources, there is NOTHING I cannot do or use to get or fix my shots! I can even rent satellite time on WHOLE UPLINK and DOWNLINK CHANNELS in mere minutes with a simple phone call !!!

Hey!

you must be the person who wrote the control code on the Starliner!

 

[Don Haines]

I disagree.

The 1D line were APS-H, a bastardized sensor size forced on the model due to sensor costs and manufacturing limitations of yield and wafer size at the time. But the 1D line was always primarily focused on fps iso performance and AF, the 1Ds line was more about the best 135 format sensor Canon could make coupled with their best AF (though detuned from the concurrent 1D model AF), the fps, a sports cameras raison d'être, were lackluster at best.

For sure nobody outside Canon ever considered the 1D X a step up in outright low iso image quality from the higher resolution 1Ds MkIII, indeed that final 1Ds still had more MP (though the difference was trivial) than the 1D X MkII.

No I'd say the 1D X was the natural replacement for the 1D MkIV and the 1Ds MkIII was the end of the line for the studio and wedding photographer orientated 1 series cameras irrespective of sensor size.

Agreed!

 

[SecureGSM]

===

I don't have to worry about speed, as OUR custom designed and coded Fractal Resizer is the FASTEST in the world using 8 CPU cores (16 threads on an AMD Threadripper) and can resample a low resolution 4096 by 2160 pixel VIDEO FRAME from a higher end video camera up to as much as 65,556 by 34,560 pixels (1.89:1 aspect ratio) in less than TWO SECONDS and it still looks quite decent !!! Normally, we resample video frames from DCI 4K video resolution to about 8192 by 4320 (35.3 megapixel) for print and poster use, since we use the Canon C700 Global shutter camera at 12 bits or greater UNCOMPRESSED as a stills camera at 60 fps burst rate equivalent ...OR.... we can use our "NEW" 50.3 megapixel unreleased MONSTER Medium Format camera which has 16-bits per RGBA channel (64 bit colour -- RAW) and can shoot 8196 by 4320 RAW pixels at 60 fps burst rate!

When you have access to a BILLION DOLLAR+ Aerospace company's compute resources, there is NOTHING I cannot do or use to get or fix my shots! I can even rent satellite time on WHOLE UPLINK and DOWNLINK CHANNELS in mere minutes with a simple phone call !!!

I also hook up my camera to a 30 GHz radio modem (terrestrial link -- not a satellite link!) and can beam my photos in less than half a second since at that high frequency, the maximum channel bandwidth available with GREAT error correction is 1.25 GIGABYTES per second, so I can send over 500 frames If I use a Wavelet intraframe compression method in less than three seconds. I can send 35 frames of RAW uncompressed 4K video frames in about the same about of time with PROPER error correction. So I can choose whether it's RAW or Wavelet (JPEG-2000/HEIF) for my images. Speed of workflow is NOT an issue with us!

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I will PROBABLY be in Tokyo this year (2020 Olympics) but who knows as I get sent EVERYWHERE to do tests on our custom gear. I will be likely staying in Osaka and then take a crew chopper over to Tokyo to do aerials and MAYBE get some stadium shots on the track events and the Marathon ending MOST LIKELY.
Since we're not with NHK (Host Broadcaster Tokyo 2020) but rather a technical aerospace company, our current schedule is very fluid. The other possibility is the Summer X games in July 16-19 in Minneapolis OR the UCI Road World championships September 20-27, 2020!

We'll see! There's also the actual INTRODUCTION / WORLD PREMIERE of the new 50.3 megapixel/DCI-8K 60 fps Monster Combined Stills/Video Medium Format camera and it's APS-C and 2/3rd inch DCI 8K large sensor super-smartphone siblings event that I will be at!

Harry, please. Hold on posting until the April the first 2020 and then unleash all your posting power and wild imagination in a single mega long post. How cool that may be...

 

[Don Haines]

I can even rent satellite time on WHOLE UPLINK and DOWNLINK CHANNELS in mere minutes with a simple phone call !!!

Wow! Impressive! In a simple phone call!
We can’t do that and we own the satellites!

 

[HarryFilm]

Harry, please. Hold on posting until the April the first 2020 and then unleash all your posting power and wild imagination in a single mega long post. How cool that may be...

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Naaaahh !!! I've got TONS more MALARKEY to expunge onto CanonRumors before April 1st, 2020! My verbal diarrhea is THE benchmark by which to measure vestigal verbal vomit! If you can't see it here, you won't see it ANYWHERE ELSE !!!

I AM HARRYFILM !!!!! --- AND....you heard it and saw it HERE FIRST !!!!

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.

 

[HarryFilm]

Wow! Impressive! In a simple phone call!
We can’t do that and we own the satellites!

...actually... WE own the satellites -- Five of them to be exact !!!

.

 

[justaCanonuser]

I've been able to get GREAT high quality 36 by 24 inch prints from EIGHT megapixel cameras! The KEY is to first edit, crop, colour correct, unsharp mask FIRST, and THEN use a FRACTAL RESIZER to resample your original image to about 4x the original pixel count (i.e. 32 megapixels) and then print at 600 dpi (or about 280 Lines per inch -- Note DPI and LPI are NOT the same thing!) using Error Diffusion and Best Quality Printing set to ON. (some printers use the slowest print setting for best printed image quality!) Both Epson and Canon professional printers have this capability to CHOOSE the type of error diffusion (test which diffusion setting works BEST for your specific image). The fractal resize step does the increase in actual pixel density. The error diffusion settings during the print stage re-distributes the aliasing and edge softening errors of the upsize operation amongst neighbouring pixels so the human eye is TRICKED into seeing a higher resolution image than it really is!

Sorry for the extremely delayed reply, HarryFilm, before Xmas I had a busy time...Your printing recipe looks quite well elaborated, thank you very much. In fact, my wife used a German professional printing service, and their printer software seems to turn her 12 mp files in high res images with some comparable tricks - without producing visible artifacts. The results were really impressive. Well, today's smartphones demonstrate that heavy-sided algorithms can produce quite useful images out of tiny sensors with very small pixels and often not so brillant lenses. The cost of adding "information" to low quality raw images, of course, is that those algorithms sometimes create very strange artifacts.

 

[justaCanonuser]

So at an international sports competition where we take 1000's of pictures we could die before we hand in our assignments using your workflow?????

Well, to help HarryFilm a bit: if you really work on ONE very promising image, e.g. a beautiful landscape or an elaborated portrait etc., it can be worth to invest quite a bit of work in ONE print. Heavy-sided editing is nothing new in the history of photography, in former times it was done by dark-room wizards. An impressive example is how Pablo Inirio, the master printer of Magnum, edited Dennis Stock’s shot of James Dean in Times Square and turned it into one of the most iconic film star portraits in history:

Marked Up Photographs Show How Iconic Prints Were Edited in the Darkroom

Want to see what kind of work goes into turning a masterful photograph into an iconic print? Pablo Inirio, the master darkroom printer who works at Magnum

petapixel.com

 

[unfocused]

It looks like the answer to this thread’s original question is “none”

 

[Nelu]

It looks like the answer to this thread’s original question is “none”

None good, you mean...

 

[privatebydesign]

It looks like the answer to this thread’s original question is “none”

It really depends on what you shoot and it what way. The MkIII is a much better video specced camera than the MkII and the WiFi speeds are going to be faster, if those are critical to your shooting then they are both major steps up.

Another thing people miss is that many companies buy tools like this on cycles that fit in with their useage for shutter cycles, tax advantages/write offs etc and they need to buy new cameras, if there is a newer model they buy it and will often hold off purchasing if a newer model is due.

As I see it the acceptance or rejection of the model will, as always, be down to AF performance, if the MkIII is better than the MkII it will be loved. Video shooters and crossover shooters are already going to love it.

BUT as a MkII owning generalist photo orientated shooter I am not enthused one bit. Indeed I am very unlikely to buy one soon and quite possibly never depending on what happens with the future RF releases. It looks like my days with the one series are now numbered, though the first of the writing on the wall for us stills orientated shooters was the amalgamation 1D X, killing off the 1Ds line was a real setback that the 5Ds/r did not fill.

 

[StoicalEtcher]

Well, to help HarryFilm a bit: if you really work on ONE very promising image, e.g. a beautiful landscape or an elaborated portrait etc., it can be worth to invest quite a bit of work in ONE print. Heavy-sided editing is nothing new in the history of photography, in former times it was done by dark-room wizards. An impressive example is how Pablo Inirio, the master printer of Magnum, edited Dennis Stock’s shot of James Dean in Times Square and turned it into one of the most iconic film star portraits in history:

Marked Up Photographs Show How Iconic Prints Were Edited in the Darkroom

Want to see what kind of work goes into turning a masterful photograph into an iconic print? Pablo Inirio, the master darkroom printer who works at Magnum

petapixel.com

Great link - thanks for taking the time to post it justaCanonuser.

 

[stevelee]

I am reminded of when I would mitigate converging verticals by setting something under on side of the easel to elevate it. Then I’d need to dodge that end of the picture to make the exposure consistent.

 

[HarryFilm]

Sorry for the extremely delayed reply, HarryFilm, before Xmas I had a busy time...Your printing recipe looks quite well elaborated, thank you very much. In fact, my wife used a German professional printing service, and their printer software seems to turn her 12 mp files in high res images with some comparable tricks - without producing visible artifacts. The results were really impressive. Well, today's smartphones demonstrate that heavy-sided algorithms can produce quite useful images out of tiny sensors with very small pixels and often not so brillant lenses. The cost of adding "information" to low quality raw images, of course, is that those algorithms sometimes create very strange artifacts.

---

Since MOST cameras are actually pretty good these days, it's now up to the printers themselves, where almost ALL now have great error-diffusion based rendering. We have 48 inch wide Epson, Canon and OCE (a division of Canon) to do our large screen prints. At 2400 DPI that is about 600 lines per inch using CMYK or about 400 LPI using 4-colour, 6-colour or 8-colour inkjets.

We have found that by using a fancy Fractal Resizer (we designed our own!) with the very advanced edge detection and object recognition to scale objects, it STILL keep edges razor sharp. We can resize almost ANY image by up to 4x on each axis and get more-than-decent result for bus-poster work or we can merely DOUBLE the resolution on the X and Y axis to get a SUPERB premium glossy magazine quality result. This means our older 8-megapixel pro cameras from 10 years ago (they still work!) can give us 32 megapixels and our high end 1Dx2's will give us 80+ megapixels, and our unreleased 50 megapixel monsters will now give us 200 megapixels! What WE HAVE BEEN DOING is finally coding the "Fractal Resizer" into a CPU chip directly so that ALL our new cameras and computers will have it built-in for real-time or near-real-time SUPER-HIGH-QUALITY image scaling!

Live Fractal Resize on a camera ALSO acts as a form of 1.5x, 2x, 3x and 4x digital zoom! We HAVE TRIED it up to 8x on each axis but it softens edges a tad bit too much for my tastes BUT for some people it may be perfectly acceptable depending upon your application! 4x resize on each axis is the upper limit in my opinion for HIGH QUALITY SCALING results!

Fractal Resize is the BEST resize algorithm out there and so long you work within it's parameters and do ONLY 1.5x, 2x, 3x and 4x resize on the X-axis, you WILL get excellent results! The printers will take care of the rest of the quality issues by distributing any basic/intrinsic image capture errors out to other pixels using simple error diffusion which TRICKS the human eye to thinking there is more resolution than there really is.

.

 

[justaCanonuser]

Great link - thanks for taking the time to post it justaCanonuser.

You're welcome, it is always a pleasure for me to take look back in the history of photography and talk a bit about it. In the digital age, it is worth remembering that photography isn't only about shooting 4000 images a day, despite many pro photographers (wedding, sports, wildlife) are forced to do so.