Sage Grouse and my new Canon 1Dmk4

Sage Grouse, Canon Eos1dmk4, EF600mmF4IS, ISO 400, 1/2000 @ F4

I just received my Canon 1Dmk4, Canon's newest flagship professional model camera. I took it out this morning for my first serious test drive. Over the weekend I tested the camera with my various lenses to make sure the focus was in calibration. Everything was very good. I feel as though the Mk 4 is is a real, down to business, professional camera that is very well refined. The camera handled everything I threw at it this morning with no trouble. It's a very fast responsive camera with impressive image quality.

Sage Grouse in Flight, Canon Eos1dmk4, EF600mmF4IS, ISO 800, 1/3200 @ F4

I visited a sage grouse lek (or dancing ground) not far from my home in Cody. It's a bit early in the breeding season but about 25 males were gathered for this mornings show. No females (hens) showed up but I would expect to start seeing some soon. The peak of the breeding season is still a month away but the males put on a pretty energetic performance along with some dominance fighting. A golden eagle flushed the birds off the lek about an hour after sunrise which put an end to my photography. Sage grouse are being considered for the endangered species list but our population in NW Wyoming is doing very well.

More Thoughts on the Canon 7D

Canon Eos 7D, EF500F4IS, ISO 500, 1/320 @ F4.5

Having had the 7D for a couple of weeks now and using it extensively on my Winter Yellowstone Photo Tour last week I can now make a few observations. This camera is a major step up from the xxD line. I've had all of them from the 10D to the 50D and the 7D smokes them all. Canon has done a great job upgrading the feature set on the camera. The viewfinder grid lines and the electronic level are very useful. The viewfinder itself is great, nice and bright, much better than any of the xxd line. The new AF system seems to be outstanding. With 19 very good focus points arranged well and covering a large portion of the frame I see very little to complain about. I used single point, expanded point and spot AF during the week. Each worked well. The spot AF is useful for precise focusing on static subject but is not as stable with moving subjects. Initial acquisition is very fast. AIServo seems to be very good. I didn't have any real challenging focus situations during the tour but I did photograph a vehicle coming down the road towards me at 20-30mph. I focused on the license plate and kept shooting until I buffered out. I was able to get off 24 frames which is much better than the Canon specs for buffer capacity. By careful analysis I determined that 13 frames were razor sharp, 8 frames were sharp, 2 were acceptable and only one frame was slightly soft. I also would like to say that it was snowing at the time so there is a chance that the snow could have affected the AF system to some extent.

Canon 7D, EF500mmF4IS, ISO 200, 1/80 @ F4.5 handheld

The images show a lot of detail and the noise performance of the sensor is very good considering the number of pixels cram ed into the APS-C sized sensor. I used ISO's from 200 to 800 during the week and am very happy with what I see. I always try to use the lowest ISO possible to achieve my goals since the majority of my clients wouldn't accept any images taken at these new high ISO's like 6400, 12,800 etc. The slight amount of noise I could see at ISO 800 is very well controlled and looks much like film grain and I'm very comfortable with that. The camera is very customizable, you seemingly can make any button do whatever you want. I never have the camera set to automatically review each image after the exposure preferring to manually bring up the image for review. With the 7d I've dedicated my SET button for this function and find it very handy. All in all this is a lot of camera for the price. Now if I could just get my MK4.....