Oh damn, there goes my holiday money!

The live screen is a surprise on a pro camera - not sure what to make of that.

Will be useful for those shots where you can't get your eye to the viewfinder, but I'm sure battery life will suffer.

Self cleaning - hurrah!

@DrD: Im sure they found room to squeeze a ton of cells in there. I'm sure battery life is the FIRST thing they thought of when the live screen idea was brought up...right canon? right?

I think they will use the same battery they have been using since the first 1D

All I can think is that some people are not going to be happy with the new 82mm filter thread on the "II" version of the 16-35mm f/2.8 lens. And personally, I'm surprised to see this come out before the refresh of the 1Ds. But 'tisn't bad, anyhoo.

Nice camera. The 40D rumors that have been going around were probably unfounded anyway, since Canon always updates the SLRs in a certain order (Rebel->MidRange->Pro). The 30D came out, then the RebelXTi, so it made sense their next release would be an update to the 1D rather than the 30D. (But what is to become of the 5D series?)

I was wrong they did make a new battery

I need to go change my pants...

Such a nice camera. I feel like the LCD view is really pointless on a pro camera (looking at an LCD screen just feels so amateurish to me, but w/e).

> rfayed says: @DrD: Im sure they found room to squeeze a ton of cells in there. I'm sure battery life is the FIRST thing they thought of when the live screen idea was brought up...right canon?

If the battery life is anything like on the 20d, I don't see any major problems here.

I can fire off ~ 1000 pictures on one charge of my 20d battery. That's about enough to fill a 4GB card.

/now batteries for my 580ex are a pain in the butt

The new batery should be good for 2200 shots according to the press release

Rock on. Next up - 1Ds Mark III with 20+ MP!

The live preview is not useless for a pro camera. There are many occasions where it's helpful to hold the camera above your head. With a decent LCD (with a wide viewing angle) it's possible to get some feel for the composition (although a rotating screen would be even more useful for that). With a conventional SLR you're shooting blind.

Press release quotes a figure of $3999.

If I lived in a city with better public transportation, I'd sell my car for this camera. I'm not even kidding.

Not many things inspire totally blind, self-sacrificing gadget lust in me, but Canon optics are one of them. I actually lost my breath when reading the press release.

What's the motor driving?

Given the expected price, I'll still be shooting with my Elan 7ne. Yes, over the long run film is more expensive but it's easier for me to come up with a few bucks for prints and processing than $4k for a camera (especially since I have a $3k quote here for braces for my daughter)

This is interesting:

"The all-new 10.1 megapixel, APS-H size CMOS sensor"

What's the betting that 16:9 will soon be established as the 'standard' aspect ratio for still images, replacing the APS-C 3:2 format that we have as a legacy of 35mm film?
As for live preview on a pro camera, this will be a boon to photographers working with long exposures or extreme closeups, who don't want to risk jogging the camera as they check the framing.

Radish, the 7ne is still a fine camera - and Canon still haven't put eye controlled focus on a DSLR!
Images taken on an EOS 30 [Elan 7e]

Oh, Snap. I was just shopping for lenses for my Digital Rebel Xt and was thinking, you know ... I need to stick with EF mount because I need to upgrade to full frame pretty soon. Looks like "pretty soon" is going to be sooner than I thought. At $3999 retail, we should see this on the street for around $3200 in no time ... which is at that unfortunate price range where it is ridiculously expensive for me, but manageable.

Btw, it isn't the first live-view screen Canon SLR - first was the 20Da. This is useful if you attend press conferences and various events, when there's like 50 guys fighting for the best position and at least 5 of them stand in front of you and the only way to get a descent shot is to hold the camera above their heads, instead of capturing snowy dandruff at the back of some guys head...

I wonder, why didn't they upgrade the resolution... I guess the average photojournalist doesn't really need the extra pixels.
Press release says that the ISO range is 100-3200 (extended 50-6400).

It's really disturbing when press releases speak about 1.6x, 1.5x or 1.3x "magnification" or "effective focal length" when there's nothing to do with any magnification or enlargements or lengthening(although some individuals would like to think so). It's just a stupid crop factor! Same one, that fuxxors your 28mm wide lenses and makes them completely useless.

Well... this makes my choice clear. No kids for me. Camera it is! $$$$

i'm sure canon knows what their doing but something about a sensor that vibrates doesn't sit well with me.

Little Joe - I'm in the opposite boat. I had the kids, and then used them to justify why exactly I needed $5000 in photo gear. Just remember the argumnet "Buying my own gear is cheaper than taking them to some hack photographer twice a year - it'll pay for itself in no time !!"

It isn't even the first DSLR with the Live View option -- that honour goes to Olympus' E-330.  At the time, most critics panned the LV feature as too "consumerish," but actual users soon found a host of good applications for it (people who did a lot of macro work were particularly happy).

I wasn't aware that the 20Da had Live View -- the only thing I knew about it was that it was optimized for astrophotography.

it may be fast, but "motor driven" it is not. this usually refers to the motor needed to move the film through the camera for rapid shooting.

pisspaws: the motor is needed to move the mirror, so it is motor-driven.

kryptik: no 16:9 anytime soon. you'd either need new lenses or you'd crop away a lot of usable space. why should they do that?

elvindeath, this is not a full frame body.

Amazing camera, but still looking for the 40D to drop ($3900) is out of my price range...

gewitterkind: the sensor on this is 16:9, so it doesn't crop anything - and because it's still smaller than 35mm film, no new lenses are needed [the release doesn't say if the body is EF-S compatible]

I'm wondering when we'll start to see 16:9 format sensors [obviously smaller than the 1D's] in compacts. Makes sense if you've got a 16:9 display

It is very unlikely the 1D Mk III will be EF-S compatible (because of the size of the sensor). Only 1.6x bodies are physically capable of using EF-S lenses without the lens literally blacking-out part of the sensor.

I wouldn't expect to ever see a pro-camera from Canon that can use EF-S lenses (they would have to use smaller sensors). Only the pro-sumer 1.6x cop product lines (rebel, 30D).

quote from the press release:
"The sensor is APS-H size, 28.1 by 18.7mm, significantly larger than the much more commonly found APS-C, usually about 23.5 by 15.5mm."

kryptik: 28.1x18.7mm means that the sensor(and pictures) is 3:2 aspect ratio. Do your math if you don't believe. Btw, you can cut your photos to any size you like, the sensor doesn't have to be that exact size. That's the beauty of computer editing and digital cameras...
APS-H means that it's halfway between APS-C and fullframe sensors.
EF-S lenses fit only to the newer APS-C sensor EOS bodies like 300D, 350D, 400D, 20D(a) and 30D. You can't use them with D30, D60, 10D, 5D and all of the 1D-series bodies. These lenses are created only for the purpose of minimizing the negative effects of the 1.6x crop factor.

If you're doubting the usefullness of a live screen, you're being a bit elitist (live screens are for toys) and you've never shot with 20 other photographers around you.

@elliotness: Oops, I blundered. Hands up, my mistake for not reading the press release fully, and just reading APS-H, and assuming Canon meant the sensor was the same size as an 'H' negative on APS.
I have made a fool of myself and then looked like a troll by arguing with the person who corrected me first. Please don't delete my acount in the next Giz commenter purge!
I agree, EF-S will probably never be seen on a pro body... unless we see an APS-C sensor on a pro body. Unlikely, but maybe in a couple of years...
I still stand by the suggestion that we may see 16:9 stills sensors - no technical reason why not, and could be a selling point. I also was right about not needing new lenses, a 30.2 x 16.7 mm sensor would be compatible with Canon's lenses designed for 35mm film (24x36mm), and this was my intended meaning. Useless for EF-S, granted.

Now if you'll excuse me, in just one day I've insulted people, eaten humble pie, messed my pants at the sight of all the shiny Canon releases, so I need to make my excuses and avoid the comments box for a while.
Your sincerely,
A Canon Fanboy

16:9 would waste too much of the lens' circular space, and it would be fairly awkward for vertical portraits, from a framing stand point, as well as viewing them afterwards on a computer screen (even worse if the screen is also 16:9 or 16:10). You can always crop the picture to whatever ratio you want. Just because camcorders are on the 16:9 path, doesn't even suggest DSLR cameras should/will.

Ah, but what about the non-crop-factor lenses? There was an article on Bob Atkins's blog that suggested you keep the same height and pixel pitch as the current 1.5-1.6x crop factor but add areas to the left or right that come active when you use a non-crop-factor old skool lens. We're not there yet, but one of these days, they may start to make secondary special-purpose bodies for people who want features that aren't good for a general purpose SLR body.

Also, there's nothing stopping you from making the mirror in sections (which is the real thing that prevents crop factor lenses from working on a bigger body). Canon could make a body that's 1.3x and 1.6x and just disable mirror segments if you don't have the right lens mounted. I forget who, but one of the medium format cameras had a split mirror a long time ago.

I blogged about some of the features after reading the whitepaper. There's a lot of neat little features that don't stand out as bullet points that they added, like the ability actually correct front-focus and back-focus yourself or the quiet shutter mode. This camera is very much intended for a specific, generally high-end professional, audience and anything that doesn't benefit that audience wasn't bothered with. Like anything more than 10.1 megapixels.

Doing a live-readout from the sensor is nearly, but not entirely free, the way they are doing it. It'll be interesting to see how the market accepts this, because there's no way with the current SLR form factor that you can make a "perfect" live view with autofocus that's as good as through-the-viewfinder.

Personally, I still very much prefer the waist-level finder on my medium format camera. The left-right directions are flipped, but I don't need to hold the camera in front of my face and can do the low-level or over-the-head sort of shots with great ease. But that just doesn't work right on anything smaller than medium format.

This is the greatest day of my life.