‘OK - I have only had the camera 2 days, as I was lucky enough to get one of the first cameras available from professional dealers. This review is based on just a few hundred shots but I thought I’d post a quick review, as fellow viewers would be interested.
Well, the camera is quite superb. Image quality is everything I expected. There is almost a complete absence of noise, even at high ISO settings. The ISO is adjustable in 1/3 stop increments which is great and the ‘L’ setting gives ISO 50 equivalent. Even ISO 3200 is incredible.
I was worried about the quality of images taken with ‘cheaper’ lenses, due to the demands of the full-frame sensor. I did some tests with some L-series lenses and cheaper zooms too. I can report the following:
1. Full aperture performance with L series lenses is very good, very little magenta fringing (e.g. 17-40L zoom @ f4.0) or diffraction. No sign of vignetting with most lenses, only slight corner fall off even with my full frame Sigma 12-24 zoom. No L-series lens I tried showed corner shading, but this may not be the case with very wide aperture lenses (e.g. 28-70 f2.8L).
2. Consumer zooms do suffer a bit (e.g. EF24-85) with edge diffraction but better than expected.
3. Non L-series Canon EF lenses have given very good results (e.g. 35mm f2.0, 85mm f1.8)
4. Sensor is very demanding, however. I wouldn’t buy this camera if you are not able to invest in (or possess) top-notch lenses.
RAW files processed with the bundled software (DPP and Zoombrowser) are superb but the large JPEGs setting (ca. 4mb files) are good enough for most situations. Possibly the best in-camera processed JPEGs I have seen.
Metering and focussing are excellent (a notch higher than 20D?) and the spot metering very welcome – the former has been noticeably absent from many Canon models for too long. The ‘Picture’ modes work well and cut down on post-production.
I printed an image to A3, having converted it from RAW into a TIF file. It was very difficult to find any fault at all (admittedly taken with an L-series zoom). Shadow detail and exposure latitude is outstanding (class leading?) and resolution exceeds that of the output device (an Epson R1800 printer).
Watch this space for an update once I have more hands-on usage’.