Canon 1D X

The 1DX, Canon's new flagship DSLR, boasts some great upgrades in the stills department.  With two Digic 5 processors for image processing, a Digic 4 processor dedicated solely to autofocus and exposure, and a newly designed 18 MP sensor, the new camera will allow for lower noise, faster focus times, and 12 FPS RAW shooting.  These new features are surely invaluable to the professional photographer.

On the video side of things, however, I'm not impressed.  With all this processing power under the hood, it is obvious that Canon is crippling the camera's maximum abilities, limiting it to a maximum of 30 FPS for 1080p (the same as the Rebels, which have only 1 Digic 4 processor).  The new hardware will surely allow for a reduction in noise and more detailed footage due to pixel binning rather than line skipping, but where are the features that truly show of the power of this beast of a camera?  There are point and shoot cameras that can do 1080p60 and the iPhone 4S (a phone!) can even pump out 1080p30.  Undoubtedly the 1D X could do 1080p60 (and probably higher frame rates as well), 3-4K video, or possibly even RAW (if it can shoot 18MP RAW stills at 12 FPS, why not 2MP at 24 FPS?).  The reason is obviously that Canon does not want to cannibalize its professional video sales.  The 1D line and 5D are already great video cameras and improving too much on them could push it ahead of dedicated video cameras for the same or lower price while also giving the user the bonus of a flagship still camera.

Based on the video sample on Canon's Japanese website, I'm not overly impressed, although the video looks to be somewhat compressed and is shot at very high ISO's.  From that brief glimpse it doesn't look like it surpasses the quality of a hacked Panasonic GH2 running Driftwood's 176 Mbit GOP1 patch.  When comparing footage from a $6800 camera which undoubtedly used top of the line lenses and underwent massive amounts of post-production (and perhaps noise reduction?) there should be an astounding difference versus the unedited footage from a $800 camera with a $300 lens.  Maybe my opinion will change when I see more, but for now I'm not overly impressed.

The announcement of the 1D X also sheds some light on when we may see a 5D replacement (I'm betting it's named the 5D X rather than the 5D Mark III).  With the 1D X not available until March, it's unlikely that the next 5D would be announced before then.  Even if the 1D X ships on time and the new 5D is announced promptly afterward, it probably wouldn't be available until at least mid-summer and would likely be difficult to get until around this time next year.  That's probably the best case scenario.  Even if Nikon gets a D800 out the door early, I can't see Canon announcing a new 5D before the 1D X ships.  That's kind of sad news, especially since if that's all the video capabilities a new 5D would offer it will have stiff competition from other cameras a year from now.  I guess we wait.