Friday 10 February 2012

Canon Japan 1D X Sample images - A rare rant on the web from Drew

Canon Japan have published a range of sample stills from the Canon 1D-X, and very promising they look too.

They go a good way to substantiate Canon's claim of less pixels of a better quality being the way to go with DSLR's.

On the same site though there is a sample video titled 'Heart beat' which I have quite a lot more to say about.

My default position on this blog is to applaud and encourage creativity, as we all(myself included)tend to talk about photography more than shoot it.

'Heart Beat' is a clever way of showing the stills AND video capabilities of Canon's undoubtedly excellent new offering.

A great idea is one thing but good execution is another.

The video content of 'Heart Beat' is good, but the stills content of the video......oh my word.

Once again I do not doubt the quality or the excellence of the Canon 1D-X, but how on earth some of these stills ended up in this video beggars belief.

I take bad shots.

Often.

But they end up on the cutting room floor not in the video.

Not in a video extolling the virtues of a camera.

Like every great act of humanity photography happens in the brain, and the camera is just a tool to express that idea.

Perhaps it's me being a grouch (this is my second day in bed with man flu) but have a look yourself and let me know if you feel I have been unfair.

There.

Rant over

7 comments:

leedsonwheels said...

You're not the only one, that's for sure.

I couldn't watch it to the end when I saw it, is this how they want to present their top tier camera?

If I'd have done this, I'd have used the incredible frame rate of the camera, and shown that off in a creative way.

Unknown said...

Hi Adam,

Thanks for your comment.

The truth is we all shoot some duff frames, you just don't expect them to appear in such an important corporate video.

Regards

Drew

Dave Keating Photography said...

I also did not finish the video. It is almost as if they forgot someone might use it to shoot stills. For this to make it as the face of the flagship camera is puzzling to say the least.

Regards

Dave

Unknown said...

Hi Dave

Thanks for you comment.

For a company who makes such brilliant products I'm baffled as to how they could have missed the mark so widely with this promo video.

I could think of many names, well known and not so well known who would have made a video which had the photo/video community a buzz but for positive and not negative reasons.

Some may think I'm being harsh on the team that made this, and indeed it is made for the Japanese market, where it is possible that the appreciation for it may infact be different.

Though in my opinion Canon have made the best press camera currently available and really have not communicated its many strengths very well at all in this video.

Regards

Drew

brett maxwell said...

poor stills aside, did you see at the end where they give the ISOs used? that video shot at 2:00 was ISO 25600! wow!

Unknown said...

Hey Bret

No doubt they have cracked high ISO, witnes the 1d-x and the C300.

25,600 ISO video output is wonderful.

I have massive respect for Canon.

Why on earth did they or their agency let those dreadful stills through though?

Give such a bad impression of a brilliant camera.

Have a fine weekend

Regards

Drew

Libby said...

I'm feeling a bit flummoxed here. It's just, well, blah. IMO the lack of editing skill shows too. There's no feel to it. I've seen better stuff on youtube. And the stills, yes, several just don't belong. Next time you do it Drew and I'll buy a Canon ;-) -Libby