Canon EOS 1Ds 11MP Digital SLR Camera: Notes for Film Photographers considering the Switch

For the past four months I've had the opportunity to use and work with the Canon 1Ds digital SLR, this was the first digital camera I've used for professional work, and I've been exceptionally pleased.

Background and Biases

Until late 2003, all of my professional work was done using Canon film SLRs and professional slide films such as Fuji Velvia and Provia 100F. While I used a digital printing workflow, early on it was my experience that film provided a higher quality image, better color, better resolution, and lower noise. Having a highly technical background, I was suspicious of many of the claims made by photographers such as Michael Reichmann about the image quality of Canon's D30 and D60 cameras, there were technical arguments that seemed to indicate that those cameras could not produce images of the quality of 35mm film, and even the 1Ds theoretically should have been neck and neck. At the end of 2003 I acquired a 1Ds, and have found a significant difference between theory and practice. Michael was right, I was wrong.

Of course, image quality is far from the only relevant feature of a camera, and I intend this to be a full review. But it's important to understand that I really was quite suspicious of the image quality of the 1Ds until I started taking photographs with it. It's also important to understand that before this, I was a film photographer. Many of the comments I make will address experiences common to migrating from film to any digital SLR, I'll try and be clear about which is which, but this review should be most interesting to people considering the 1Ds as their first jump from the film world.)

Build Quality and Ergonomics

Opening the box, one of the first things you'll notice about the 1Ds is the weight, and general build quality. The camera feels solid, and is solid, much like Canon's professional film cameras (e.g., the Canon 1v). Most controls follow the Canon idiom, with a cluster of buttons left of the viewfinder, a control wheel near the shutter and on the back, and so forth, I found it surprisingly easy to adapt to using the 1Ds.

There are some details I'd love to see polished. The rear LCD could be brighter, it's hard to see in sunlight. I find the tabs for securing the battery pack to the camera to be difficult to open (I have very short fingernails; I usually end up using a key.) But these few details aside, I've been quite impressed.
Autofocus with the 1Ds and USM lenses is fast and accurate.

A Few Things You'll Need

You'll want a lot of flash when using the 1Ds. RAW images from the camera (while you can shoot JPEG images, you'll get the highest quality results from shooting in RAW format) take well over 10MB each, a 128MB flash card won't get you very far. I'm using a pair of 4GB Hitachi Microdrives; these hard disks are the same size and shape as compact flash cards and work well in the 1Ds. If you're going on a multiday shooting trip you'll have another problem--where to put all the images! I ended up purchasing a laptop with a substantial disk drive, and a good enough screen that I could do a first editing pass during a trip.

Adobe's Camera Raw software, an integrated part of Photoshop CS, is excellent, and greatly simplifies my workflow.

Image Quality

I don't think that screen images convey the story well, let me instead tell you what I see. The first day out of the box I took the 1Ds, took some test images around the house, and printed them at 24 inches by 16 inches. This is a common size for my prints from 35mm film, so it was easy to then compare the apparent sharpness of the prints side-by-side. My instant impression was that the 1Ds had produced prints that were vastly sharper and more detailed than equivalent prints made with 35mm Velvia (tripod, cable release, mirror lockup, same lens). This was a surprise.

Then I noticed that I'd shot the digital camera at ISO 400. My jaw dropped. The EOS 1Ds was clearly outperforming 35mm Velvia when shooting at ISO 400.

What's going on? As a said at the start of this review, in theory there should be little difference. In practice, the 1Ds images have a lot less grain/noise. Even Provia 100F grain is significant on a 24x16 print. While digital cameras have noise, the 1Ds displays far less noise than an equivalent Provia drum scan, and that lack of noise allows for greater sharpening.

RAW images out of the camera have low contrast. This is intentional, it's easier to add contrast later than to take it away, the camera captures a broader brightness range than color slide film.

Catches

What don't I like?

Well, the camera does get sensor dust. When you change lenses, dust can creep into the camera and it'll stick to the sensor. At small f-stops, the dust becomes more visible and you'll usually need to "spot" the image in Photoshop before printing. Cleaning the sensor yourself is not recommended by Canon, and can lead to very, very costly repair bills. Canon will clean the sensor for you, but the cost to ship the camera insured isn't cheap either.
The price (around $7K) is high, but. The 1Ds is saving me money in film and processing purchases, as well as in the cost of drum scans. For me, this worked out to about $3K/year). It'll pay for itself quickly.

Joys

What do I like about having switched?

I've been very impressed by what appears to be an increase in GOPR (Good Ones Per Roll) since I've started using the 1Ds. It's hard to figure out exactly where all this is coming from, but I have a few ideas. It's not compositional; the small rear LCD isn't good enough to let me tell more than I was pointed in roughly the right direction. The histogram is a more likely source of improvement, providing instant feedback that I haven't blown out the highlights of a shot in difficult lighting. The additional contrast range of the 1Ds is also a likely source of improvement.

While I normally work at ISO 100 for landscape work, I adored the ability to up my ISO quickly when I came across a California condor. Being able to take high-quality images at ISO 200 or 400 provides an enormous amount of flexibility when things are dark, or moving.

I love that RAW processing means getting to compensate for the coolness or warmth of the lighting post-exposure. Warming filters (and the little bit of image degradation that any filter provides) are no longer a necessary part of my photography.

I love not having to keep track of how much film I need, and worrying about refrigeration.

Conclusion

The 1Ds is a far better match to my photographic needs than a 35mm film camera, and I was surprised by how much. Great job, Canon.