It’s fall, Photokina 2010 is coming up, and just a week ago Nikon announced their fall new products. Today, it’s Canon’s turn.

EOS 60D: High Low-End, not Low High-End

First up is the impressive as a consumer class camera, but maybe not so much as a replacement for the EOS 50D. What’s gone is the Aluminum/Magnesium body, the 6.3 FPS frame rate, AF micro adjustments, and  compact flash cards.

The new EOS 60D, yep it still looks like a Canon SLR.

Out with the old in with the new. New to the EOS 60D, among other things, is:

• A 63-zone color sensitive meter
• +/- 3 Stops of exposure compensation
• A combination multi-controller and rear dial ripped right from the PowerShot G11
• An articulating high resolution screen and wireless flash control
• In camera image resizing
• Creative image filters (soft focus, grainy B&W, Toy Camera effect, and a tilt-shift effect)

Clearly canon is putting more and more focus on video in their new SLRs, though the lack of video information on the Canon USA product page is a bit of an odd oversight. The EOS 60D has full manual video control, including manual gain control of the audio. It also has in camera editing functionality, which I guess is handy given what appears to be the target market for the EOS 60D.

So while the spec list is fairly impressive, I’m not sure the camera is. Not to me at least. There is one new feature that I really like. The integrated multi-controller and secondary control dial does make for a much better UI design when it comes to using the multi-controller ot select AF points, especially when you have a vertical grip attached to the camera. In fact this has been one of my major peeves with SLR UI design for a long time.

Using the multi-controller to selection AF points is unbeatable fast, however, when you’re using a vertical grip it’s virtually impossible since the multi-controller is now way out of finger’s reach. Nikon got around this on their D300(s) and D700 bodies by adding a second controller to the MB-D10 grip. The combination controller on the EOS 60D appears to solve the issue for Canon, at least on the lower end cameras–the professional bodies are still woefully lacking when it comes to having a properly designed user interface.

The new front top LCD and control buttons on the EOS 60D.

There’s another UI change that isn’t so impressive, however. On the 50D and it’s predecessor, 6 of the most important functions–ISO, drive mode, AF mode, metering mode, white balance, and flash exposure compensation–were controlled by 3 buttons in front of the top LCD. I actually think this is one of the best UI features of any Camera I’ve handled. Need to bump the ISO, push the first button turn the main dial, no need to even take your eye away from the view finder.

The dual mode buttons in conjunction with the two control dials were simple, compact, and intuitive. Never mind at this point well established. The EOS 60D apparently eschews that for a more Rebel–or dare I say it EOS 1 series–style single mode button. The new camera replaces the elegant 3 button solution with 4 (not including the LED button), AF mode, drive mode, ISO, and metering mode. White balance and flash exposure compensation are nowhere to be found. I assume you have to go though a menu for them now.

The EOS 60D is expected to retail (body only) for $1100, and should be available towards the end of September.

New Glass: Go Pro or Go Home

New glass is always a much anticipated event. The months proceeding any of Canon’s major announcement times send the rumor sites into a virtual frenzy theorizing and speculating over every possible lens. One can dream, right?

EF 8-15 f/4L Fisheye USM

This is something akin to a replacement for the old EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye, even though the EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye hasn’t been discontinued. On a full frame sensor the lens has a circular 180° field of view at 8mm. At 15mm, it’s like the current fisheye, a 180° diagonal field of view. On a crop camera, at 8mm you get a full 180° diagonal field of view. Not a bad deal if you use a fisheye.

Estimated list price is $1400, and the lens is expected to be available in January of 2011.

EF 70-300 f/4-5.6L IS USM

Lets start with what it is. It appears to be an L class replacement for the EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM. It’s a slow, variable aperture lens, so it’s not exactly in the same class as the EF 70-200mm f/4Ls (either with or without IS), nor is it as long as the EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM. It is, however, weather sealed.

What this lens really is, at least to me, is an enigma. Canon had a perfectly good, if not slightly soft EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM. It was the reasonably priced and it’s been removed from Canon’s website (at least the USA site) which tends to mean that it’s been discontinued. The replacement is apparently this lens. Boy does that leave a gaping hole in Canon’s lineup. There’s the two non-stabilized, mediocre–kit lens–quality 75-300′s at the $200 price point and the non-stabilized EF 100-300mm f/4.5-5.6 USM at the $500 price point (where the old 70-300 IS lived). If you want a stabilized 70-300mm lens, you jump then to $1400 for the EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM, and then to the new $1500 EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM.

There are two questions for me. First, why another L telephoto zoom? Canon has 13 telephoto zooms listed on their site now; 1 is an EF-S lens, 3 are the a fore mentioned low end 75-300s/100-300, the final non L lens is the 70-300 DO. Eight, yes, eight of the 13 telephoto zooms are L. Doesn’t that diminish the L branding as a premium when almost all the lenses are L branded?

Second is a matter of the lens’s described focus system.

Lens extension via inner focusing and focus cam plus floating mechanism.

Is it me, or does that sound suspiciously like the front element extends when the lens focuses. Extending front elements tend to be a feature of inexpensive lenses, not premium pro level ones. If that’s the case, this will be one of the first L lenses I can think of that isn’t an internal or rear focusing design.

The EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM is expected to retail for about $1500 and be available in October of this year.

EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II USM

I so want one of these. The current one is fast both to focus and in gathering light, tack sharp, not terribly heavy, and reasonably sharp when paired with a 1.4 or 2x teleconverter making it pretty flexible. The new one improves the IS system (it’s now good for 4 stops), has 2 fluorite elements to reduce chromatic aberrations, adds the latest in Canon’s coatings to reduce ghosting and flare, and is lighter to boot. Wow! Wow! Wow!

The downside? The price has jumped from about $5000 to $7000.

The lens is expected to be available in December with an est retail price of $7000.

EF 400mm f/2.8 L IS II USM

If the EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II USM was impressive, the bigger badder 400mm brother is simply jaw dropping. Take the same fancy coatings, optics, and stabilizer, make the lens 400mm longer while keeping the f/2.8 aperture and you have the EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM. Of course, anybody who owns the EF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM knows right away you don’t get a 400mm f/2.8 lens with out your back (or your monopod) paying for it. The first generation 400 f/2.8L IS USM weighed in at a back breaking 11.8 pounds. The mark 2, a feather weight 8.5 pounds. WOW! That’s almost 2 pounds lighter than Nikon’s 400mm f/2.8 VR II.

The only real downside to the EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM appears to be the price.

The EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM is expected to retail for $11,000 and should be available in December.

Extender EF 1.4x III & Extender EF 2x III

This year had seen Nikon introduce a 3rd generation 2x tele-extender, the big deal, an aspherical element to improve image quality by reducing spherical aberrations. It’s now also seen a 3rd generation of extenders from Canon. While the press release and product pages don’t say anything about aspherical elements, they do say this.

These new extenders have been designed to provide faster autofocusing and improved autofocus precision with compatible EF lenses. Each extender includes an anomalous dispersion lens element for reduced chromatic aberration and enhanced optical image quality. Each extender also features a newly developed microcomputer that increases AF precision when the extenders are used with a IS Series II EF super-telephoto lens. Both extenders are equipped with rubber gaskets and seals to enhance weather resistance. A new fluorine anti-smear coating is applied to the front and rear elements of both extenders.

I use my Extender EF 1.4x II enough that if these are as good as they sound, I can certainly see a new 1.4x extender in my future.

The extenders are expected to be available in December of this year, and will cost approximately $500 a piece.

According to Canon this fall is all about the pros, and their product line up really shows it. The EF 8-15mm fisheye provides a useable fisheye for any Canon user, regardless of the camera’s crop factor, that’s a big deal if you ask me. Canon’s previous 300mm f/2.8 and 400mm f/2.8 were arguably as close to optical perfection as you could get for a lens of that class, and I expect the new ones are going to be even better. The new tele-extenders also show promise to stretch those big lenses just that much further while keeping the IQ needed to drive today’s high density digital cameras. Finally, there’s the EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM, it seems like a bit of an odd duck in the line up, apparently pushing the lower priced entry level lens out of the catalog. That said, it is an L lens, and L lenses generally deliver optical quality commensurate of their price tags.

That just leaves, EOS 60D, certainly it shows promise as a solid upgrade for those Rebel users that are looking for a bit better control and better ergonomics.

* Direct links to the product pages and press released can be found in the Links box in the right-hand column.

Canon announced today that they’ve developed a 120MP (that’s a 13,280 x 9,184 pixel image) APS-H format sensor that has a laundry list of features. The sensor can be completely read out in about 10ms, resulting in a 9.5 FPS frame rate, it can do full HD video from the whole sensor (I assume) or one of several 1/16th area sections. Fortunately, or unfortunately as it may be, this is just a prototype and not something Canon has any immediate plans for.

The full press release can be read on Canon’s website. What follows are my thoughts on this sensor and what it could mean for photography down the road.

Small Pixels, Big Picture

From the scant details in the press release, we can make a few estimates about the sensor. For starters, the sensor packs 120 million pixels, resulting in a 13,380 x 9,184 image, in a 29.2mm x 20.2mm area. Simple math tells us, that the pixels are approximately 2-microns across.

2um pixels alone aren’t something new, many of the better performing current generation point and shoots have pixels that size, including Canon’s PowerShot G11 and S90. What is unprecedented, however, is the move to make a sensor with that pixel pitch that big.

Since this is an engineering prototype, it’s clear that part of this is Canon demonstrating they have the technology to manufacture a part this big and the capabilities to drive or use it. Lots of pixels, after all, means lots of data that needs to be moved and processed, doing that at almost 10 FPS isn’t anything to laugh at. The real question, or at least a good hypothetical one, is what that means for photographers in a few years.

Why aim for small pixels, aren’t bigger pixels better?

The balance between pixel size and noise is determined by a couple of factors including area, well capacity and quantum efficiency. However, the only factor in resolution is pixel size.

In general, when there is very little signal (light), larger pixels do “better” since they collect more signal and as a result should have less noise. However, when there is a lot of signal, smaller pixels will resolve more detail. This split can be seen in how Canon and Nikon orient their studio and “low light” cameras, studio cameras has more pixels and a limited ISO top end, low light cameras have fewer pixels and a much higher ISO top end.

What this thinking doesn’t consider is that you can make a smaller pixel appear bigger if you combine it with its neighbors. In short, you can make a small pixel camera behave more like a big pixel camera, but you can’t do things the other way around. This parity can be seen if one compares results of the 5D mark 2 and the Nikon D700. The D700’s bigger pixels perform better in low light, but when you reduce the 5D mark 2’s image to the same size, the results are virtually identical.

Currently, designers try to balance the resolution advantages of small pixels with the noise advantages of big pixels. However, if the sensor can pack enough pixels to break the current 1 imaging pixel equals 1 image pixel condition things could change in interesting ways.

With a whole heck of a lot of pixels, designers could choose to bin pixels all the time. That is, treat each RGBG quad as a single image pixel. It reduces the image resolution at least by a factor of 4, however, noise goes down, and image quality goes up. Moreover, the anti-aliasing (blur) filter can be disposed of without worrying about moiré so the camera should be able to resolve more fine details.

The other alternative is to progressively bin as the signal to noise ratio or ISO increases. This has the advantage of producing the highest possible resolution image in situations where there is enough signal to support that, and producing increasingly less noisy, though lower resolution, images as pixel noise increases. Binning based on ISO isn’t something that’s unheard of either, Phase One’s P+ medium format backs do this to achieve their highest ISOs, so do many P&S cameras.

Bits, FPS, and Bandwidth

The real problem, and what makes this sensor largely infeasible as a commercial product for the foreseeable future, is the amount of bandwidth that this sensor can consume. Assuming it keeps a 14-bit output reading out 120MP sensor 9.5 times a second requires almost 2 GB/s in bandwidth. At that rate, a 32GB flash card would be filled in less than 2 seconds and with only 16 or 17 pictures.

2GB/s isn’t an insurmountable problem; most modern PCs are capable of moving much more than that between their system memory and CPU. Even the DDR memory used in Canon’s current top end camera’s in theory, at least with a wide enough bus, could handle the data. The problem in a camera, however, is twofold. First, is power; simply put moving lots of data requires a lot more power than moving a lot less data, and this sensor would be moving more than 7 times as much data as the fastest production camera Canon currently makes.

Simultaneously, there the problem with storage, at 9.5 FPS, this sensor could fill a 32GB flash card in less than 2 seconds, with only 16 images. Well, at least it could if the buffer was big enough. The fastest flash cards currently available can’t write any faster than about 100MB/s. At that speed, it would take almost 30 seconds to write a single 120MP 14-bit image (assuming no compression).

It’s a Tech Demo, Don’t get Excited Yet

Of course, ultimately this announcement wasn’t intended to demonstrate what Canon expects to put in a camera in a couple of years. This is a demonstration of their capabilities in designing and building bleeding edge imaging sensors, and while it’s not ultimately useful on its own, it is very much necessary to spend the time and money on R&D that results in this kind of thing even if you only use part of what you learned.

There are a few things, however, that concern me about this announcement. For starters, there’s the frame rate. 9.5 FPS is quite fast, and while Canon doesn’t go into detail about how parallel the readouts are, it’s clear that in addition to reading in parallel the sensor is being read out quite quickly as well. The problem is, speed and noise, at least when it comes to analog to digital conversion, don’t play together very well. Conversions can be done quickly, but doing so increases the amount of noise in the conversion.

This problem is most obviously seen in the EOS 1D mark 4. Independent tests have shown the sensor could be capable of >15 stops of dynamic range if the conversion circuitry wasn’t driven to meet the 161MP/s requirements of 10FPS shooting. Now this might not be an issue for this prototype sensor, it may not have even been a goal of this prototype, and of course, Canon may have found a way to build an ADC that performs better at the required speeds.

While this prototype sensor is certainly impressive, photographically speaking FPS and pixels mean less to me than noise, dynamic range, and color accuracy. What would really get me excited is to see Canon announce is a sensor with good by current standards resolution (say ~20MP full frame) and 20 stops of dynamic range. Even better, would be for them to say they’re going to ship it in a camera in the next year.

This may not exactly be news, I just got a notice about it while re-profiling my displays, but Datacolor has released (as of July 30, 2010) a new version of their Spyder 3 calibration software, version 4.0.2 for Windows and Mac OS. The new version has a slightly reworked UI that slightly improves the programs usability and provides some automated brightness controls for users with displays that lack them.

Version 4.0.2 can be downloaded form Datacolor’s download site.

It’s been long in the waiting, for me at lest, LPA Design’s AC-3 Zone Controller has finally started making it into retail channels. The AC-3 Zone Controller, is the little add-on that slots into the top hotshoe of LPA Design’s Mini TT1 or Flex TT5 transmitters so you can control flash powers in multiple zones without having to have a flash on the camera.

Supposedly they were released to distributors some time ago, however, they appear to be just making it into retail channels.

B&H Photo finally has them listed, though they apparently aren’t stocking them.

Midwest Photo Exchange also has them listed, though with even less detail.

The AC-3 is listed at $69.99 from both sources.

Adobe, has released a release candidate for the first update to Lightroom 3, and the second update to CameraRAW 6.

Lightroom 3.2, Adobe has elected align the minor version numbers between Lightroom and Camera RAW (i.e. Lightroom 3.2 and CameraRAW 6.2 have feature parity), has an extensive list of bug fixes and brings new camera and lens profiles. Unfortunately, for me at lest, Lightroom 3.2 still opens RAW files in Photoshop CS4 with Camera RAW 5.7 even though ACR 5.7 isn’t fully feature complete.

• Camera RAW 6.3 (Adobe Labs)
• Lightroom 3.2 (Adobe Labs)

LPA Design has released the final versions of the 5.1 firmware for their Control TL PocketWizards (i.e. the Mini TT1 and Flex TT5) for Canon cameras. The new firmware adds or fixes several issues including:

• Adds support for the AC-3 Zone Controller
• Adds support for the Canon Rebel T2i (550D)
• Addresses an issue with the EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM on the EOS 7D
• Expands compatibility with the EOS 1D Mark 4 and High Speed Sycn
• Fixes trigger issue with remove cameras and shutter speeds higher than 1/400th
• Reduces rear curtain sync clipping
• Radio timing optimized for reliability improvements

A complete list of fixes can be found in the Manual Addendum 5.1. The updates can be downloaded an installed though the PocketWizard utility available from here.

Adobe has released Lightroom 3. I’ve been playing with the release version since late this morning and it’s certainly everything the Beta’s indicated it would be.

Adobe has priced Lightroom 3 out the same way Lightroom 2 was; $99 for the upgrade version, $299 for the full version. In addition there’s a 30% discount if you buy Lightroom 3 with Photoshop CS5 which make a reasonable deal if you need both of the programs.

That said, if you don’t actually need to do serious retouching you can probably save yourself a good chunk of money and skip Photoshop entirely at this point, especially since Lightroom’s new distortion correction (both profiled and manual) allows for fixing most of the things (geometric distortion and perspective correction being the big ones) with out taking images into Photoshop at all.

The only major problem I’ve found so far is with respect to importing and synchronizing catalogs. Since the beta couldn’t/wouldn’t convert an existing LR 2 catalog I ended up largely abandoning my main Lightroom 2 catalog while I was working with the Beta. My intent was to update and recombine it with my LR3 beta catalog when the release version came out. And testing in Lightroom 2 and 3 beta 2 indicated that I shouldn’t have a problem merging catalogs. What I found in practice is that Lightroom 3 is less than happy about merging catalogs with duplicate images or many duplicate images (not entirely sure yet), and importing the old catalog on top of my new catalog is throwing “unknown errors” and failing. As a result, I’ve lost most of my keywording and some processing settings (mostly virtual copies). Fortunately, I’m mostly able to recover from that (by writing edits and keywords to XMP files and re syncing that into the new catalog) but it’s proving to be more annoying than I anticipated.

If you’re upgrading form Lightroom 2 and never used the betas or kept your beta catalogs completely separate from your Lightroom 2 catalog, you should be good to go.

Adobe has posted a video to YouTube showing off the full suite of lens corrections that will be in the final release of Lightroom 3 and CS5′s Camera RAW 6.Thought the demonstration is done in CameraRAW 6 the full set of functionality is supposed to available in Lightroom 3 as well.

To me, profile based corrections and the ability to control vertical and horizontal perspective distortions is huge. No more will have I have to take images into Photoshop just to fix a few minor but annoying distortions. The profile corrections handle geometric distortions, vignetting and CA which makes them a 1 click stop to produce a cleaned up image to start processing form. Even nicer, the profile based corrections can handle lens distortions that are more complicated than simply barrel and pincushion distortions.

Finally perspective corrections are an nice added bonus for fixing up those shots with annoying converging lines. Of course a perspective correction lens would be even better but Lightroom is ~$300 and good PC lens is ~$2400.

Watch Adobe’s Demonstration on Youtube.

Datacolor is offering an upgrade program for Spyder 3 Pro users wishing to upgrade to the new Spyder 3 Elite 4.0 software for only $99. While the update saves existing Spyder 3 owners from paying the full price of the Spyder 3 Elite–which is currently about $195, about $58 more than the Sypder 3 Pro at B&H Photo–looking at the overall price doesn’t make it so attractive in my opinion, though it’s certainly cheaper than buying a whole new colorimeter.

That said, the Elite 4.0 software does look to be an interesting upgrade, at least based on the marketing literature. The software appears to make calibrating multiple displays much easier, as well as offering some improvements in calibration accuracy. It also has a nice visualization of the display’s color gamut relative to several color spaces. In addition users with displays that lack brightness controls, like Apple’s iMac line, can now control display brightness though the Spyder 3 software.

Details on upgrading can be found on DataColor’s website here.

Adobe has released Camera RAW 5.7 and Lightroom 2.7.

As I reported earlier in the ACR 5.7 RC post, ACR 5.7 is necessary to bring images from Lightroom 3 Beta seamlessly into Photoshop CS4 for editing.

They can be downloaded from Adobe at the following locations:

Lightroom 2.7

• Windows
• Mac OS

Camera RAW 5.7

• Windows
• Mac OS

Adobe DNG Converter 5.7

• Windows
• Mac OS