Amateur Photographer Magazine

 Canon EOS 1D Mark IV brings HD video, 16 million pixels and higher ISO - Introduction

Tuesday 20th October 2009

Damien Demolder

With the launch of the Canon EOS Mark IV, Canon has introduced full HD video and a 16-million-pixel sensor to its news and sports EOS 1D series cameras. The new professional body of the Canon EOS mark iv, which is due to arrive in the UK in December 2009 priced £4,499 (€5499) body only, also has an expanded top ISO setting of ISO 102,400, a new 45-point AF system as well as a 'reflection-free' high resolution LCD panel.


Product managers Mike Owen and David Parry of Canon Europe and UK

Speaking in an interview with AP, Mike Owen, DSLR product manager for Canon Europe, said that the Canon EOS 1D IV was the result of extensive research and feed-back from professional photographers. 'We've been listening to what professional news and sports photographers want, and this is our response. The priorities for this camera have been speed, performance and reliability, coupled with our aim of achieving the highest image quality possible. We've made some great progress with noise avoidance and noise reduction, which has allowed us to raise the maximum standard sensitivity from ISO 3200 to 12,800, and the expanded settings from ISO 6400 to 102,400.'

The Canon EOS mkiv sensor


The new 16 million pixel Canon-built CMOS sensor

Maintaining the same 10 frames per second shooting rate as the 2007 Canon EOS 1D III and the same 28.1x18.7mm APS-H sensor size the Canon EOS 1D IV uses a new 16.1 million-pixel CMOS sensor that has been redesigned to collect more light per pixel. The micro-lens arrangement above the pixels is gapless and the colour filters have been altered to allow 'significantly' more light to pass through. Circuitry on the sensor has been rearranged to reduce the space between pixels and the actual photodiodes have been enlarged to collect more light. 'Noise is being tackled on the sensor as well as through image processing.' says Mike Owen, 'The new DIGIC 4 processors are 30% more powerful than those used in the Canon EOS 1D III and so can handle far more data in the same time.' The camera's buffer has been expanded so that up to 121 full-resolution jpeg images or 28 raw files can be captured in a single 10fps burst – an improvement of 11 jpegs and 3 raw files over the previous model.

View AP's video clip of the Canon EOS 1D Mark IV
View Canon EOS 1D IV images in detail
Canon EOS iD IV makes ready-to-use images
Discuss the EOS 1D IV in our news forum

Read all our Canon EOS stories here

Got an opinion on this story? Why not post a comment on our news message boards

Back to index