EOS-1D Mark IV HD Video

EOS-1D Mark IV HD Video Review

Prior to the EOS-1D Mark IV becoming available, I had a chance to borrow an EOS 5D Mark II for a few hours from fellow photographer and African Safari leader Tom Whetten. It was the first Canon DSLR to come out with built-in HD video, and is very similar to the HD video features in the EOS-1D Mark IV.

On the 5D Mark II, it was really easy to use the video feature once I had it set up right. I wanted to see how it would work with my big lenses. I put the camera on my Canon 600mm "L" series lens and was thrilled to be able to take videos of a Black-Chinned Hummingbird hovering and landing on a feeder! I wish I could have had more time to play with the camera so I could have found more interesting wildlife to video.

It was simple to do - I set up the camera and lens as usual, with a Canon EF 1.4X II teleconverter (on the EOS-1D Mark IV I would have used a Canon EF 2X II teleconverter ), then focused for the perch on the feeder where I expected the bird to be and set up the exposure the way I wanted. Then I pressed the "Live View" button, which shows the live image in the LCD screen on the back of the camera. When the hummer came into view, I pressed the "Set" button, which starts the video recorder (after you've set up the camera in the functions menu to do that). Pressing the "Set" button again stops the video recording. And when I wanted to take a still photo at full resolution, all I had to do was press the shutter release, which pauses the video recording long enough to take and store the image, then the video recording automatically restarts.

In the video above, there's a slight pause about midway through - that's when I took this image in mid video. If you have the volume turned up, you can hear the click of the shutter. Once the photograph was captured and stored, video recording continued.

Something I discovered in a subsequent video is that I could adjust the exposure in mid video. In this case, I noticed on the live view that the bird was darker than the bright feeder, which was throwing off the exposure. So I added some + exposure compensation, adjusting it by what I could see in the live view. In the resulting video, I can see when the exposure changed, the same as I saw in the live view.

I wanted to do more, but Tom needed the camera back to use on his Northern Arizona Nature Photography Tour. If I had had more time, I would have liked to find more wildlife to video, as well as trying out some of the other advanced capabilities. For instance, the ISO can be set as high as 6400, (note that the newer EOS-1D Mark IV's can be set to ISO 12800), which might make it possible to photograph owls in the evening with the 600mm lens. I also wanted to try some macro photography/video. I know that once the camera becomes more available, I'll need to get one!

See the Digital SLR Camera Guide for a comparison of the current best prices and where to buy the Canon EOS-1D Mark IV from the most popular retailers.

EOS-1D Mark IV More Videos

The video below was filmed by Vincent Laforet using a new (presumably pre-production) EOS-1D Mark IV HDDSLR in available light. The video is silly, but shows what can be done with this camera.

Make sure to read some of the EOS-1D Mark IV reviews and see what other people are saying about it.

EOS-1D Mark IV Reviews

Make sure to read some of the EOS-1D Mark IV reviews and see what other people are saying about it.