- Abraham Joffe's EOS-1D X Mark II video review
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Award-winning cinematographer Abraham Joffe puts the Canon 1DX Mark II DSLR camera through its paces to review its video capabilities. He tested it out in the height of winter in Norway, with stunning results.
One aspect about the Canon 1-series cameras that I’ve always loved is that they are rugged workhorses.
It’s always a thrill to get a new camera in your hands and I was very excited when Canon asked me to test the video capabilities of the 1DX Mark II.
When considering an environment to test out the 1DX Mark II, it doesn’t get more extreme than than mid-winter in the north east Atlantic Ocean.
I shot these off Senja Island in Norway. It is all dark water, incredibly cold and a pretty harsh environment. The air temperatures got down to minus twenty and the water a chilly two degrees.
It was incredibly dark with no direct sunlight hitting the water. These were the most gloomy of conditions that I’ve experienced so being able to shoot much higher ISOs with clean results on the 1DX Mark II is what has made filming possible. And after putting the 1DX Mark II through its paces, I found my favourite features of this camera to be:
It is great to see the 1DX Mark II boast recording capabilities to 50 and 60 frames per second while shooting 4K, with the addition to 120 frames in full HD. There are many times when I want the resolution of 4K combined with the aesthetic of slow motion, and this camera wraps them together beautifully.
The live view auto focus with tracking is the most exciting feature about this camera. One of the big challenges with shooting video in DSLR's is hitting sharp focus manually and this intelligent tracking system actually enables you to do the focus pulling for you.
I’m a lover of glide cam, and until now it was impossible for me to move towards a subject and have the focus track in. It’s the new dual pixel CMOS sensor that allows this focus technology to function. I found it incredibly responsive even in low light conditions.
Looking through the images that I’ve shot here is really exciting.
I’ve always dreamed of having this sort of feature and it’s just going to open up all sorts of possibilities.
To have this sort of performance with low light and high frame rate is very, very impressive. I've achieved what I’ve always wanted.
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Angela and Jonathan Scott, reveal the top three 1D X Mark II features which impressed them. Read more here.