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INTRODUCTION The EOS 3 is a substantial camera. Not only does it look good, it feels good. These sentiments are not misplaced, for when you pick one up and start using it, you realize that the layout is well designed, as with most everything else in the EOS range. The Singapore street price of the EOS 3 is S$2,400. To put this in perspective, the Nikon F100 is S$2,400, the Minolta Maxxum 9 is S$2,500 and the EOS 1N is S$2,550. When the EOS 5 was launched, it cost S$1050 (inflation is, for all purposes, nil in Singapore). As with the launch of the EOS 5, the launch of the EOS 3 brought a slew of lens offering from Canon. Though it is not mentioned anywhere in the company’s literature, the “standard” lens for the EOS 3 is the EF28-135 IS USM. (For the EOS 5, the “standard” lens is the 28-105mm – this is stated in the EOS 5 brochures). To use all the functions of the EOS 3, you ought to have the 550EX Speedlite, another S$650 investment. EOS 3 + EF28-135 IS USM + 550EX
That is a substantial investment! Of course, not everyone would want the EF28-135 IS USM, or the 550EX. But seeing that the camera itself is already priced so high (S$2,400 is about the average monthly salary of a fresh graduate in Computer Science), this makes a review all the more important. Features 45 point Eye-Controlled Focusing Does it work? Yes, it does, though different users may experience varying degrees of “workability”. The placement of the eye, how much it is relaxed (eg, sometimes squinting and sometimes not), and the lens in use all make a difference to how successful 45 point ECF will be. To ensure that it works for you, calibrate it using the posture you usually adopt when holding the camera to your eye. You have to ensure that the eye is placed at approximately the same position on the viewfinder each time so that ECF is always successful. It is possible to calibrate without any lens attached. This is actually preferred since you can concentrate on the little boxes instead of at any image. However, user reports on the internet have mentioned that it is wise to calibrate for different lens. If you have a lens collection consisting of a 28mm and a 50mm – focal lengths of not much difference – then different calibrations may not be necessary. If, however, you use a 20mm and a 600mm, separate calibrations are wise. You get the idea. You can calibrate and store up to 3 settings. ECF is fast. It is slightly faster than an EOS 5. I will frequently draw comparisons with the EOS 5 because the EOS 3 is often said to be Canon’s replacement for the EOS 5, though this is not true according to company’s literature. Considering the number of ECF points involved, this is amazing. However, a user wouldn’t be concerned with how much faster ECF is compared to another camera’s --all he/she cares about is whether it does the job adequately. No one can convince me that it is a technological feat to incorporate 45 points if ECF is slow and inaccurate. Happily, it is not. The beauty of the ECF is that it links the metering system to it. With evaluative or spot metering on and ECF activated, you are assured that wherever your eye looks (implying wherever you think is important and where you think the focus should be on), the metering is skewed towards that area. So in spot metering, the spot reading will be taken at the point your eye is focused at and in evaluative metering, the weightage given to that focused area is heavier. This linking of metering to the focusing points can be done even if ECF is not enabled; you simply set the focusing point manually. Is ECF damaging to your eye? The EOS 5 was released in 1992. It has been 7 years and Canon also had other ECF models out since then. No one anywhere has complained or had to seek medical help because of injuries related to ECF. A “laser” shining into your eye sounds dangerous but in Canon’s case, it is not. Flash Exposure Lock (FEL) A little historical perspective: Canon EOS flash system has always been the joke of photographers. Nikon has the excellent 3D flash metering (which came out with the F90 in 1992. Minolta had wireless flash capability long before any other brands had that idea. Canon has plain vanilla E-TTL. That is, until the EOS 3. Some breakthroughs in this new flash system include FEL and wireless flash. The 3D flash system by Nikon could have been incorporated too, since it works basically by the transmission of distance information and EOS lens can transmit that information. Beats me why Canon did not do that. Patent problems? FEL works by allowing the photographer to lock the “flashed exposure” much like AE Lock. If you understand how AE Lock works, FEL should not be difficult to understand. A brief burst of flash (not the full output) is released to gauge the final flash output necessary. Once the user locks the reading, he/she can recompose the image as he/she likes and then shoot, knowing that what was focused on previously will be lighted by the flash correctly. That is in theory. In practice, the results speak for themselves. The FEL button is placed conveniently near the shutter release, yet because of its smaller size, you will not mistake one for the other. Canon has wisely not used the thumb for FEL. Already the thumb takes care of the Quick Control Dial (the thumb wheel) and the other buttons near the LCD screen (Focusing Point Selector and AE Lock). Wireless Flash The benefit of having three channels does not stop at ensuring no clashes in radio signals. It also helps in setting up different lights on different channels so that you could, for eg, take a shot on one channel and immediately switch to the second lighting setup by a flick of the channel. In reality though, why would someone want to buy several EX Speedlites to do that when the cost of buying them will probably amount to an adequate studio flash system? AE Lock. If you understand how AE Lock works, FEL should not be difficult to understand. A brief burst of flash (not the full output) is released to gauge the final flash output necessary. Once the user locks the reading, he/she can recompose the image as he/she likes and then shoot, knowing that what was focused on previously will be lighted by the flash correctly.As is the standard for most EOS flashes (even the older EZ series), it is possible to have A-TTL, strobes and flash exposure bracketing (FEB). More information about which flash has what capabilities can be found here. 7 Frames Per Second At 7fps, it takes only 5 seconds to burn through one roll of 36-exposure film. Who would need this feature? The sports photographer, the photojournalist in the thick of some action or maybe a scientist trying to capture the resonance effect of the drop of an object into a pool of water. But generally, the common user may never use 7fps at all. Without any separate drives attached, the camera is capable of a respectable 4.3 frames. This is slightly slower than the EOS 5’s 5fps but still fast nonetheless. 7fps is not the fastest that Canon has. This distinction belongs to the Canon F1, which, with a special motordrive attached, was capable of up to 10fps (3.6 seconds per roll) in the 1980s. Together with the bulk film back, the Canon F1 was able to shoot longer without changing films. The EOS series has yet seen any bulk film backs. AF Speed How fast is fast? Probably not much faster than other older EOS cameras in bright sunny conditions. At least, not fast enough for me to discern which is faster. But in low lighting, that is when the EOS 3 shows its mettle. Older cameras will hunt, but the EOS 3 with its new Area AF CMOS snaps into focus instantaneously. Much of the processing power of the EOS 3 comes from its 32-bit microcomputer. This chip has the approximate speed of an Intel 386. Slow? Yes, but considering the relative little amount of data it needs to process compared to a personal computer, a 386 is more than adequate to run the AF and determine the exposure. This brings to mind a question: since the chip is a (cheap) 386 equivalent, then obviously the chip is not the main factor for the pricing, so why is the camera still so expensive? S$2,400 can get me the latest Pentium III with tons of RAM! There are several reasons here. The first is the “durability” of the price. You can be sure that a used EOS 3 purchased 10 years later will have depreciated only about 30%. This means that you should be able to get a used EOS 3 for about S$1,700 about 10 years later. Trying having that kind of resale value with your 386! The next factor is miniaturization. Laptops generally cost more than an equivalent desktop computer, the reason being its portability and hence miniaturization. Similarly, everything inside a camera is small. More importantly, they are packed securely to ensure bumps do not knock them out of their places. The final point is the R&D that has been poured into the making of the camera. Canon knows that in photography, more than any of their office products markets, their camera line is built on loyalty. You can always buy a Minolta photocopier and dump your Canon one but you will definitely find it more difficult to dump your entire EOS system and start to rebuild one based on the Minolta. Handling The textured (ribbed) rubber grip can be found as far back as the EOS 1 in 1989. For Nikon, it took them till the F5 in 1996 to come out with something similar. Minolta has nothing like it so far. This is a personal preference. I am sure there are many Nikon and Minolta users who are perfectly happy with their grips. There is a nice indent near the top of the grip for one to rest the index finger (this also helps prevents slipping). Buttons on the right side fall naturally into place, including the Main Dial and Quick Control Dial. The QCD (thumb wheel) is legendary and Nikon has found it important enough to incorporate something similar in the F100. The QCD dial in the EOS 3 is not perfect, however. Because it is larger than that on an EOS 5, the dial spills over and extends beyond the film back cover. The film back cover extends a crescent shape below and towards the bottom of the camera to provide support for the QCD. In my opinion, this will be the place where dust will find it easiest to enter. The EOS 5’s QCD was recessed in a little “bowl”, whereas the EOS 3’s QCD does not have a “bowl”. Lens operations in traditional cameras have always been uncomfortable. Unlike the right hand which has all controls fall neatly under it, the left hand has to move horizontally back and forth to adjust focus, zoom and aperture. For EOS, however, the left hand needs only concentrate on the zoom and focus because the task of setting the aperture is given to the right thumb, a far more convenient arrangement. With my EOS 5, It was initially easy for me to accidentally turn the thumb wheel either with my nose or with the thumb but you get used to the wheel as you use the camera more and accidents cease. The Main Dial clicks into place. I find the clicks significantly loud enough that I would turn it slowly (and hence quietly) in a drama performance in the theatre. Otherwise, during normal shooting, the clicks are audible to no one else other than yourself. The motordrive PB-E2 is the second one in the EOS system which is fully featured and replicates most of the controls on the camera body. It has the Main Dial, the shutter release button, AE Lock button, FEL button and Focusing Point Selector. The last “motordrive” to have this kind of functionality was the VG-10 for the EOS 5. The motor drive/battery pack/vertical grip for the EOS 1, 1N, 50 and the new 300 lack the Main Dial – the most serious omission in my opinion. However, I did not like vertical shooting with the PB-E2. My hand did not feel comfortable holding it, and the lock button is at a peculiar angle that I was able to sometimes accidentally flip it on or off. Further, there are no contours like that on the EOS 3 main body, hence, the PB-E2 is a straight block of rubber ribbing for the hand holding it for vertical shooting. Though buttons are duplicated from the main body to the PB-E2, the feel of the buttons are different. Whereas the buttons on the main body were responsive, fully-depress-to-activate, the buttons on the PB-E2 were click buttons – gentle pushes to activate the functions. They may be minor gripes but I could not understand why the “feel” on the body cannot be replicated on the PB-E2. The buttons for Exposure Compensation and LCD panel illumination are too recessed to depress successfully each time. I felt that the designers might have made the bowls in which the buttons lie bigger, or at least let the buttons protrude more. There is a good suggestion on the net to improve this situation and that is to cut out exact fitting velcro pads and stick them onto the buttons to make them protrude more. With the EF28-135 IS USM lens attached, the camera balances well. You get the feeling that even letting an EF70-200mm L USM lens hang from the camera from a long period will have no serious effects on the mounts. In fact, even with the new EF600mm f/4 L IS USM lens, the camera handles beautifully. Though I would not recommend it for long stretches, I was able to hand hold the EOS 3 and 600mm combo comfortably and steadily. The viewfinder of the camera shows 97% of the total image area both horizontally and vertically. What this means is that you do not get to see the remaining 3% of your picture before you fire the shutter. How much is 3%? Not much. The 3% is actually spread over the entire frame, so you are not seeing less of the “left” side or more of the “top”; you are seeing less of the whole frame. If you print regularly on 3R or 4R, you get image cutoff anyway because the paper and the negative are not of the same relative size. This can have its drawbacks and benefits. For eg, I was testing a Nikon F3 once and it has 100% viewfinder coverage. Several of my full length shots of a model had part of her head or part of her legs “chopped off” at the printing labs because the paper couldn’t accommodate the whole negative. If I had less than 100% viewfinder coverage, I doubt that this would have happened. Still, I believe a camera for the pros should give 100% coverage and this one point I am slightly unhappy about. However, considering that the camera is already so expensive, adding a 100% viewfinder will definitely jack up the price, a scenario I wouldn’t like to see too! Viewfinder information is more than adequate without giving the user a sense of info overload. The metering bar at the right side is much like that of an EOS 1 and certainly brings back happy memories of the circle and needle metering era. The number of graduations on the scale makes it easy to gauge how many turns of the dial are necessary to get the correct exposure. This takes some initial training but the learning curve is not steep. Despite my initial fears that two metering bars will confuse me, I am happy to say that it is very legible and very easy to understand. After some usage, it will be easy to estimate where your multi-spot reading will average out. On boring days, this can even become a game (multi-spot a few areas and guess where the eventual dot will lie). Hmm… let’s see, when I am bored, I now have a choice of playing the games on my Nokia mobile phone or play the dots on the EOS 3! You can control most things without taking your eyes off the viewfinder but I find my eyes getting tired after looking through it for too long (same for other cameras too). Hence, I use the LCD screen on the camera top more often. The LCD screen is very informative. The EOS 3 LCD screen brings a feature that was solely lacking in the EOS 5 – illuminating screen. It looks like a Casio G-Shock watch but you might not want to use it often because it is one of the heavier batteries drainer. The common user would probably have little use for the G-Shock feature but to me, it saves my mind from having to remember the location of yet another equipment, the torch. When a flash is affixed, the EOS 3 without the PB-E2 looks top heavy and gives the impression that a strong wind might topple the camera backwards. But that is looks and the actual situation is far from that. The EOS 3 may be constructed of plastics and is light, but trust me, it is heavy enough to make you want to take it off your neck after an hour or two. With the PB-E2 attached, the camera balances well (and looks gorgeous) with the 550EX flash. Performance underexposing saturate the colours in the slides better. At least, that was Contax’s opinion. In Popular Photography’s opinion and mine (and pretty much the world of professionals who knew about this), the decision to under- or over-expose something should be left to us. How troublesome it gets when we have to always remember to overexpose by 1/3 stop every time! Canon has not given any admission that the under-exposure problem was deliberate. But my guess is that it was not deliberate, some in-house quality control measures should have detected the problem and remedied it before the camera was released. Remember the Pentium bug in 1994? Intel, in the end, spent US$300 million to recall and fix the bug. It would have cost Intel far less had they delayed the launch and arrested the bug before releasing the chip. In Canon’s case, a software fix is available. EOS 3 users facing the under-exposure problem are strongly encouraged to approach your local Canon office for a free software alteration. The fix is free, should rightly be so, and is so. Conclusion The controls are great and ECF works. When you hold it, the camera feels solidly built. It is nothing short of an engineering marvel, and well worth the S$2,400 it costs. Do you need it? If you have been frustrated with the EOS flash system, getting the EOS 3 will open your eyes to a new world of E-TTL flash with wireless controls. FEL and the ability to multi-spot are reasons why I would get this camera. Is the EOS1n dead then? I am inclined to think so. With so many features packed into a body that is cheaper, I do not see why anyone would want to get the EOS 1n over the EOS 3. This is a camera that will slowly amaze you with its features. Some things grow on you, for eg, I didn’t know I needed a larger QCD before the EOS 3 came along. After the initial awe, it took me some time to realise its other design benefits, and then to make use of them. I really enjoyed using this camera and despite my minor complaints, I will wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone. Related Links:
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