Camera parts 3

Before I move on with the rest of the review. I was shooting at 7.30 am this morning, we had a wonderful crisp frost on the ground. I put two 512mb cards in the camera and only the SD card was being read. I could only format the SD card. This was due to the fact that the CF card had been formatted in my Nikon. Removing the SD card forced the camera to look at the CF card and I could then proceed to format it. The camera now sees both cards. Whilst looking through some of the first images, I was quite dismayed to see dust on the image, especially as this camera is so new. In fairness to Canon, the previous reviewer must have used this camera in a very dusty environment as the focus screen is also covered in hairs and other muck - take note Canon I said the previous reviewer made your camera mucky.

Shot with the 17 - 40mm L lens, exposure was spot on
Dust is still the photographers curse
A difficult scene that was a breeze for the 1Ds meter

Tuesday 25th

I have just a couple of days shooting with the 1Ds MkII and have another session lined up for this evening. I will conclude looking at the back of the camera before moving on.

Power on switch	Rear LCD for setting White balance and image quality
Rear Quick control dial	No shortage of buttons on the 1Ds
A well sealed cover	IDs will accept two card types

The camera power switch is located on the rear. The switch has three settings; Off, On and On with a bleep. On a cold day in London the switch was a fumble, but back in the studio the switch is positive and is hard to be accidentally knocked into the Off position. To the right is the "Memory card slot cover handle", twist this and the cover opens. A quick note on this, there is a rubber seal on the cover, which ensures no moisture or even rain will find its way into the camera's delicate electronics. The door handle is positive and the actual cover is very sturdy. Inside the cover are the two memory card slots, for CompactFlash and SD cards (compatible with type I and II CompactFlash) .

You can select either card as your primary storage card, but it is presumed that you will use the CompactFlash as your main card and the SD card for backup or extended shooting. You need to select Backup from the camera Menu and you can then select Card 1 (primary) with card 2 (backup), or Card 2 (primary) with card 1 (backup). The camera generates a backup of the image on the second card, with the exactly the same pixel count filename etc. This is a useful feature but I would have liked a more advanced choice such as shooting RAW files on the main card and JPEG file on the second card. The 1Ds has the ability to shoot RAW with a second JPEG file (JPEG size can be user selected). If either card becomes full when shooting in backup mode then the camera will not allow further shooting. Make sure you use the same capacity cards in both slots.

There is a plethora of buttons on the rear, for the uninitiated this may seem overwhelming, but spending half an hour or more with the camera and instruction manual should sort this out. The one thing that I have not managed to get used to (yet) is the button labeling, the names are above each button and I constantly kept pressing the wrong button, I am sure I would get the hang of it with regular use. The quick control dial can be customized to your own preference, you will need to find this in the camera custom menu. By default this is set to setting the aperture, and the top quick wheel to shutter speeds, you could reverse this if you wanted. The small switch turns the quick dial On or Off, you will want to use this as knocking the aperture off mark is far too easy.