Best Digital Camera (5) Canon PowerShot A710 IS

Canon PowerShot A710 IS

Review : (frem cnet.com)

Very good

7.6

out of 10

The good: Optical image stabilization; manual exposure controls; 6X optical zoom; usable ISO 800.

The bad: Sluggish flash recycling; widest angle of view is 35mm, auto white balance is very warm with tungsten lights.

The bottom line: Canon's A series continues to deliver tons of bang for the buck, this time including optical image stabilization, 6X optical zoom, and solid image quality in a midsize compact camera with a stylish design update.

Canon's A-series cameras have a long tradition of providing solid performance and impressive but not over-the-top feature sets at a reasonable price. In the past, that has often come with a slightly utilitarian design, but Canon's newest addition, the PowerShot A710 IS, looks practically classy, with its gently curved top; shiny, silver-plastic accents; and curved, dark-plastic section on its grip. Add to that the fact that it has a 6X optical, 35mm to 210mm (35mm equivalent), an f/2.8-to-f/4.8 zoom lens with optical image stabilization, a 7.1-megapixel CCD sensor, and a bunch of manual controls, and you've got one heck of a nice feature set for a camera in its price class.

Fans of the A series will note that the camera's grip isn't as large as some of the others' in the line, mostly because the A710 IS is powered by two AA batteries instead of four. This makes for a more pocketable design, and Canon still rates battery life at 360 images with NiMH batteries and 100 with alkalines. With a good pair of AA rechargeables, you should be able to use the camera for a weekend without running out of juice. Despite the smaller grip, the camera is still very one-hand-shooting friendly with all camera controls in easy reach of your right hand's fingers and thumb. Our only design criticism is the location of the SD card slot. As in a lot of cameras, it's tucked next to the batteries, which means that you'll have to be careful not to let the batteries fall out when switching cards. At least the spring-loaded slot pushes the card far up, so it's easy to remove.

Features are similar to those of the PowerShot A700, another camera in Canon's line. Standouts include controls for manual exposure and aperture and shutter priority, as well as flash compensation, which lets you roll back flash output power, and second-curtain flash, which fires the flash as the shutter closes so that moving objects don't end up with trails in front of them when you're using the flash. This happens a lot when shooting cars at night; with second-curtain flash, the headlights end up with slight trails behind them instead of looking like laser beams. Of course, if you like the laser look, you can also choose first-curtain (a.k.a. normal) flash, which is the default.

As you might expect, there are also many choices for tweaking your pictures, including 11 color modes, one of which lets you create your own by setting contrast; saturation; sharpness; red, green, and blue levels; and skin tone brightness. You can also use Color Accent mode to turn all but a selected color to black and white--perfect for making cutesy pictures of flowers in which only the petals are in color. Along similar lines, Color Swap lets you trade one color for another.

Optional accessories, such as the 0.7X wide-angle converter, 1.75X teleconverter, and close-up lens, all of which attach in front of the built-in zoom lens via a bayonet-mounted adapter, letting the A710IS grow with you as your shooting needs change and making the camera even more versatile.

The biggest place the A710 IS lags, feature-wise, is in its sensitivity settings. It tops out at ISO 800, which isn't bad. But with so many cameras, even budget snapshooters, pushing up to and past that mark, we would've expected to see Canon's flagship A-series camera go up to ISO 1600.

Given the A-series' track record, we weren't surprised to find that it performed well in our Labs' tests. It took 1.6 seconds to power up and capture its first image, and 1.8 seconds to capture subsequent images without flash. Activating the flash almost doubled that time, resulting in 3.5 seconds between shots in our tests. Shutter lag in our high-contrast test measured 0.35 second, jumping to 1.2 seconds in the low-contrast test--both very respectable numbers for a camera of this class. Continuous shooting was average, yielding an average of 1.7 frames per second for VGA-size JPEGs and 1.5fps for 7.1-megapixel JPEGs.

Image quality was very good in our tests. Colors were accurate, if a touch flat, and the camera was able to capture a healthy amount of detail. Exposures were generally accurate, with only minor blooming in extreme highlights, impressive shadow detail, and little or no fringing.

Noise wasn't noticeable at ISO 80 and was only minutely present at ISO 100, manifesting itself as extremely slight mottling of solid fields of dark colors--something that most people would not notice in prints, even at full size. By ISO 200, noise spread to a wider range of colors but still remained mostly as a light grain that most people would dismiss; it didn't appreciably detract from image detail and would likely be completely minimized when printed. By ISO 400, noise was more apparent and took away a mild amount of finer image detail. For example, the 1/16-inch markers on the measuring tape in our test scene began to blur together at this point. By ISO 800, noise was very noticeable, as a fine snowy grain. While not as objectionable as the heavily colored grain some cameras produce, it was hard to miss and was enough to make the numbers on the measuring tape unreadable. Still, prints were usable at smaller sizes, in which the grain served mostly to rob contrast and obscure shadow detail.

Once again, Canon has delivered a great value with it's A series in the form of the A710 IS. With its addition of image stabilization, you should be able to shoot a couple of shutter-speed stops slower than you normally would, making the long end of the zoom lens even more convenient, and the camera's usable ISO 800 setting will let you capture images in situations when IS is not the answer. Plus, for average situations, the camera's image quality is quite good for the money. Most casual shooters and simple snapshooters will find that the A710 IS is plenty of camera for their needs, and its versatile controls make it a nice spare camera for more advanced shooters, as well.

Best Digital Camera (4) Sony Cyber Shot DSC-T10 (silver)

Sony Cyber Shot DSC-T10 (silver)

Review : (from cnet.com)

Very good

7.8

out of 10

The good: Small size; attractive design; optical image stabilization; quick performance.

The bad: Lens is slow and not very wide at f/3.5 and 38mm.

The bottom line: Sony's Cyber Shot DSC-T10 delivers an attractive pocket camera with decent image quality, this time in multiple colors, too.

Years after the first Sony T-series hit the market, it's still impossible to deny the cool factor of these little, silver snapshot cameras. This time, Sony serves up the 7.2-megapixel Cyber Shot DSC-T10, which lands between the 6-megapixel DSC-T9 and the 7.2-megapixel DSC-T30 in the company's line. The DSC-T10 doesn't sport the fancy plexiglass back panel or the 3-inch LCD of the T30, but it's got most of that camera's other features and a nice looking 2.5-inch LCD of its own. To keep things interesting, Sony has offered a choice of four colors for the T10: black, pink, silver, and white.

Except for its 7.2-megapixel CCD sensor, the Sony Cyber Shot DSC-T10 is extremely similar to the DSC-T9. A full-body-width sliding lens cover turns the camera on and off, and the back panel layout is essentially identical, with most of the control buttons gathered to the right of the 2.5-inch, 230,000-pixel LCD. One nice touch is that, when the lens cover is in the down position, a small vertical ridge provides a perfect grip for your middle finger. A tiny button to the right of the shutter controls the camera's optical image stabilization, which Sony refers to as Super Steady Shot. We found that it'll get you between one and two stops of leeway when shooting at slower shutter speeds. For example, we were able to shoot steady, crisp images at 1/20 second with stabilization on, in situations that would normally require a shutter speed of 1/60 second to prevent blur.

A handy selection of shooting modes covers most specialized situations, while program and full auto let you tweak--or not--settings such as white balance, metering, and focus modes. In addition to the normal autofocus modes, you can also set the camera to a range of fixed focus distances, which are based in meters rather than feet. Perhaps this is Sony's way to revive the Go Metric campaign that highlighted my grade school years.

Like its predecessors, the DSC-T10 has a 3X optical, 38mm-to-114mm-equivalent, f/3.5-to-f/4.3 Carl Zeiss lens. Many cameras now include wider angles of view, which can be useful in casual snapshooting when you may not have the room to back up, and some have wider maximum apertures, which help in low light. Perhaps the next T-series camera we see will include a wider setting. Nitpicking aside, the lens does a decent job with little, if any, blooming, and fringing appearing only in the brightest areas of the image.

As usual for a T-series camera, the DSC-T10 is a quick camera. It took 1.4 seconds to start up and capture its first image, while images thereafter took 1.6 seconds without flash. With the flash that slowed noticeably to 2.38 seconds, but that's still very respectable. Shutter lag impressed us, measuring 0.5 second in our high-contrast test and 1.45 seconds in low-contrast. Burst mode was the only less-than-stellar performance result, with an average of 1.28fps when capturing VGA resolution JPEGs and 1.35fps when capturing 7.2-megapixel JPEGs. Of course, an ultracompact camera such as the T10 isn't likely to see much burst shooting anyway.

Image quality from the Sony Cyber Shot DSC-T10 was pleasing, especially for a pocket camera. Colors look accurate, though a bit flat at times, and noise is kept under control except at the highest ISOs. The camera captured clean, well detailed images at both ISO 80 and ISO 100. Noise crept in at ISO 200, but plenty of detail remained. By ISO 400, we saw enough noise to obscure finer details, such as texture in fabric and separate strands of hair. At ISO 800, there was noticeable detail lost, and off-color speckles and grainy noise was pervasive, though smaller--and possibly even letter-size--prints, should be fine. At ISO 1,000, the noise was only worse, but 4x6 prints, while obviously not perfect, should still be passable.

While on the outside it's difficult to distinguish Sony's DSC-T9 from the DSC-T10, once its innards start cranking out images, it's obvious that Sony has continued to refine its stylish series of pocket cameras. The T10 raises the bar in terms of noise performance, while retaining all the other nice features that have made their way into this line over time. When it comes to ultracompact cameras, it's hard to beat the value of Sony's Cyber Shot DSC-T10, even if it does seem expensive.

Shooting speed
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Typical shot-to-shot time

Time to first shot

Shutter lag (typical)

Pentax Optio A10

4.2

3.8

0.8

Nikon Coolpix S4

2.8

2.5

0.8

Sanyo Xacti VPC-E6

2.3

2

0.7

Casio Exilim EX-Z850

2.7

2.1

0.5

Sony Cyber Shot DSC-T10

1.6

1.4

0.5

Sony Cyber Shot DSC-T30

1.6

1.8

0.4

Note: Seconds

Typical continuous-shooting speed
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Sanyo Xacti VPC-E6

3

Pentax Optio A10

1.8

Sony Cyber Shot DSC-T30

1.4

Sony Cyber Shot DSC-T10

1.4

Nikon Coolpix S4

1.1

Casio Exilim EX-Z850

0.5

Note: Frames per second

Best Digital Camera (3) Canon PowerShot SD800 IS

Canon PowerShot SD800 IS

Review : (from cnet.com)
Very good

7.8

out of 10

The good: Good focal range for lens; quick performance; optical image stabilization; attractive design.

The bad: Few manual controls; extremely noisy photos at ISO 1,600.

The bottom line: A slim, stylish body, a wide-angle lens, very good photo quality, and snappy performance make the Canon PowerShot SD800 IS a great point-and-shoot.

Last spring, Canon impressed us with its stylish high-end shooter, the 6-megapixel PowerShot SD700 IS. It had a great lens and produced great images, all in an attractive, pocketable, metal body. With the follow-up Canon PowerShot SD800 IS, the company improves upon its previous design by squeezing in a wider lens and a higher resolution sensor.

The 7-megapixel camera's tiny body is shiny, curvy, and very attractive. But it may be just a bit too stylish for its own good. For instance, the power button is a tiny, illuminated half-oval built flush into the top panel; without actually pressing it, you might easily mistake it for an indicator light or a design flaw.

The Canon PowerShot SD800's mode dial curves slightly outward, flowing into the design of the camera, making a comfortable resting spot for your thumb. But it feels slightly slippery when switching camera modes.

Beyond those quirks, though, the SD800 IS is a standard, straightforwardly designed Canon shooter, with a four-way navigation switch, additional buttons, and the shutter-release/zoom-rocker mechanism we've grown used to. The small, all-metal body weighs slightly more than six ounces, and at an inch thick, is just the right size for most pockets. Though small, the camera still has enough room on its body to hold both a 2.5-inch LCD and an optical viewfinder, a rare and welcome feature on an ultracompact.

The SD800's most prominent feature is its image-stabilized, f/2.8-to-f/5.8, 28mm-to-105mm-equivalent lens. The 3.8X zoom range offers the flexibility of wide-angle focal lengths, while still providing a bit more zoom power than the average 3X point-and-shoot lens. Though the SD700 IS had a 4X zoom lens, the SD800's 28mm-equivalent wide shot more than makes up for the slightly smaller telephoto factor.

In addition to the flexible lens, the SD800 IS has some handy snapshot features. The camera's sensor can be boosted to as high as ISO 1,600 for low-light or high-movement shots, though you'll want to keep it at ISO 800 or lower because of image noise. You can shoot 30fps VGA video, or bump it up to 60fps QVGA (320x240) to capture action footage for half-speed playback. If you're looking for manual controls, however, look elsewhere; like the SD700, the SD800's aperture and shutter settings can't be changed except for a long shutter mode, its focus modes are all automatic, and the camera's manual mode allows only exposure compensation, color correction, metering, and white-balance adjustments.

The SD800 also uses the recent Digic III image processor, which Canon claims improves image quality, performance, and battery life. We didn't notice any significant improvements over the SD700's already good performance, but the SD800 seemed slightly more responsive than its predecessor. It performed excellently in our lab tests. Just 1.1 seconds after the power button was pressed, it was able to take its first shot and subsequently could snap off a shot every 1.3 seconds. Even with the onboard flash enabled, we experienced a lag of only 2 seconds between shots. Shutter lag was a negligible 0.4 second. The only disappointment was the camera's burst mode, which managed only one shot per second.

Shooting speed
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Typical shot-to-shot time

Time to first shot

Shutter lag (typical)

Casio Exilim EX-Z1000

3.5

1.8

0.3

Sony Cyber Shot DSC-T30

1.6

1.8

0.4

Canon PowerShot SD800 IS

1.3

1.1

0.4

Canon PowerShot SD700 IS

1.6

1.5

0.5

Note: In seconds

Typical continuous-shooting speed
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Canon PowerShot SD700 IS

2.0

Sony Cyber Shot DSC-T30

1.4

Canon PowerShot SD800 IS

1.0

Casio Exilim EX-Z1000

0.4

Note: Frames per second

Photos were attractive, with fine detail rendering and solid color reproduction. Aside from some slight purple fringing along the borders of bright subjects, we noticed few distortions or aberrations in our photos. Image noise was acceptable to as high as ISO 800, manifesting as a fine grain that dulled colors but otherwise didn't mar photo quality too much. ISO 1,600 was a different story; a sparkly, static-filled mess that made the photo look as if it were received via a television antenna.

The Canon PowerShot SD800 IS is a great point-and-shoot camera. It's small, it sports a stabilized, wide-angle lens, and it can pump out beautiful shots at a pretty rapid pace. If you want higher resolution and don't mind losing the optical image stabilization--though we don't recommend the tradeoff--the Canon PowerShot SD900 and the Casio Exilim EX-Z1000 offer 10

Best Digital Camera (2) Nikon D80

Nikon D80

Review :
(from www.cnet.com)

Excellent

8.0

out of 10

The good: Excellent color rendition and noise levels; large feature set; highly customizable; lightning-fast performance.

The bad: Full raw editor costs extra; flash sync of 1/200 second.

The bottom line: Nikon scores big with the D80, its new 10-megapixel, sub-$1,000 dSLR.

The last time Nikon updated its sub-$1,000 mid-range dSLR, a handful of minor, but certainly welcome, updates gave us the D70s. Now, Nikon has given the camera a serious overhaul, including a new 10.2-megapixel CCD imaging sensor, an 11-area AF system (up from 5), the obligatory larger LCD screen (2.5 inches, up from 2 inches), and a pile of in-camera editing and custom functions. With this newest revision, Nikon has put the camera more in line with its expected audience, which spans lower-end enthusiasts, all the way down to SLR newbies who crave more power than they can get with the company's entry-level dSLR, the D50.

The only downside to this slight shift in focus, is a slower top shutter speed--the D80 tops out at 1/4,000 second instead of 1/8,000 second--and a slower flash-sync speed of 1/200 second instead of the 1/500 second that the D70s offers, which was significantly faster than its competitors' in the first place. This may irk sports shooters, who may appreciate the extremely fast shutter of the D70s, or other action shooters, who like to freeze movement with a fast burst of flash, but the majority of photographers won't notice the difference. But, given that more advanced enthusiasts now have the Nikon D200 to quench their needs--a D200 equivalent didn't exist when the first D70 came out--the advances in almost all other areas of this camera should outweigh these couple of changes.

The camera body is technically slightly smaller in all dimensions compared to those of the D70s, but current owners will find the design very similar. Most of the buttons are the same and in the same places, and there are dedicated buttons for many commonly used functions. For example, a cluster of buttons next to the shutter let you change metering mode, exposure compensation, drive mode, and AF mode. Meanwhile, the buttons to the left of the 2.5-inch, 230,000-pixel LCD screen let you change white balance, ISO, and image size and quality settings without diving into menus. About the only function without its own dedicated control is AF zone selection, though the camera's programmable function button can be programmed to cover that if you so choose. The default for this button is to display the current ISO setting.

Three dials adorn the camera body. The mode dial lets you choose between program, aperture- or shutter-priority, full manual, full auto, or any of six preset exposure scene modes. The other two dials, located on the front and back of the grip, let you change aperture and shutter speed. Together, they make full manual shooting quick and easy.

Nikon's menu system is straightforward and, for the most part, intuitive. An option in the setup menu lets you hide some of the menu items by either selecting Nikon's preshortened Simple menu, which displays only what Nikon thinks are the most commonly changed menu items, or My Menu, which lets you choose which items the camera displays in each of the playback, shooting, custom setting, and retouch menus. Never heard of the retouch menu? That's because it's new.

The retouch menu lets you edit your photos in camera. Choices include resize, crop, red-eye reduction, filter effects, or monochrome. The coolest is probably the overlay option. It works only with raw images, but it lets you superimpose one image on top of another and even lets you choose the opacity, so the pictures can blend more smoothly. It won't replace Photoshop, but for simple overlays, it's pretty fun. Plus, since all the retouch menu functions save a new version of your image, you can always go back to the original later, and, in the case of overlays, you can lay more photos on top of already mashed-together images.

Other fun options include creating your own tone curves using the included Camera Control Pro software, as well as adjustable hue control, and a black-and-white mode with options for virtual yellow, orange, red, or green filters. A multiple exposure mode lets you shoot as many as three frames, which are then combined into one image by the camera. Of course, like most dSLRs, the D80 includes selectable white balance, as well as the usual metering and autofocus options. The image-processing and AF system are the same ones that come in the D200, while the 3D Color Matrix Metering II included here is the same as the one in the D50.

Like the D70 and the D70s, the D80 includes Commander Mode, which lets you control compatible Nikon Speedlights without the need for a separate wireless trigger, such as Canon's ST-E2 Speedlight Transmitter, which must be purchased separately to allow you the same level of control from Canon cameras and flashes. Unlike the D70s, which could only control one group of Speedlights on one channel, the D80 can control as many as three groups on any of the four channels Nikon offers.

In the "keeping up with the Joneses" department, Nikon has included SD-HC support, so you'll be able to use SD cards with capacities larger than 2GB. Also, Nikon will offer an optional vertical grip for the D80 called the MB-D80 which will hold up to one or two EN-EL3e rechargeable lithium-ion batteries or as many as six AA batteries. That means you won't be stuck buying a third-party grip as were so many D70 and D70s users. Without the grip, the D80 runs on one EN-EL3e battery.

Meanwhile, in the "not keeping up with the Joneses" department, Nikon continues to charge extra for its Capture NX software. PictureProject software is included for free, and will do rudimentary raw conversion, but if you want full raw control you'll have to shell out the extra cash for Capture NX. To their credit, Capture NX does include more image-editing functionality than that of the free software included with other manufacturers' dSLRs, but most buyers expect full raw conversion to be included with the camera.

Because of some nasty problems with third-party batteries in recent years, the camera will accept only Nikon's official EN-EL3e batteries. However, the company's new batteries let you see more detailed info. If you look under battery info in the setup menu, you can see remaining battery life as a percentage, as well as how many pictures have been shot since the last charge, and a loose gauge of how many times the battery has been recharged. It would've been nice to see average minutes or pictures remaining, as Sony's InfoLithium batteries provide, but we're not complaining about this extra info from Nikon, and the charge meter is a well-conceived idea.

Performance was among the fastest we've seen so far. In our lab, the D80 took 0.1 second to power up and capture its first image. Subsequent shots took 0.3 second without flash and 1 second with the flash turned on. Raw shots were just as fast, with a shot-to-shot time of 0.3 second. In our lab's high-contrast test, the shutter lag measured 0.45 second, slowing to 0.9 second in the low-contrast test. Continuous shooting yielded nine fine-quality 10.2-megapixel JPEGs in 2.7 seconds, for an average of 3.33fps and turned in about the same performance on basic-quality 2.5-megapixel JPEGs, capturing 99 images in 33.3 seconds for an average of 2.97fps.

The built-in flash has a Guide number of 13 at ISO 100, up from the D70s's Guide number of 11 at ISO 100. The extra power was noticeable in our lab test shots. Plus, the D80 did an excellent job of balancing the camera's fill flash with our scene's incidental lighting. In the field, we also noticed that fill flash from the D80 was consistently even.

Image quality from the Nikon D80 is quite impressive. Colors were accurate and neutral and the camera's meter did an excellent job of reading the scene and providing an accurate exposure. At times, mostly in extreme cases when the scene was dominated by darkness, the Matrix metering tended to preserve detail in the shadows at the expense of highlights, though typically, this is what one would've intended in that situation. Plus, switching to selectable zone metering or using the camera's massive plus or minus 5EV exposure compensation should help in those situations.

The 18mm-to-135mm, f/3.5-to-f/5.6 kit lens, which pushes the suggested price well above $1,000, performed well. We saw almost no colored fringing and were impressed with the lens's sharpness given its affordable price. Despite its plastic lens-mount, it feels more solid than many of the kit lenses on the market. Our only complaint was a slight amount of vignetting noticeable at the wide end of the zoom range.

Images from the D80 showed very little noise in our tests. At ISO 100, ISO 200, and ISO 400 noise was practically nonexistent, with only an extremely fine grain beginning to become apparent at ISO 400. Even at ISO 800, noise was a little more noticeable but still no more than a fine grain. At ISO 1,600, noise became noticeable but lacked the many off-color speckles that characterize many cameras' noise profile, and was similar to what we've come to expect at ISO 800 on some other dSLRs. At ISO 3,200--Nikon calls it H1.0--noise was obvious, resembling a coating of fine, snowy grain. A fair amount of detail was obscured by the grain but plenty still remained, and prints as large as letter size--and possibly even larger--should be acceptable, though far from perfect.

Buying an SLR is a complex process, which should include not only the camera body, but also a given manufacturer's--and third parties'--complement of lenses and accessories. That's exactly why manufacturers such as Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Olympus, and KonicaMinolta have built up such a large following over the years. Now that Sony has bought KonicaMinolta's know-how and released the DSLR-A100, which is compatible with past KonicaMinolta lenses and accessories, the consumer electronics giant has gained entrée into this market in a meaningful and substantial way. The same can be said for Samsung and Panasonic and their respective licensing of Pentax's and Olympus's technology. That means that big players, such as Nikon, have to continue to refine their technology if they want to remain competitive.

With the D80, Nikon has proven that it is very much still pushing ahead strongly. With 10.2 megapixels, lightning-fast performance, high-quality images with very low noise, and a heaping pile of convenience features, Nikon's D80 will not disappoint. We're just eager to see how it stacks up to Canon's Rebel XTi, which is due to hit stores just weeks from now. But, if you already own some Nikon lenses and have been waiting for an affordable 10.2-megapixel dSLR, this one is a sure winner.

Best Digital Camera (1) Canon EOS-1D Mark II N

Canon EOS-1D Mark II N

Review :
(from www.cnet.com)

Spectacular

9.0

out of 10

The good: Combination of fast drive mode and high resolution; large buffer; highly customizable; saves custom camera setups to media, supports cards greater than 2GB.

The bad: Noise in underexposed image areas; imperfections appear when paired with lower-quality lenses.

The bottom line: In a league by itself, the Mark II offers professional photographers extensive customization, excellent photo quality, and market-leading speed.

Canon maintains its pro leadership with its 8-megapixel EOS-1D Mark II N, the fastest-shooting digital SLR on the market. Made for magazine photographers covering news and sports, the Mark II N also works well for portrait shooters who want a versatile, small-format digital camera. The Mark II N replaces the EOS-1D Mark II--which was already at the top of its class--and makes several useful improvements.

As a contributing photographer for Sports Illustrated magazine, I have been using the Mark II for a few months and am very impressed with its feature set, design, customization ability, and image quality. If you need evidence that it's in a league by itself, consider that SI replaced all of its EOS-1D bodies with Mark IIs.

Editor's note: The design, feature set, and image quality of the EOS-1D Mark II N is essentially the same as that of its predecessor, the Mark II. The II N has faster performance and a larger LCD than the II, so we have simply updated the original review where necessary.

Design of Canon EOS-1D Mark II N

The body design of the Canon EOS-1D Mark II N is very similar to that of its predecessor, the EOS-1D Mark II. At 3.4 pounds without a lens, the Mark II N has a perfect weight for professional use and fits comfortably in my hand, although it might be heavy for some. A solid camera, it's weatherproofed and sealed from water, dust, and dirt.

One nice touch is that the rubber doors covering the ports swing around but don't come off, which means you won't lose them. Canon also made a small but important improvement in the release tab that opens the memory card door. Anyone who has ever shot with the original EOS-1D in the snow knows how difficult it was to change out CompactFlash cards with gloves on. On the Mark II N, like the Mark II, the tab protrudes a little bit, making it much easier to open.

You can change the Canon EOS-1D Mark II N's several basic settings by pressing these buttons on the left of the camera top while turning a mode dial with your right hand.

As with the Mark II, the Mark II N has an integrated second grip and shutter release so that you can turn the camera 90 degrees and capture photos with a vertical orientation. Like the main grip, the vertical grip provides all the necessary controls--a command dial, a button for multispot metering and flash exposure lock, an autoexposure-lock button, an autofocus assist button, and an autofocus-point selection button--and it's comfortable to hold.

The Canon EOS-1D Mark II N's vertical grip is comfortable to hold and incorporates a second set of shooting controls.

The shooting modes you cycle through with the command dial include Program, Manual, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and Bulb. If you're upgrading from the original EOS-1D and used to moving the command dial two clicks to go from Manual to Aperture Priority, you'll be thrown off until you become accustomed to turning only one click.

The EOS-1D Mark II N's top status LCD shows information regarding the photographic operation of the camera, including exposure parameters, as well as Metering, Drive, and Focus modes. You can select continuous ISO display via the Mark II's custom functions.

The rear status LCD shows digital settings, and also confirms which of the Mark II N's two card slots is currently active. The well-organized main menu system still requires that a button be depressed twice to delete images and four pushes to format the card. This is to prevent accidental loss of images.

Features of Canon EOS-1D Mark II N

Canon's EOS-1D Mark II N is one of the most customizable cameras on the market, with 21 custom functions and 31 personal functions that you set via the included desktop software. Plan on spending some time setting up the camera before you begin shooting. I developed a set of basic recommendations for Sports Illustrated photographers, which you can view here. Because this camera does not use the electronic shutter that let the original 1D achieve shutter speeds of 1/16,000 second, its top shutter speed is 1/8,000 second--still pretty fast. You can choose from 40 different JPEG compression levels without hooking the camera up to a computer. The Mark II N's lowest ISO setting is a clean ISO 50 while its top ISO setting remains ISO 3,200.

Many of the Mark II N's enhancements over the Mark II center around image playback and the larger, brighter 2.5-inch LCD display. For one, you can set the camera to magnify the area centered around the AF point when reviewing shots, a big timesaver when you need to check your focus. Furthermore, you needn't pop into playback mode to zoom in; you can do it during Quick Review. Also, the camera can return to the last image you viewed during playback, rather than the last one you shot.

New to the Mark II N are Picture Styles. In addition to a handful of presets, you can save three custom combinations of sharpness, contrast, saturation, and color tone settings.

Like all the EOS models, the Mark II N is compatible with Canon EF-mount lenses (except EF-S). It has a 1.3X lens conversion, or crop factor, because its CMOS sensor is smaller than a 35mm-film frame. In other words, when you put a lens on the Mark II, it will give you the same field of view that a lens with 1.3 times greater focal length would have on a 35mm camera. The 1.3X factor makes a nice compromise between the 1.5X crop of Nikon's D2H and the 1:1 ratio for Canon's EOS-1Ds. However, I find that it's just enough of a difference that you must shoot with a wider lens to really get a wide-angle effect, but not enough to make a significant difference with longer telephoto lenses.

Equipped with two card slots, this camera lets you shoot to either CompactFlash or SD media. You can use the SD slot for backup or set the camera to write raw files to one card and JPEGs to the other when in RAW+JPEG mode.

One smart idea is the Save/Read Camera Settings feature. Once you have your camera set up exactly the way you want it, you can save all of your settings by using a selection in the first Setup menu. The Mark II N will store your settings in a small CSD file on the root level of your card, which you can then load onto another camera or save for future use. It's a huge timesaver.

Senior editor Lori Grunin contributed to parts of this section.

Performance of Canon EOS-1D Mark II N

Canon has managed to improve all aspects of continuous-shooting performance for the EOS-1D Mark II N. It retains its fastest rated full-resolution drive speed of 8.5fps in optimal conditions, but Canon claims the buffer will now hold 48 JPEG images (up from 40), 22 raw files (up from 20), or 19 raw+JPEG before reaching capacity. In our tests, we managed to capture 257 small JPEGs at 8fps and 100 raw shots at 3fps before buffer crawl set in.

Like the Mark II, the buffer will continue to write images to the card even if you accidentally open the card door. The top status LCD will blink and tell you how many frames it has left to flush out of the buffer, but it will continue to write without a problem.

Canon has also improved the time it takes to clear the buffer. In previous tests, the Mark II took almost a minute to clear the entire buffer after shooting a burst of 20 raw+JPEG files. With the Mark II N and a SanDisk Extreme IV CF card, it took only about 22 seconds to write 21 raw+JPEG images. The Mark II N also zips through reviewing images on the LCD--close to instantaneous, in fact--a big improvement over the Mark II.

Since the Mark II N has the same excellent 21-zone evaluative metering and 45-point autofocus systems as the Mark II, its automatic shooting modes still do an amazing job at getting the exposure just right.

The EOS-1D Mark II N's bright viewfinder gives you a 100 percent view, and there are nine interchangeable focusing screens available. A built-in eyepiece shutter prevents light leaks during long exposures.

Canon rates the rechargeable NP-E3 nickel-metal-hydride battery pack for 1,200 shots at 68 degrees Fahrenheit and 800 shots at 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Mark II N uses the same rechargeable nickel-metal-hydride battery as its predecessors. That means you won't have to buy a bunch of new batteries, but it also means Canon didn't implement a newer, longer-lasting lithium-ion or lithium-polymer battery--such as the never-ending Nikon D2H cell.

Senior editor Lori Grunin contributed to this section

Image quality of Canon EOS-1D Mark II N

Editor's note: Since the Canon EOS-1D Mark II N's image quality hasn't changed from that of the EOS-1D Mark II, we've left the references specific to that camera. All comments here apply equally to the Mark II N.

The photos I've taken with the Canon EOS-1D Mark II files are smooth and show almost no noise at ISO 100 and ISO 200; even ISO 400 and ISO 800 look very good. There is no sign of the banding that plagued images from the EOS-1D. As with most dSLRs, however, you must be careful not to underexpose your images. Noise can be seen very clearly in images that are too far underexposed. Just to be safe, I prefer to overexpose my images about half a stop, then bring the exposure down when converting the raw file with image-processing software.

Mark II images also have very little sharpening applied right out of the box. Some people may be put off by the resulting softness of the images, but I like this approach, because it allows you more control in applying your own sharpening after the fact. If you prefer to apply sharpening in-camera, I recommend using a sharpness setting of 3 or 4.

Because of its high resolution and superb image quality, the Mark II will demand a lot from your lenses. For example, my 1.4X teleconverter, which worked perfectly on the EOS-1D, doesn't give me sharp results on the Mark II. The camera's high resolution shows even the slightest imperfections, so you'll have to use the highest-quality lenses to get the best results.