I need to go and see a doctor… a specialist at that, as I think I’ve contracted some weird illness – I went to a Camera show today, with vast amount of equipment for sale… and I didn’t buy anything. Actually that’s not quite true, I bought three coffees and car park ticket but nothing camera related – as I said, I must be ill.
It’s not that there wasn’t any equipment there that I wanted, there was in fact plenty, it’s just the bits of kit that I was interested in haven’t found their way to market yet in fact I tested a new Sigma 180mm macro lens which was the only one of it’s kind, it’s the development lens; I also tested a Canon 200-400mm lens of which there are only two of them – again a development lens. Both were as good as anything you are able to buy, you wouldn’t know they weren’t the final product. Actually both lenses were absolutely fantastic, and I would love to add them to the list of lenses I own as and when they come out.
These weren’t the only surprises on offer; Canon had a number of the new 1D X flagship camera as well as the recently announced 5D mark III. Again these cameras were both pre-production cameras and as such people were not able to save any photos to their own memory cards but I did have a good play with both cameras. I was greatly impressed with the 1D X, it’s auto focus and auto exposure were absolutely spot on however there was one thing I didn’t actually like about the camera.. it’s size. I’m not a fan of the standard size camera such as the 5D, for me the 1D4 is perfection itself but the 1D X is actually too large for my liking! The 5D mark III is a very capable camera, the auto focus again is very capable but the image quality, even though it has more pixels than the X, is somewhat lacking in comparison to it’s big brother but then you would hope so when there’s a £2000 price difference.
So despite my lack of purchases I had a a very fruitful day at the show, perhaps next year I’ll have overcome this terrible affliction and return with purchases (and it’ll give me plenty of time to save up as well).
Andrew Skelton: 
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