I attended an event organised by Canon Singapore called EOS Experience Day. The day started sunny but as I proceeded to the venue, storm clouds gathered with a menacing appearance. A few minutes later, the worst happened, the clouds started pouring rain (what else). Fortunately, the seminars that were to be conducted were conducted under a temporary shelter and so we were saved (The event was held at a seaside venue and some water skiing had been planned). The seminars were boring and the introduction of their newest camera, the EOS-1D Mark III followed. The darkness (both literal and figurative) brought on by the onset of rain was offset by this toy. It looks innocuous enough for a camera of its caliber, and once the shutter is pressed, it unleashes its inner beast and starts firing away at 10 fps with a 10 mega pixels resolution. To give a comparison of its speed, a video camera captures close to 24-25 fps at a resolution around 1 mega pixels max. If technology progresses fast enough soon we will be able to make movies out of digital SLRs.
Coming to the most interesting part of the EOS Experience Day, the visitors were allowed to try their shot at the new camera (hence the water skiing) and lens lineup (the longest being 1200mm of which it is rumored that there are only 10 in the world). There were also some macro and still life lenses lined-up and had arranged for some models to pose in swimwear (Canon wanted to give a great experience to the photographers I believe). By this time the rain had stopped but it was still cloudy, and the photographers, professional amateur and all went in hordes to try the lenses. I took some macro, then went to the long lens lineup,took some pictures of the surfers, then came back for some more macro, couldn't find any inspiration at the macro counter, tried some more shots competing for space with the other professionals and finally left. Though I couldn't take more shots, I came away satisfied that I was able to fire a machine gun in the guise of the EOD 1D Mark III. Was a bit sad that I couldn't get my hands on the 1200mm lens (the one with the longest queue). Take a look at some of the pictures taken that day.
A couple of Macro shots...
...a couple of high speed shots, couldn't get a longer lens...
...and a candid shot with the 50mm standard lens, but with a maximum aperture of f/1.4 it is anything but ordinary.
