It probably won’t come as a surprise to many people that Canon has officially announced their 5D Mark IV, which replaces the 5D Mark III. In Canada they are priced around $4,499, and in the US around $3,499, with an estimated shipping date of mid-September. Initially when I was reading the rumors about the 5D Mark IV, I was thinking that I was going to pass on this body, and instead keep my 1DX as my backup full frame camera to the 1DX Mark II. Maybe it’s my need to consume, but part of me is considering actually purchasing the 5D Mark IV, and selling the 1dx.

Here are some of the features that have piqued my interest:

Megapixels:

The 5D Mark IV comes with a 30.4MP full frame CMOS Sensor. I’m very glad that some of the initial rumors of the camera being close to 50MP didn’t come true, because I think it would have really limited the use of the camera (especially with Canon already having 50MP options in the 5DSR). This is a 8MP over its predecessor, and a 10MP improvement over the 1DX Mark II…remember the days when you were only buying cameras with 8-10MP, now was are seeing that as the MP increase.

My only hesitation of having a 30MP sensor will be how it fares with hand-holding. I do over 90% of my photography hand-held, and sometimes from very unstable places (such as boats), I am concerned about how having this many MP will impact image sharpness.

However having two cameras with different megapixel counts would be an advantage.

AF System:

The 5D Mark IV comes with an improved 61-Point High Density Reticular AF system with 41 cross-points. On paper this was the same specifications for the 5D Mark III and the 1DX, however seeing how much of an improvement the 1DX Mark II was over the 1DX, I’m optimistic that the 5D Mark IV will also see an improvement over the 5D Mark III.

Additionally, all the AF points are f/8 points, meaning that you can stack a 2x Extender on a 500mm f/4 lens and still have full use of all the AF points. Obviously if you are not a big user of extenders, then this may not seem like that great of a feature. However, I love the flexibility of using extenders on my lenses, and so far I have really been loving this feature on the 1DX Mark II.

RGB+IR Sensor:

The 5D Mark IV has been upgraded to a 150,000 pixel RGB+IR light sensor (an improvement over then 100,000 its predecessor). The increased pixels in the sensor should increase AF performance as well as metering performance, and therefore should lead to faster AF, and better metering of the scenes.

Other Features:

The camera also has a few other features that I consider less important, such as 4k video with continuous AF (which I haven’t even tried on my 1dx Mark II, yet), and built-in wifi and GPS, and it also comes with a touchscreen. While lots of users would probably put a lot of value in some of these features, they aren’t going to make my buy decision for me.

There are a few things that I think are lacking from the 5D Mark IV

Memory Cards & Batteries:

I don’t know why Canon is going to continue to force me to carry around three different types of memory cards, which also involves carrying around different card readers. The 5D Mark IV comes with a dual slot, one for CF and one for SD, which is consistent with the 5D Mark III, however I was hoping it would have a CFAST slot to make it more consistent with the 1DX Mark II.

Given the increase in megapixels, as well as the increased frames per second, this camera NOT having a CFAST slot may really impact on the buffering of the camera. Therefore the increased frames per second might just lead the camera to buffer faster. This was the problem I have had with both the 5D Mark III and the 1DX, it wasn’t that I wasn’t getting enough shots each second, it was that they could only go for a few seconds before buffering and slowing down. That’s why I’m really surprised/disappointed that Canon wouldn’t use the CFAST cards instead of CF, since their flagship body is already using them.

The batteries are the same as the 5D Mark III, however I wish that when you added a battery grip it would change it so you can use the battery from the 1DX/Mark II. Also, the battery grip of the 5D Mark III is not compatible with the 5D Mark IV, so while you can use your existing batteries, you will need to buy a different grip.

Frames Per Second:

One of my only complaints about the 5D Mark III was that it was slow, compared to the other cameras in my collection, such as the 1DX Mark II, 1DX, and the 7D Mark II. And so for Canon to only upgrade the 5D Mark IV to 7 fps from 6 seems like they could have added at least one more and I would have been happier…and I’m sure others would have been as well. If I actually think about it, there are very few scenarios when 7 or even 6 would be insufficient, but the breaching Humpback Whale that I saw in BC last week would have been a challenge if I had my 5D Mark III in my hands, and probably not much better if I had the 5D Mark IV.

After reading all the things I like about the camera, and the list of relatively minor dislikes I have with the specs, you are probably wondering why my mind isn’t made up about it already. The reason is that it’s always hard to translate what’s on paper to how it performs in the field under the shooting conditions that I’m presented with.

Specifically of concern is the ISO performance as a large portion of my shooting is done in low-light settings, such as the Great Bear Rainforest in BC, or photographing owls in Alberta before the sunset, so ISO performance is one of the most critical features of a camera for me (hence my initial gut reaction of keeping the 1DX).

Secondly, I wonder how a camera with 30 MP will perform while not on a tripod, given that I do the vast majority of my shooting hand-held.

Thirdly, whether the increased MP will have an impact on the buffer, and make the camera less desirable for high-action shooting.

Overall, based on what I’m reading, I think this camera is a improvement over it’s predecessor, and provides a great full-frame option to users that don’t want to fork our $8k for the 1DX Mark II. However, the one thing I don’t know based on reading the specs is whether it is enough of an improvement over the 5D Mark III for people to upgrade with the $4299 price tag, or whether you would be better off buying a used 1DX for around the same price.

It will remain to be seen whether I end up adding one to my stock of cameras permanently, however I will get my hands on one as soon as I can to do some testing in comparison with the other cameras I have.