Canon has announced the new 5D Mark IV, and it’s got some terrific new features. Let’s first take a look at the official launch video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z9089048wk

What New Gear Was Announced

Here’s a list of all the new gear that was announced (it’s already on sale too).

A Few Standout Features

How, here are the features that caught my eye. This is not a review. I’m not a Canon Explorer of Light, so I haven’t been shooting with this camera, yet. It won’t even ship until September. This also isn’t an in-depth look at all the features. You can find that stuff on Canon’s website. As a guy who’s shot with all iterations of the 5D and most other changeable lens cameras, these are the things that stand out, for better or worse.

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Autofocus

This will be top-notch. I expect the only DSLR that performs better will be the 1DX mkII. Canon have put all their latest tricks into this camera, and it looks like it will be capable of focussing well for sports, wildlife, portraits, weddings, etc. Again, this is probably the best autofocus system in the world. Still, if you use the current 5D MkIII, you’ve got a really good system, too.

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Wifi and GPS

Finally! This camera has built-in wifi connectivity so you can download pictures to your phone. Mirrorless users have been enjoying this feature for years. I use it daily on my cameras, and I know Canon shooters are going to love it.

It also has built-in GPS, which is cool, but kinda underwhelming. Having GPS locations embedded in your pictures is useful for nature photographers, but I suspect wedding photographers and sports photographers won’t be using this often. I suspect it’s a battery hog, too. My mirrorless camera uses the phone app to sync GPS data from the phone to the camera, so it’s curious to me that Canon have included a GPS module in every camera instead of utilizing free smartphone data.

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4K Video and Slow-mo

Yup, it shoots really big video files. Filmmakers will love that. What it means for photographers is that we can take a single frame from that 4K video and keep it as a photograph that’s large enough to be useful. That’s good for difficult to capture moments.

Slow motion video is really fun to make, and the MkIV now shoots video at up to 120 frames per second, which makes playback at 30 fps look really smooth. If you haven’t played with this, you’re in for a surprise. Slow motion helps me make more interesting and watchable videos. Again, these are both features which mirrorless cameras have had for years.

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ISO 102,400

That’s a pretty high ISO rating, and this camera will actually make pictures in the dark. The highest settings will be very noisy, but the tolerably noisy ISO levels will be very high, and that’s handy for the occasional very low light picture. Videographers will probably use this more regularly. I expect settings like ISO 6400 will be very clean and look good, whereas that used to be remarkably high. However, the Sony a7s tops out at ISO 409,600, so mirrorless is setting the bar again.

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30.4 Megapixels

Megapixels are just a tool for measuring the size of a photograph, and 30.4 is very large. That means fine details will be visible even when enlarging the picture or viewing very closely. The 5D MkIII is about 24 megapixels, so this is a little larger, but I don’t think you’d look at it say, That’s much better! Rather, I think you’ll find that it’s just large enough to make you want a faster computer. Bigger files take more time to load and a faster computer will load them faster. Also, you’ll start to notice that your drives fill 25% faster. So, if you get this camera you’ll definitely want to budget for larger drives in your Drobo, and start thinking about a faster machine, as well. Personally, I’d rather have fewer megapixels with better noise performance than a larger picture.