Purpose
The purpose of this review is to determine whether the Canon EOS-1Ds digital camera is suitable for capturing still frames for stop-motion animation. Other consumer-grade digital still cameras seem to have flicker problems with small aperture settings. Is this also the case with this top-of-the-line camera?
Setup
For all tests, we used a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens, and captured a series of exposures using the Canon TC-80N3 timer remote control, which you can see in the photo below.
It is important to note that with this camera model does not have a live preview feature. That is, it's not possible to obtain a live video feed from the camera.
The camera was trained on a blank gray card and a voltmeter. The voltmeter was connected to the same power source as the two incandescent lights used to light the scene, so that voltage irregularities that affect the lighting could be accounted for. The room was closed up with nobody inside it during the experiment, so that the results would not be skewed by stray light sources or shadows.
For both tests, I captured frames at the highest resolution possible (4064 x 2704, a whopping 11 megapixels), and processed them into a short 24 fps MPEG-1 video using Gromada's VideoMach v2.7.2.
Test 1: Small Aperture
For the first test, I set the camera's aperture to F8.0 with a shutter speed of 0.3 sec. (This is by no means the smallest aperture possible; I chose F8.0 because I wanted to match the settings in my S50 test as closely as possible.)
Results:
Surprisingly, the resulting video exhibited flicker problems similar to the S50 F8.0 tests. Looking at the close up video, there does not seem to be a direct correlation between the flicker and the voltage.
Test 2: Wide Aperture
For the second test, I set the camera's aperture to F2.8 with a shutter speed of 1/25 sec.
Results:
The resulting video has almost no flicker. There is one "pop" at the tail end of the movie, but you can see in the close up video that this anomaly coincides with a voltage fluctuation. Each red tick on the scale represents 5 V AC, so the needle jumped approximately one volt.
Conclusion
The Canon EOS-1Ds does appear to be plagued by the same flicker problems as less expensive models. The image resolution is light years beyond what one would need for stop-motion animation, even for high definition mastering. The lack of a live preview feed is for me the final nail in the coffin. This is an incredible camera for its intended purpose -- still photography -- but in my opinion, it is not a good fit for stop-motion work.
I hasten to add that at this point, I have yet to capture a completely flicker-free test with any equipment setup. I am reasonably sure that lighting fluctuations have been accounted for in my experiments, but there is a possibility that my methods are flawed.