Summary: An oldy but surely one of the best - still! I purchased 3 520s from an international wire photo service that upgraded to EOS 1Ds this year (2004). As a professional press photographer, the first time I used one of these was in 2000 and I loved it - but at CDN$15,000 it was well out of my budget.
But I never forgot using it.
The 520 is rock solid and gets the picture when other cameras are still writing to disk. Sure, it only has a 2Mp imager and records in Kodak's proprietary RAW-TIFF format but these cameras rock.
And if you can find them, well, the price/performance ratio makes it an easy purchase.
Strengths: Solid. Very solid. Very, very solid.
Built on Canon's venerable EOS-1N, these cameras stand up to the pounding of REAL press use. Shutter lag is virtually non-existent with a solid, "k-chunk, k-chunk, k-chunk..." for as long as you hold the shutter.
The Canon metering is a little on the dark side - but I prefer this in digital as it prevents data from falling off the bright side of the histogram.
Shutter (Did I mention?) is v-ery sensitive to touch and I like that in a phojo camera. Top speed of 1/8000 means you can use your fast glass in most daylight conditions.
Canon custom functions - You can adjust the camera to work the way you do, and perform revisions "on the fly" with the electronic menu - Like shifting the auto-focus function away from the shutter or adjusting flash output as fill.
Right now, if you can find them, these cameras can be had for about US$500 for phojos on a budget or for a never-let-you-down backup to the newer 1D series.
Weaknesses: High ISO noise. No surprises here for anyone shooting digital but sometimes you get what you got and that's all the world will see. Can I live with the "grain?" As a phojo first and digital user second, I'd rather have the shot and worry about removing the noise later.
Forget true colour representation on the LCD monitor. It'll show you an image, where you can press INFO to see the histogram, but it doesn't have the resolution of newer models.
You will post-process your selections. PhotoShop CS makes it a lot easier, otherwise it's Kodak PhotoDesk - and there's not much tweaking you can do there.
Batteries. They hold a charge real well but are pretty expensive to buy. About US$120 for Gold NiMH
Similar Products Used: Olympus E-10 (Wish I still had it), Canon D2000, D30, 10D, G2, Fuji 4900Z (It was the paper's, not mine!), Fuji S1
Customer Service: R-ight. Haven't required servicing but Kodak still does it. But as technology continues to increase - 20D? - the value of the 520 will drop until it's too costly to repair.
Summary: I'm a Canon person and have many Canon lenses and flashes. At work I use a Canon D60 and a Kodak DCS 1-c. I was thinking about getting the Kodak 720x because of its high ISO speed and that it shoots around five frames a second. But my loyalty to Canon won out when Imaging Spectrum said they had a refurbuished camera for only $1300.00. I got the camera in December and bought an extra battery. I also found some (two) 2GB Toshiba PC cards and use them (I get 877 pics per card). You can put two cards in the camera at once, but for some reason the camera doesn't quite like this. Sometimes it doesn't recognize one card, or it won't write to the card. The simple fix is to remove one card. Then the camera works beautifully. The best thing about this is the EOS-1 body. It's a tank! Also the body has been updated to accept the E-TTL 550EX flash. (There's been a lot of griping about this flash but It seems to work well for me.) One major conssesion that I've done is set the camera to use only the center led sensor in the viewfinder. This helps on focusing a whole lot. I'm sure it also helps with the flash too. I set the camera to turn off in 15 minutes which eliminates the turn off/on problem with most digital cameras.
I have two Quantum turbo batteries, so I found a turbo cord that will allow me to power the camera from a turbo battery (quantum CD3) this works great and gives me a ton of power. You can use it with or without a Kodak battery in the camera so I think this is a major plus.
I'm real sorry to see that Kodak and Canon discontinued their relationship because this is a major monster of a camera! Even with the small CCD (2mgs) everything else makes this an exceptional tool for photography.
Another plus for this camera is the Kodak software, Photodesk it is rated as one of the best packages out there and it integrates well with Adobe Photoshop.
This camera is one of the great ones and will be still working when a lot of others have been tossed in the trash.
Strengths: Canon and Kodak quality.
Interchangable lenses
1.6X for telephoto lenses
ISO 1600 speed
3.5~4 frames per second
Quick operation and display on LCD of image.
1394 firewire connection.
Ability to use PC Card Adapter, for Compactflash, etc.
Weaknesses: Weight
Abandonment by its parents Kodak and Canon
Menu system-takes some getting used to.
Similar Products Used: All manners of 35mm film, medium format and large format cameras. Canon, Kodak and Nikon digital cameras.
Customer Service: Member of Canon CPS and have used Kodak professional service and rate both highly.
Summary: I wanted to update what I had previously written. Anyone who wants to buy anything so expensive must be convinced of continued superb support and perforamce. Well, in this update, I'm to confirm that the camera is not only a workhorse, it still weighs as much as a real horse, but tougher!
In March, I will have owned the camera a year. I have used it on the beach with salt spray (not recommended) and in the hot summer heat of Andalusia many time. I have shot the Blue Angels and captured quiet Spanish landscapes. The camera has bumped into various small heads and hit by a soccer ball (right on the shutter release. The camera is a lousy photo-taker!).
The battery always takes one hour to fully charge. This has never changed for me and with my history of batteries from NiCad to NIMH, I am happily surprisd that it has remained so predictable. After twenty mintues, I have enough of a charge for at least a hour of shooting. I use a 520 ATA type III card and the maximum amount recorded to date has been 241 images during the Blue Angels air show last summer. I had room for 7 more images!
I am always surprised by the speed of this camera. I do not use the camera on a regular basis, thus recording over 1500 images on the camera, according to the counter. I use a MicroTech card reader which speeds up things on my old Pentium 120 (overclocked to 199mhz) computer. I recently purchased the IEEE1394 firewire card and now use the cable from the camera to download my images at a faster rate.
There is always the individual who stops me to talk about the camera. As a lover of photography and I hope, a teacher also, I don't mind at all answering questions about the camera. This also happened at Photokina 2000 in Germany. I was waiting at the table to hold and view the Canon D30. I had my camera in hand to photograph tight shots of other photographers holding the camera, giving a sense of size in my images. After ten minutes of waiting, I was finally the next for the D30; the photog presently checking out turned slightly to me, saw my DCS520 in my hands and literally dropped the camera. Then he started asking me 500 questions about the DCS520. Again, I don't normally mind, but the D30 is more a news item than an "old" 520 at that time. Throughout Photokina, I had people eyeing me which really made me uncomfortable; I metnioned this to my companion and he stated, don't worry, they're not looking at your camera. The next day I carried the camera hanging around my neck with my hand upon the front, so nobody could see the top, but unfortunately they could still see the bottom where the words "Kodak DCS520" is printed. After an hour in the Photokina, my companion turns to me and says (slightly jokingly): hey, they're looking at your camera!
When I talk about the camera's speed, I like to demonstrate. A good example of speed cannot be described by words alone. I'll turn the camera on, point at a fairly lighted scene, and start firing away. After about 20-30 non-stop frames without one pause or shudder by the camera, and usually the specator is mouth open, I I quit because I'm starting to get sores on my trigger finger from these speed bursts. The longest I have fired continously as a test is 40 frames. Not one pause. Recently at an office when the workers are quite knowledgeable about cameras, manual and digital, I had the rare chance to use the 520 with a flash. I've never done my speed shutter test with a flash before, so I started. This was a fairly lighted office and after 26 frames of firing with the flash and the flash couldn't keep up, I finally quit. Again, not one pause. I turned around, and nobody was working. There were eight people present and all I saw were eight surprised people looking not at me but at the camera I held to one side above my head at the lights. I guess it was a good demonstration, huh?
Add to that the D1 can't keep up and can't take notes as the DCS520 has that microphone feature, recording a WAV file to an image. I'ce used it rarely as the data stored in the TIFF files are already full of information. I still keep a pen in my bag just in case.
Performance? Can't be better. I am still amazed by how I seemingly adjusted (and very quickly) to the Canon 1n body so quickly, that I am considering buying a 1n body to use as my non-digital body.
Do I shoot better or worse with this digital? I use a bit more than I used to, probably thinking that I can delete unwanted images later. I just end up having more images so I like them all. I am trying to return to my old shooting style. What I have started is bringing the digital with me. It is an excellent preview device, enabling me to describe the scene with an image to capture the mood, lighting or emotion that I only see, and my subject cannot see. This has already helped me many times.
How is the printed image compared to a traditional film image? I will not beat any stones with this subject. Film will always have the best, in my honest opinion, resolution... but what I see at 500dpi on my monitor screen is pretty close. Presently, I print at home with a dyesub (the same dyesub mentioned in the first review) up to full-frame 8x10s. Well, actually it's a bit bigger as I'm in Europe so I use A4 paper which is slightly larger.
Overall impression after a year of use? Very happy with the camera and its possibilities. This year will be shooting more clients with the DCS520 as the printing phase has cut the muster. Look for another update soon!
Questions? Debates? Contact me; please no nukes as I'm allergic to radioactivity!
Strengths: -Strong reliable performance
-Powerhouse of a camera
-Stronger than a soccer ball!
-Easy to use
-Easy camera menu to navigate
-Speed shoots very good
Summary: Well, I recommended that my company buy this camera to take care of all of it's simple product photography needs for our website. The camera was used for the period of one year to photograph over 1000 products shots for our ecommerce website. It's a reliable workhorse that took advantage of all the Canon lenses.
Strengths: Reliability
Fast continuos shots
Body based on Canon EOS 1
Rating Reviewed by: Tony Lee(Unregistered User)
(Expert)
Review Date May 4, 2000
Overall Rating 5 of 5
Used product for 2 Weeks
Visitors rate this review 5.00 of 5,
2 votes
Review 5 of 5
Summary: I did so much research on it vuia the internet, "talking" to other photographers who either tested the camera or actually have it, that i felt I knew more about the camera BEFORE i even purchased it.
I know some others who have purchased the Nikon D1 and have seen the resulting image but now that I've actually used the DCS520, I KNOW the camera is worth every penney (tear-drop stain on keyboard).
The setting was Holy Week processions in my little town of Rota in southern Spain. Allow me to set the scene for you: the smell of burning incense, people in colored robes and cones, crowds of people everywhere
and tight environment where you need eyes in back AND in front to see what your either going to photograph or who will be walking into you in a second. No room for a tripod and flash destroys the natural lightning, whether night or day shooting.
My experience in photography is 20 years +, shooting Nikon, Nikkormat, Minolta, Kowa, Mamiya(s) 6x6 AND 6x4.5, Olympus cameras and now a
Canon Rebel G (500n in europe) which I intentionally purchased knowing well I could use everything for the Rebel on the newer digital camera I planned to buy, and now the DCS520.
154 pixs were taken Sunday afternoon during the 1st day of Holy Week processions. Heard a few kids teens whispering "look at dat camera - in spanish of course!). None of the other photographers except for a hobbyist who I knew) noticed that the camera I used wasn't a typical camera.
The Canon EOS1n is an OUTSTANDING camera base that is so comfortable and easy to use that I did NOT notice anything different in shooting with this camera, including the fact that i was shooting more than 60 frames and didn't have to change film! During this time/test, I went through various camera modes, including changing metering modes (overall, average and spot) very often, focusing points, ASA and switching from manual to autofocus every other second it seemed, because of the situation.
How was the overall experience using the DCS520 in a real-world situation? It was pure pleasure using this camera! I loved using this camera! I have a printed copy using the Alps (MD5000) with the actual image size measuring about 6"x8" and it is detailed and beautiful! Everyone who has seen this image and this includes several photographers, did nOT believe it was totally digital picture because of the colors, resolution and details. Have tried using normal photo paper for Epson/HP in this printer without success: the paper curvature is so bad it breaks the ribbons (the user manual displays/explains too much warping will damage the ribbons/printer: VERY true!). So I have to use Alps paper until I find A4-sized paper that's FLAT enuff for me to use in the Alps! I have even printed on plain poster board with image undercoating enabled and the results are EXCELLENT! The quality combination of the DCS520 with the Alps MD5000 is perfect for a totally digital envirnoment. All I have been told about size being NO problem with the DCS520 is true. On my monitor with a 600dpi image blown up to about 11x14 still yields a detailed image! The ONLY thing that I did do that was out of the ordinary that I wouldn't even do with MY normal reflex cameras was I originally shot at 400asa (I shoot Ilford HP5+ exclusively and rate it between 200 to 800, but 90% of the time at ASA400; have my own lab!) and as the afternoon sun got lower, I lost light unlike my tiny P&S HP C20 which FINDS light. So without
even thinking, I changed the ISO to 800 and kept shooting. Remember, I am on the street BUT did NOT use the LED screen to see the results! Well sure enuff, on the PC later that same night, I could see what I call "digital grain" on the images exposed at ISO800. Ever sooOooo slight, but it was there.
I LOVES DIS CAMERA! Plus I have already updated the firmware on the camera (ugh but very easy to do. "ugh" only because I had to learn the new but better interface) and the twain acquire drivers. This camera is soooooo good, I wish I knew about it earlier.
Again, using the Alps printer, the big test print took 17 mins to print, but I feel that's about the same as processing, drying, finishing, printing, cutting, finishing. Actually, i think it's less time spent and then I consider this tiny fact: I NEVER HAVETA BUY FILM AGAIN! I will still shoot B&W with my other norm body until i get totally used to this new camera but will now start shooting selectively in digital color. Want me to send a test copy? I'd send the image with an email but it'd take forever to download! The uncompressed TIF files are almost 6megs!
PS: Some of the images taken with this camera appear on my webpage (http://www.geocities.com/soho/gallery/5718/2000.html) of Holy Week (Semana Santa) and are listed as some images taken during this year's celebrations. If you view these, please remember I have reduced the size and JPGed the heck out of the images to discourage internet piracy. The original images are VERY detailed!
Strengths: -EOS1n body easy & comfortable
-easy to change metering system
-Fits into hand like a glove
Weaknesses: -Weight; over two pounds
-Price. It was the choice between a new 2-dr car with A/C or the camera (I'm still walking!!)
Similar Products Used: None
Customer Service: Have contacted Kodak about various camera-related issues (not problems) for detailed info not covered in manual. Replies have been timely and answered very well!
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