EOS 1D Mark III: The birth of "UiP"...

OMG! Folks, I am shocked...

Yes, we are witnessing the birth, the prelude of what is about to come: a fusion, an integration of imaging solutions, a new breed of extemely capable and powerful products that will be probably available in as soon as 2-4 years... and, you bet, Canon is right there, working "silently" and getting ready for the "knock-out" punch... And Sony knows this, perfectly... Or who will be first? Canon or Sony?


Ok, "UiP": this stands for Unified Imaging Platform, which is a device where audio, stills or video do not matter (we are talking about Professional / High Quality output, not just bottom-of-the-barrel Handycam HAD 1/1.8" CCD sensors).

What is fueling this? Well, just look at the 1D MarkIII design-and-implementation trends:

1. Light-agnostic sensitivity: low light, medium light, lights off, lights on, under the sun, under neon, with scorching brightness, you name it. I just saw an ISO3200 sample from this camera, and I almost flipped back from the chair... could not believe the detail preserved there. As we continue to advance with the refinement of manufacturing materials, techniques and components, and A/D conversion, we are now seeing sensors capable of amazing sensitivity, *and* amazing quality. This kind of performance is, of course, reserved today for sensors of this caliber, and will not be possible with smaller, lower-quality handicams, but the trend is there and it is coming...

2. Storage-and-speed-agnostic Capture: with the dramatic increase in densities and speed in non-volatile storate, as well as improved bandwith efficiency of on-board connectivity (WiFi adapter, and future WiMax), you will not have to think again about buffer-overflows and capture rate (fps). This just means shoot-and-forget-about-the-finger-on-the-shutter.

In addition to this, just imagine that great APS-H 1.28x sensor from the 1D Mark III capturing NTSC or HiDef frames @24fps ("true-to-live" preview/capture), with same or even more data-read-out channels. This could be *the* standard chip for future UiP products, already capable of resolutions that far exceed 1080p, at an incredible imaging quality, with superb color reproduction and great dynamic range... I am predicting a long, long life for this APS-H sensor, as we stand today!

This opens up the doors for still and video, combined, in a single device. IMAGINE how the Cinema/Movie-industry is going to react to this... Capture, editing, frame-by-frame reviewing and possibly editing, in a single, hand-held platform, either locally or remotely... Talk about SciFi!


3. Processing and Powering-density: Just imagine adding an advanced, ultra fast and low-power AVC or MPEG/4 engine, coupled with a DiGiC multi-core array or some hybrid, scaleable silicon. Couple this with even more efficient powering/energy solutions and there you go... The sky is the limit as to what you embedded-applications you can run in a single platform.


We are at the verge of a substantial transformation of what imaging technology is all about, and these changes are just being "unveiled" to us, bit by bit, at the professional level.

It is going to be huge, and Canon knows this... Imagine 5 to 10 years from now the stuff we will be seeing in the street. I just wish my father would be here to see this because, ladies and gents, we are going to see this, sooner than later.

The advent of the 1D MarkIII has just convinced me of this. It is just a matter of time, and... I happen to have all the time in the world!

Ferenc Harmat said:

OMG! Folks, I am shocked...

1. Light-agnostic sensitivity: low light, medium light, lights off, lights on, under the sun, under neon, with scorching brightness, you name it...........and will not be possible with smaller, lower-quality handicams, but the trend is there and it is coming...

Click to expand...

Texas Instruments has already made their chip for dealing with shadows or highlights into the sun and alleys at the same time with local processing in each case automatically. Supplied to HP and Kodak!

Discussed here in OPF!

Ferenc Harmat said:

2. Storage-and-speed-agnostic Capture: with the dramatic increase in densities and speed in non-volatile storate, as well as improved bandwith efficiency of on-board connectivity (WiFi adapter, and future WiMax), you will not have to think again about buffer-overflows and capture rate (fps). This just means shoot-and-forget-about-the-finger-on-the-shutter.

Click to expand...

Give us some real world calculations for storage and, transmission of still and 24 fps 16 BIT images 10 MB.

We are getting there...

Asher Kelman said:

Texas Instruments has already made their chip for dealing with shadows or highlights into the sun and alleys at the same time with local processing in each case automatically. Supplied to HP and Kodak!

Click to expand...

We are certainly making progress in several fronts. There have been and currently are available some of the "ingredients" (Sony's new small sensor is a more recent example). But.... where are the cams? where are the optics for this UiP device? Where are the integrations/applications? Where is the resolution and speed for unified-media? It seems to be that we are beginning to see the very first steps of what is coming.

There was a movie ("Corpse Bride", I believe) that was shot (partially) with the 1D MarkII as one of the main cameras (in fact, several ones). Prettty interesting stuff, and more than enough resolution for NTSC or legacy-DVD distribution quality.

We certainly going on that direction, and it seems (to me) that the 1D Mark III resembles very closely the first of its "species", so to speak.

Give us some real world calculations for storage and, transmission of still and 24 fps 16 BIT images 10 MB.

Click to expand...

Well, if you take into account that the most efficient video-coder that I am aware of (AVC) outputs Hdef streams at 9 megabits/sec, there seems to be plenty of room for handling that, plus any other layer2/layer3 network protocol overhead for ensuring on-the-fly transmision of content (at least at distribution-quality) via N-type wireless networks (at least, one stream). Not sure if that would be enough for "production" quality, but wireless bandwidth availability is increasing steadily, too.

In other words, If at any point in time I will be able to stream Hdef content within my premises, then any of these future UiP devices will certainly be able to stream their output too, either frame-by-frame or in continuous motion.

Frame-by-frame transmission would be very interesting, because you could transmit content asynchronously, for non-real time applications (like movie-productions), to a pre-production server, where you will assemble all the frames (could be raw or... Bingo!: sRaw), then prepare every single frame for conversion and complete pre-production content (which would in the form of a video stream rather than separate frames). Once there, you will be able to move on to post-production, at full quality, and do whatever you want before archiving and distributing, now in a compressed fashion.

I am positively sure that Canon (and other big fishes out there) have already (and quitely) seen this, and will be looking forward to work on this direction, but not making chips or rams, etc. I am talking about, instead, of the actual cams / devices, which is far more than the ingredients.

The one that I do not see in this future, anywhere, is Nikon, unfortunately.... but I may be wrong, of course, as I simply have no ideas of this company's plan and vision.

Some figures and ideas to think about.