I don't care what camera Charlotte Lewis did this with - Snickers did me in.
A.Weil

There are those who have used the camera and those who have not.  

For most it comes down to this.  Those who have run with the croud mentality which developed from early (usualy beta) reviews of this camera, have a negative opinion.  Those who have used the camera and experienced what it can do are in the main, very satisfied.  For those who love the Canon 1Ds, enjoy it because it better be good for 3k more.

For me, I have been using the camera for about 3 months now and find it to be fantastic.   Resolution is incredible, crop, crop, crop and I still have 5-8 megapixels to work with.  Use the whole frame and I can print huge!!.   Colors are great and the software is easy, fast and acurate.

If you are wondering, check it out by holding it and taking pictures with it.  

John

I use a 1Ds (and just bought a 10D as a back-up body).  My guess is that I would be happy with the Kodak, too.  What it gets down to is content and seeing.  Even a 10D or D100, with skillful RAW processing and a decent, calibrated printer, and produce compelling images.  But you need to see and compose the images first.  That is the real challenge.  I'm sure the Kodak would make some shooters very happy providing they don't try to push the envelope too much on ISO ratings, etc.

We're suffering from an overload of irrelevant information and a dearth of relevant information.

Amen!

BJL,
I think the above answers the question as to why there has been such negative comment about the 14n.

We were all hoping that Kodak would steal a march on Canon by producing a product that, on balance, was the equal of the 1Ds but at a significantly cheaper price. After all, when it comes to computer related technology we expect everything to get better and cheaper as time goes by.

Our expectations have been let down. We were hoping the competition would be more fierce and that some people might even migrate from the Canon system to a Nikon system to take advantage of the better value 14n, thus forcing down the price of the 1Ds.

On the question of reviews, the following appears in a German mag:

http://www.colorfoto.de/d/26230

I have not downloaded the full review for 1 Euro, but according so someone who has, the conclusions are:

- It has more resolution than the 1Ds; and

- at 400 ISO, it has less noise than the 1Ds at 50 or 100 ISO

Even I struggle to understand the latter statement, but one explanation is the exceptionally wide dyanamic range of the 14n, so the Signal to noise ratio might actually be better.

No flaming please, as I am merely reporting what I understand the article to say (its reported in a thread on the dpreview Kodak forum).

Quentin

Ray, you might have got to the psychological heart of it: even puting aside all the debates over image quality, one would expect or strongly hope the highest resolution DSLR so far to have completely top of the line body components and ergonomic design; I suspect that Nikon is largely the cause by not offering F5 or F100 level components to Kodak.

Still, it also makes sense sometimes to put aside one's wishes, assess the actual current options, and get to work making photographs, which seems to be the mood of these comments from 14n users.

Jonathan, don't worry and be happy, you bought a very good system.  Yes at high ISO the 1DS does manage noise better.  At ISO 80-200 well exposed, the 14n provides more detail and dynamic range.  Both are good.  Both have different strenths.  But no question the 1Ds is a versitile camera and be happy.  

I am happy I waited waited a few more weeks for the 14n and added the 80-200Vr and 17-35 Af-s lenses for the same money as a 1Ds body.

thanks, John

I must have read all the reviews of the Kodak 14n, and like most people, assumed it was not a camera for me.  Too many weaknesses, and not enough strenghts - that was my assumption.  

But as a (reasonably happy) Fuji S2 user, I was getting increasingly frustrated at the 1.5 crop factor, and I was therefore looking at buying a Nikon 12-24 AFS DX to satisfy wide angle lust.  Problem was that I wondered what might lay around the corner.  Even though Nikon seem to be out of the immediate running for an F-mount full frame DSLR, a full-frame Fuji S3 might appear, and would make the 12-24 look like an expensive stop-gap.  But who knows what Fuji's timetable is?

I re-read the reviews of the Kodak, and was about to conclude that a 14n would end up as an expensive paper weight when I came accross this site:

http://www.wordsandphotos.org/Pro14n_Gallery.htm

Here was a pro photographer working with the 14n who was delighted with it, and producing a range of excellent images from it.  And she does not seem to be alone.  It was difficult to square these happy users with the received wisdom of this as a second-rate prduct riddled with noise and other faults.

Doubts crept in.  Could the 14n be the answer?

I played around with a test camera, and finally took the plunge by buying a 14n last week (back orders have generally now been fulfilled, and the 14n is available from stock here in the UK).  As I walked from the store, I wondered if I had gone completely mad.  But I need not have worried.  It turns out to have been a very sound decision, as I can say its the best digital camera  I have owned by some margin.  

This is not to say that I wholly disagree with everything negative written about the camera.  Noise is there, but its controllable - with care (and a copy of Neat Image). You have to work with the 14n's peculiarities.  The weaknesses are there, and now indirectly referred to in the Q&A for the 14n on Kodak's own site.  But let's consider its strengths for a moment:

-  Great resolution.  Medium format matching. A big step up from my excellent Fuji S2.  Bigger than I had expected.

-  Low noise.  Huh??  OK, low-ish noise at low ISO  ::   That means 80 -125 ISO.  And noise at higher ISO can be controlled by Neat Image.  But I accept that this is no sports shooters tool;

-  Superb software.  This makes a real difference.  The + / - 2-stop exposure compensation that can be dialed in for Raw or ERI Jpegs within Photo Desk does an excellent job.  I rarely need to bracket.  I am not sure how its done, but it beats Fuji's raw software by a country mile.  You'd have to be a real idiot not to get a useable shot.

-  Full-frame.  What a pleasure to see ...space  :D It's like buying a new bag of lenses.

Ultimately, it's all about image quality, and I can get more, and better, from this camera than from any other I have tried.  Now, I have not tried the Canon 1Ds, and no doubt its even better (and its certainly more expensive), but I have a stack of Nikkors, and anyway, I want to keep running the Fuji S2 for those high ISO occasions.

The 14n is a bit like the stock market.  Its been down, but it's recovering, as users get to grips with it, and with the latest firmware and software (were up to Firmware 4.3.3, and Photo Desk 3.1 - much better colours).  Kodak's reputation for customer support is second to none.

So, there we (or I) have it.  The 14n is not perfect, but its still darn good.  Give it a second look.

Quentin

Nice article from Charlotte, but this is what you can call a biased review.

Too much sugar for my coffee, I like it black.

Is there out somebody who could lend her a Canon 1Ds and so she can make a review as Michael Reichman or Phil Askey does or have done about this two cameras?  

I briefly considered a 14n, compared to the 1Ds, and went with the 1Ds. I do a wide variety of shooting; landscape, portraits, concerts, etc. Some is in bright sun during the day, some is outdoors at night with not much ambient light. I have no problem with the proposition that the 14n could rival the 1Ds for the stuff I shoot in sunlight as ISO 100, but I have yet to see any reason to believe it would work nearly as well for the nighttime stuff I do where ISO 800 or 1250 is barely fast enough. If I'm spending umpty-thousand dollars for a camera, it better be able to do well in any photographic situation I throw at it if it's wearing an appropriate lens.



I have a question for 14n owners: look at my creekwalk concert page and tell me if you could have shot that with the 14n. It was after dark, the only illumination was the stage lights and my flash, except the last image, which was shot without flash. I was shooting manual mode, 1/80, f/5.6, ISO 800 with a 35-350 L lens on my 1Ds. How well would the 14n handle such conditions? If asked to shoot under such conditions, what strategies would you use to get clean images?

I'm not trying to bash the 14n, it's just that there are things I shoot under conditions where everything I have seen so far indicates tha the 14n would yield less-than-optimal results. If my impressions are incorrect, then let's see some pictures and I will be happy to change them.

Does anyone know what is the 'actual' pixel size of the 14n? It's recently come as a shock to me that the pixel size of the 1Ds is identical (?) to the pixel pitch (8.8 microns), whereas the pixel size of the 10D is considerably less (5.25 microns?) than the pixel pitch of the 10D (7.4 microns).

We're all suffering from a lack of relevant information.

To answer your question - I have not tried using the 14n in circumstances comparable to your examples, but I suspect it would not handle that particular situation well.  The 14n is not a high ISO camera, and here the 1Ds is no doubt superior.  

That's the reason I still have my Fuji S2, which is a good camera at high ISO.

But there are plently of other circumstances where the 14n shines.

To maximise high ISO and shadow quality, I run Neat Image Pro +.  I have built profiles for all speeds up to 400 ISO.  above that is S2 territory...

Quentin

I am a bit puzzled by some of the responses generated by the posting of a few favorable user comments abut the Kodak 14n.

At their strongest, those comments can I think be paraphrased something like this:

"I now have a significant amount of experience with the Kodak 14n and have found that it works very well FOR MY PURPOSES, and though the Canon 1Ds has undeniable advantages, such as for low light photography, its higher total cost of adoption (a lot more than $3000 for an established Nikon user who would have to replace a whole system of lenses and accessories) and a few other advantages of the 14n make it the preferable option FOR MY PURPOSES."


Sorry for "shouting", but a lot of the responses seem to ignore the context and qualifications of these comments, and respond as if someone had thrown down the gauntlet by declaring the 14n to be unequivocally as good as or superior to the 1Ds, whereas the only comparison I have read made by 14n users to the 1Ds is on cost.

It seems to me good to have several companies offering very different high pixel count DLSR's, each with some demonstrable advantages, and so producing marketplace pressure on camera makers to offer something better yet. In fact I hope that someone like Fuji or Nikon will soon offer 10MP+ in a smaller format, just so we can see for ourselves what the size trade-offs really look like instead of relying on rough theoretical predictions.

I include better prices as a desired improvement: the 35mm format DSLR market has been almost utterly free of list price drops or rebates so far, and perhaps some competition within the Nikon lens mount camp will help there.

FWIW, both the Nikon D1X and H versions have dropped in price from their original intro prices. I can speak from personal experience on the D1X, which premiered 2 years ago at $5,350. I waited about 10 months before I got one for $4,350, one thousand $ lower. It has now dropped to $3,899.

Like a few others here, I also want a camera with more versatility. I like the ability to go from shooting flowers, landscapes, architecture, and portraiture with ISO 125 to shooting bar musicians and night football @ 800-3200 ISO.
A camera like the 14n in which the images start getting grainy at anything above 100 ISO ain't gonna cut it for my needs.

One thing is clear.  The reviews need to be updated.  

The 14n came to market before the software was optimized.  The new versions of Firmware and of Photodesk bring the camera to new levels of performance.  Color, speed, noise, etc. are significantly improved.

It is time for those who rushed to do reviews, to do thoughful updates, and perhaps lend perspective to what is a very fine camera, with only the 1Ds at 3k more as competition.

John

This really is mysterious, and it leads me to a question I have had for a while about what digital cameras actually mean by "ISO" and how they calibrate their light meters to digital output levels, so perhaps some people here know, or can test their DSLR's.

My first very naive guess is that light metering would adapt the "18% gray" rule by placing objects of average measured luminosity at a numerical value that is 18% of the maximum (using loosely the zone system sense of "placement"). If so, a photo of a uniform gray object exposed at the level recommended by in-camera metering would have each pixel at 18% of the maximum possible value. If anyone is wanting to check, I list the levels I would expect below, adjusted for bit depth and gamma compression used.

I am curious if a photo of a uniform gray subject comes out close to those levels with DSLR's. More specifically, I am curious if there are differences in the "placement" between cameras, and between raw vs. 8-bit JPEG/TIFF output from the same cameras.

For example, in-camera JPEG output mode might place the average meter reading at a somewhat higher level (effectively boosting "ISO"), in order to hold more shadows in 8-bit output at the cost of blowing out highlights more often. In particular, digicams with only 8 or 10 bit A/D converters might very much need to make such compromises; that is why testing the "exposure placement" of my digicam will not be very informative, but I will try anyway.

Does Kodak's special "JPEG-ERI" (?) output option do something like this, boosting the level of the JPEG part, losing both some highlight and shadow detail there but stashing them in the "ERI" part? This would certainly complicate noise level comparisons!  I believe that Michael is encountering that same "JPEG-ERI" option in his Kodak DCS MF back evaluation, so maybe he can illuminate us.



Appendix: Levels for 18% of maximum luminance level

linear (no gamma), .18 of maximum, so
 level 11,796 for 16 bit linear
 level 46 of 255 for 8 bit linear
gamma compression for the standard gamma of 2.2, .46 of maximum, so
 level 30,058 for 16 bit
 level 117 for 8 bit
(and for Mac gamma of 1.8,  the numbers are .39, 25,278 and 98)

Thanks Quentin, that is the information I was looking for. So the consensus is that in well lit conditions, low ISO, and reasonably fast shutter speeds, the 1Ds and 14n compare closely, but in low light situations where higher ISO and slower shutter speeds are in order, the 1Ds would be the preferable tool to use.