Some notes from an evening shoot

[rent]

My X1D, along with its elder sibling, were at Grimes Canyon this past weekend. XCD 30mm, ISO 100, f/4.0, 256 sec x 6 exposures.

I note the following observations:

1) Battery drain was better than expected. I shot about 75 frames within 2 hours. About 25 frames were long exposures > 1 minute. Still had 1/3 battery charge left when all said and done.

2) Didn't encounter any errors / restarts. I suppose it's kind of hilarious that I'm explicitly pointing out not having encountered any errors during a fairly routine operation of a $13k rig as a cause for celebration. :p

3) Disappointed with the Phocus iPhone app. It's pretty crude actually. For long exposures, if triggered from Phocus, there was no telling of how long it's been. I was so fed up and ended up with just pressing the shutter button on the camera for the 4-minute exposures. And guess what, if you do that, the screen does display a nice count-down timer. I had thought a physical cable release would not be necessary -- I could just use the Phocus app. But I admit I was wrong. Definitely need cable release.

4) Forget about manually focusing after sundown. The image was so grainy it's just not possible. I pre-focused and didn't run out of battery so it wasn't an issue this time. But there needs to be a way to save / retrieve a pre-set focus point after swapping batteries. Otherwise the X1D would be useless for any significant amount of night work.

5) The resulting image files! They are just so incredibly smooth and malleable! For all the inconveniences, the results are certainly worth it. There is so much DR to push and pull these files. I am extremely happy.

Alex