I’ve built a few PCs before so the hardware bit wasn’t challenging although I used some new bits I’ve never used before. To keep things simple and relatively standard, I used recommended parts from the CustoMac Pro build in the May 2013 buying guide. While this isn’t the fastest Mac you can build it’s the most Mac like. It has a single CPU, has power management meaning that it can go into sleep mode and wake again. The more powerful Macs using the Socket 2011 chips are more powerful but more tricky to get Mac like. The spec I settled on was:

• CPU: Intel i7-3770K
• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP5-TH
• RAM: 32GB 1600MHz Corsair Vengence
• Case: Corsair 500R
• Power: Corsair 650W HX
• Wifi: TP-Link TL-WDN4800
• Graphics: Asus GTX 670
• Bluetooth: IOGear GBU521
• Cooling: H100i liquid cooler

All up, $1800 inc GST from MSY and Centrecom. The step by step guide to install 10.8.3 is here and it mimics the details of this build. I’ve tweaked the BIOS so the CPU runs at 4.4GHz and the memory at its rated speed of 1600MHz following the settings here. Here’s a photo of the parts before the build:

And one of it partially built  showing the H100i cooler with it’s cooling pipes:

The result is a great performing Mac. Noticeably faster than my old Mac Pro (late 2009) with a Geekbench2 rating of 16,731. Highly recommended!

Before the 1D C/X, both Nikon and Canon relied on the concept of expansion or helper points. The photographer chose one of the AF sensor points and can select an additional 9, 21 or 51 in the case of Nikon, in a pattern that radiated out from the point selected to assist the camera to lock focus. These helper points meant that if the subject moved quickly or erratically so the selected point was no longer over the subject the camera’s AF software can look for areas that were close to the selected point to focus on. Here’s the relevant function in the cameras’ manuals. The first one is for the Nikon D3 and the second one for the Canon EOS-1D Mk IV:

Note there is a mode called Auto-area AF – more on that later.

Canon’s approach is similar, a ring of helper points or every helper point. The only difference is Nikon has the ability to have 21 helper points in addition to the ring of 9 points and every (51) point.

Now, fast forward to 2012 with the Canon 1D X/C. Canon claims it is a completely new AF system and looking at the manual and using the camera it certainly performs differently. Note that there is a departure from an emphasis of expansion points to a much smarter algorithm

So is the new approach better than the old? Here is an example of the limitations of using expansion points in autofocus. The next two photos shows what happens when the photographer miss the subject. The camera has locked on to the criss cross area of the netting because it has a nice contrasty shape, rather than the relatively flat colours of the players’ uniforms. Notice that this happens regardless of whether the netting is white or black, it’s just the higher contrast of the net that the AF software algorithms prefer.

These photos were shot using a Nikon D4 but based on previous shots with the D3 and D3s, as well as the Canon 1D Mk III, the AF systems all exhibit this problem. Now lets’ see what happens with the current Canon 1D X:

The AF wasn’t tricked by the higher contrast of the netting and focused on the goal keeper. I’m seeing the keeper rate of photos like this much higher with the 1D X/C than the previous generation of cameras from Nikon and Canon.

While I don’t know the actual software algorithms used by Nikon and Canon I can make an educated guess at what’s happening. I suspect that the Canon 1D X/C has an AF system that relies or prioritises shape or object detection over a brute force contrast detection. That’s why you don’t see settings for ever increasing helper points. In fact the ability to have a finer control of helper points to 4 in the shape of a cross or 9 in the shape of a circle confirms this. But the really exciting setting is what Canon call “automatic selection of AF” and what Nikon called “Auto-area AF”. These are the black-box settings where the photographer relies on the camera to focus on what it thinks it should. Many photographers will never use this mode – it’s too much a leap of faith, and the fear of missing the shot will be a deterrent that’s impossible to overcome. But those that do will be rewarded by amazing results. Canon explains it here. The pattern recognition software in these cameras are amazing. It will magically focus on the eyes when it sees a face, and it’ll pick out a person rather than the background. I’m seriously impressed. Nikon’s older Auto-area AF was also very good in certain circumstances, but the Canon’s implementation in the 1D X/C is just that much better.

What’s coming next? If I were a software engineer at Nikon or Canon I would love to have some form of eye-controlled AF as pioneered in the EOS-5 and rumoured to be making a come-back in a Sony DSLR in 2014. But the holy grail would be to incorporate a Lytro-type AF where the focus points can be changed after the photo is taken. Now wouldn’t that be something.

The Black has built-in WiFi which allows the GoPro iPhone app to connect and control the camera. If this works then I could instruct it to start and stop recording from my position on the side of the pitch. However, as with most Wifi devices in sports stadiums with hundreds of Wifi handsets the Wifi stopped working and I was unable to use the app. So my only option was to start the camera recording manually and not via remote control.

My only approach therefore was to set the camera going before the match and hope that the battery lasts the 45 minutes of the first half. I had already given up that it was going to last the whole match based on my research.

So, I set up the camera to shoot in 2.7K and not 4K because I wanted to record in a higher frame rate than 15fps (which is the highest the Black can record at the 4K setting). At 2.7K the Black can record at 30fps in NTSC mode so that’s what I used to see if I can capture a decisive moment. When the first half finished I retrieved the camera and to my surprise and disappointment the Black recorded a mere 24 minutes before it powered off. Since I had to start the recording 10 minutes before the start of the match I only got 15 minutes of non specific action.

I don’t know whether it was the battery running out of juice or because it overheated. Nevertheless, I’ll keep on trying. Here is a frame grab and I was pretty happy with the quality being of sufficient quality to “publish” after a bit of tweaking in Lightroom. Let’s hope I can get the camera to record a full 45 minutes, and then work on getting it to do 90 minutes because I’m encouraged by the result to date.

If you’re a Mac user, here is an Automator app (1DX2C.app) that you can just drop a CR2 file onto that will make the change. The app runs this perl command:
perl -i -pe 's/\x24\x03\x00\x80/\x69\x02\x00\x80/' filename
that substitutes the C’s model id 0×80000324 with the X’s 0×80000269
If you’re using Windows, I’m sure there’s something similar to run the perl command over the file.

When Adobe and Apple release a new version you can just change the files back to the correct id if you’re really keen.