Today Canon released the firmware update which has beeing announced earlier this year.

Changes in Version v1.0.2.0

• Improved auto focus speed
• Improved Quality in low light for HD (previously not mentioned by Canon)
• Selectable shutter speeds of 1/25 and 1/50
• Added recording mode MP4 1920×1080 h264/4:2:0/8-bit/35mbit with 25p/50p Frame-Rates for PAL and 23,976p/29.97p/59.94p for NTSC cameras.
• Onscreen displays possible during HDMI output (for HD video only)

Autofocus

Autofocus can be set to three different “pulling-speeds” speeds. Slow, Normal and Fast. It seems that with AF set to FAST focusing speed is a bit under 1 second, at NORMAL 1.5s and with SLOW the focus change’s duration is about 2 seconds depending on how good AF can “see” contrast image and focus on it.

Three new AF speed options available

Improved Quality in low light for HD

The best of all, image quality with high ISO in HD resolution is a lot better now. Automatic Noise Reduction is still kicking in, but the resolution stays sharp up to the maximum from ISO 20.000. Previously at ISO 5000 and above the image was very soft and not usable, which is fixed now and very usable up to ISO 10.000 and still ok up to ISO 20.000 but of course with noise reduction artifacts at higher ISO toward 20.000.

ISO 800

ISO 8.000

ISO 12.800

ISO 20.000

Unfortunately, as Canon announced only improvements are made for HD, When recording 4K the image quality with higher ISO is not improoved, getting a lot softer at ISO 5000 or higher.

Shutter Speeds

Shutter at 25p and 50p can now be set to 1/25 – 1/29 – 1/30 – 1/33 – 1/40 – 1/50 – 1/60 – 1/75 – 1/90 – 1/100 and higher up to 1/2000 in 17 more steps.

MP4 Recording Modes

The camera can now record movies as MP4 codec, but the container is still an MXF file. So the camera still records MXF files but you can choose between an MP4 or XF-AVC codec within the MXF container.

MP4 codec recording

What’s Missing

Image Quality above ISO 5000 was not usable because of heavy automatic video noise reduction which cannot be turned off. That is fixed with HD now, but not with 4K. 4K is still soft ofer ISO 5000.
It would be nice if Canon would have added a switch to turn off or set the level of reduction built in video-noise reduction, but unfortunately not with this firmware update. Hopefully this ispossible in the future.

Firmware Update

FW Update screen

INFO: Don’t forget to backup your Menu Settings before making the firmware update (Menu/Wrench Icon/4/Backup Menu Settings).

  The Firmware can be downloaded for free at Canon’s Service Center.