Canon 1D Mark III- Full Review (Expanded and Updated)

Canon 1D Mark III- Full Review (Updated and Expanded)
drew strickland


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Hi Chris,

If I get the camera next week I will try to look into this for you. What type of shooting situation are you specifically interested in simulating? Things like candlelit wedding ceremonies and such?

Dark as in something like ISO 1600 F 3.2-4 and 1/15-1/30 and no flash to aid in focusing. I seem to have more difficulty with teh 70-200 lens, probably due to a greater distance from me to the subject. Subject wise - receptions primarily.

Seems since i am doing more ambient light shooting with IS lenses and closer to wide open I am shooting in darker conditions without the aid of the flash IR assist beam so low light focusing has become an issue.

Did a sunset engagement session Thursday night with studio flash in an park (vagabond power is cool) so I had no on-camera assist (PW on hot shoe), and the viewfinder in the 30D is a good bit darker than a 1 or 5D body so manual focus is, well, not much better than bad AF.

Tonite I just used my feet to zoom and the 17-55 2.8 IS lens and used the center focus spot more often - I'll be cropping quite a few dance shots.

Thanks,
chris

For these situations, this auto-focus should be as good as auto-focus gets.

You probably can use any single one of the sensors, not just the center one.

However, these are the situations where a great fast lens like the 85mm 1.2, the 135mm 2, etc. are best suited. You can walk around, so the fixed focal length won't be worse than the smaller focusing aperture on other lenses, even if you shoot at 2.8 or smaller. The wider open focusing aperture makes a big difference to these focusing devices, especially in low light. Here, you really cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Also, framing so that the sensor covers a smaller area of the subject also helps when it is possible. Then you can place the sensor on the face and even get just an eye area, which is ideal.

For full-figure shots or even larger-area shots, a sensor is usually too large. For a small group shot, for example, the single sensor could cover an extended hand with a glass in it, the face behind the hand, and a piece of someone behind that person. That is when things can go haywire. Because the sensor cannot differentiate those distances and one often ends up in a depth-of-field mess.

The Canon sensors are about as small as it gets, these days. So I own one. But the solution would be for Canon to make the individual sensors points (point-size), not boxes. Then one could place the sensor-point wherever one wanted and the focus (focal point) would be there, and nowhere else.

But they either didn't think of that, or can't do it. And that has long been the fault in auto-focusing devices: the sensors were too large. And also they weren't spread out across the whole viewing image, which precluded accurate focus with many possible images.

Only one device can focus essentially on a point and can do it essentially anywhere on the viewing image (anywhere on the subject, with any subject). That device is a manual one and is called the "Messraster", and it is not available. The photographic industry saw to that.

Mark

It looks like I will access to this camera again for a few days.

Does anyone in the Atlanta area have one of these cameras they would like to include in the autofocus testing? Especially, if you have a body you believe to focus incorrectly.

Mark,

I realize you're an 'old guy', and you're probably - like most old guys are - opinionated, to say it nicely. But I must remind you that just because YOU may not find any use for a servo-focus mode has no bearing whatsoever on the ACTUAL usefulness of such a feature. Surely you cannot deny that there are people who do need to shoot moving subjects, and need their cameras to be able to track focus on a moving subject...

Let's take your own description of your method of individually focusing, presumably on a moving subject. (If you're talking about static subjects, we shouldn't be having this conversation.) If your subject is moving when you attempt to achieve focus, how do you intend to GET focus? Surely not with the "one-shot" focus mode, and definitely not with manual focus. I require a 90% or better "keeper" rate, and for most of the frames I shoot, the follow-focus automation is simply indispensable.

I regularly shoot 3500 frames each Sunday, nearly all of them of moving subjects (motocross riders, cars, sportbikes on a road course, etc...). The AI Servo mode is absolutely required for this kind of photography. Typically I ask the camera to focus on the subject - which is usually moving in a diagonal path, but mainly towards me (think "3/4 front view") - and I will wait until the peak of the action to fire the first shot. However, I often will fire one or two shots just before the peak action, and one or two afterwards, using the 8fps drive mode. And I do this with pretty large apertures, usually f/2.8-4.5.

I have found that my 1DM2 does quite well follow-focusing these moving subjects through multiple frames. This manner of shooting is VERY important to me, and I am quite concerned that the 1DMIII I am waiting for will be less capable in this realm than is my current 1DM2.

(Previous message is quoted at bottom of my post.)

First, I assure you I am quite modern, own both an EOS-1Ds and an EOS-1Ds Mk II from the moments they came out, and know their strengths and some limitations that I never see written about elsewhere.

I don't find preferring the catching of the best moments of a sequence to catching only time-determined shots at preset intervals "opinionated". Just a real possibility that is never mentioned, because there is no device out there that can do it.

BUT!!!!! I worked with such a device during most of my pro years and ever since (I still have two of them, one 35mm and one 4 x 5 in a Linhof back on a quite new top-of-the-line Sinar).

So we are speaking from totally different worlds, and you do not know my world at all, because this device, the Messraster (see www.anstendig.org, papers on focusing) has been kept off the market since it was invented in the late 30s.

But the proof is in the viewing. And for that I recommend checking the photos at www.anstendig.com.

On that site, which is by no means finished, there are a number of photo sequences of moving subjects (theater, reportage, lovers, etc.) that are not only fast, but caught at the definitive moments (my musical training helps that, believe it or not) and not only are all usable, but most are exactly right on, focvused almost always exactly on the most important subject-point, not just depth-of-something-or-other close. This was unheard of at the time and definitely state-of-theart.

The Pantomime sequnces, made under very low lighting during the performance, still correspond to the above descriptions, even with hand-held, fully opened, somewhat soft-focusing Olympic SONNAR 180mm 2.8. The visits of the East to the West sequences are spot-on and unrivaled for that kind of accuracy and precision of emoptional depiction, which is only so emotionally exact when the focal-point is on the nearest eye of the subject. Thaose were all shot a night at the border in freezing cold weather, some with fill-flash, some only available light.

The lovers sequences were unposed and they were left to move as they wanted....and they did.

The final sequence of Faust II is spot on and absolutely at the key moments of the flow, and in low, dimishing light from afar.

The Hakrness Ballet sequences are all during the performance and mostly technically brilliant.

Manually, one can shoot at around 3 shots a second (or more with mnual Nikons), if meed be, and the Messraster is so exact and focus is so unequivocal that it does not slow one down. When one is used to it, it is simply second-nature, with no back and forth over the point of focus necessary! And that is the biggest difference, besides the accuracy of what one sees, focuswise!

Nikon, Canon, Zeiss, and others knew well about this device and fought against it for decades.

Now, with the inventor long dead and no heirs, they could simply give it to us as additional manual-focusing screens on their cameras. But they don't. But all auto-focusing devices in their cameras are rip-offs of the Messraster principle.....just not yet as accurate as the Messraster for all subjects and impossible to use for some subjects. The Messraster does not have those shortcomings.

But don't criticize something or label it (old fashioned, opinionated) until you are sure the person is not speaking of something real and up to date.

I was truning out fast sequences, with nearly 100% usable and most spot-on, three decades before you had even a glimmer of follow-focus automation. And the photos were famous in their day in their venue (West Germany, Berlin....no, I am not German. I am a born American who was in Berlin on a German Government Grant as an orchestra conductor).

There is a lot....an awful lot....in the photo industry that most do not know about. But, even with only the decidedly limited devices made available to them, everyone is sure of everything these days and doesn't want to hear about or bother with realities.

For me, that is very amusing. And there, my age and experience in the field mkes a difference.

Mark

Mark...you and I have a manual focus history that newcomers like Terry have a hard time understanding. I started shooting auto racing in 1960 with an Exakta VXIIA (talk about a backwards system). I progressed thru the Canon line in the '70s and early '80s to the New F-1 motor drive body shooting mainly a 300L at around 5 fps on chromes. My keeper rate was in the 90 percentile range...manually focused...that's all there was. I had no reason to shoot more than 200-250 shots at a race. I knew where the peak action was going to take place and developed a sense when it was most likely to occur. Nothing new there it had been going on for decades before I got involved and some of the greatest sports action shots were made with 4 X 5 Speed Graphics..now that is one slow camera. They sped things up with the roll film backs, later. We became one with the camera and lens combo, knew exactly what it would do and shot with 2 hands one constantly focusing the lens the other doing everything else. But I also learned to drive with a manual tranny, learned to fly without an auto-pilot and relied on my skill and experience to get me here today. I went ahead and bought the 1DIII, as I like to keep abreast of the changes in technology...even though I knew it was flawed. It doesn't do as well as I could in my prime years, but it does better than I would today with yesterday's gear. When I learn it as well as I knew my 35mm gear and become familiar with its limitations...I think the results will improve. It is kind of like transitioning from single engine to multi...once you get it, you never want to go back...but it is intimidating in the beginning.

Another old guy...