Canon 1D MKIII Autofocus- Interactive Review

Canon 1D MKIII Autofocus Problems- Interactive Review

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Has it been released for download yet?

I bought a 1D MkIII in August, and tried it out on some seagulls...100 shots. 50 of the shots locked focus on the background, even though I am pretty sure I had the center focus point on the bird.
I sent the 1D MkIII a 1D MkII, my 500mm, 100-400 and 70-200 lenses to canon factory service along with a CD of the seagull shots, and asked them if they could calibrate the lenses with the body. (No sense telling them the AF seemed to be stinko, after all, it could be my technique.)
They sent the camera back after a week, and reported that they changed the electronics in the MkIII and calibrated the lenses so they would focus with each body.
Wow.
I shot the Reno air races Sept 11-16. 9,000 frames. I did a rough review of the images. It appears 95% of the shots of jets (I shot these at the highest shutter speeds) were in perfect focus. the remaining 5% were evenly divided between technique errors on my part (couldn't keep the focus point on the 400+mph jet) and the camera not seeing the right contrast or just not keeping up with the jet.
80% of the propeller planes were tack sharp. About 15% were slightly oof...certainly due to my technique (shooting 1/320. The planes were traveling 400mph +/- 80mph) and the reason for the remaining 5% oof were inconclusive, but I suspect the AIServo mode just couldn't find a good contrast to lock on.
Temp: Hi 90's. Clear, bright blue skies. Exactly the conditions that seemed to be a problem for others. My MkIII SN 526xxx
The MkIII pictures are terrific. A noticeable improvement over the MkII in the depth of the images. I would say the AF is slightly better than the MkII.
I am putting my MkII up for sale and getting another MkIII.

Great to see that you have a working piece of equipment!! I may have to break down and send mine back...

Canon 1D MKIII AI Servo Autofocus Problems Confirmed.

Day 17 entry added.

If Canon says it's a problem at high temperature why are you still adament that temperature is not an issue?

I did not say temperature was not an issue. If you read the full review, I said this is a variable that we could not test for, so it did not enter into our conclusions.

Rob was saying that ALL BODIES were affected by temperature and light and that they were all "broken." The tests we performed simply showed that this was not the case.

As we stated the problem does not show up in "good" bodies regardless of temperature.

To put it another way.

Temperature has nothing to do with the performance of a "good" body. Only a "bad" one.

Rob noticed some differences in performance of his bad bodies based on temperature. We could not and did not test whether temperature made the bad bodies better or worse. We simply supported our main hypothesis that it was a manufacturing defect and not a systemic one as posited by Rob and others.

Hope this helps.

I was about to order the camera but thought I'd check Rob Galbraith's site one more time. There is information there to the effect that Canon recognizes a problem, is planning a fix, and has neither made a formal announcement, nor made a public announcement. The information was allegedly received by "VIP" customers at four locations, one being the SuperBowl.

I'd love to know if anyone can confirm that information.