On the Mark [3]
This past week, I covered two games: a college football game in Champaign, and then a college basketball game in Evanston. Nothing really out of the ordinary (except for Northwestern putting up 95 points in basketball... that was quite unexpected). What was different with these games was that I shot these games with a Canon 1D Mark III, which is Canon's newest DSLR.
So what's so great about it compared to the pair of 1D Mark II cameras that I've been using? The Mark II is 8 megapixels at 8 fps... What more could I need? You're right, I have been happy using the Mark II for a long time, and will continue to be happy using it. So why upgrade? The Mark III does 10 megapixels at 10 fps. That's the fastest frame rate of any DLSR out there on the market. However, in my opinion, the biggest reason to upgrade is the low noise at high ISO. There is a lot of user testimony out there claiming up to two, or even three stops difference in noise between the Mark II and Mark III. I don't know how they are judging the noise, but to me, that's a bit of an exaggeration. By my eyes, it looks like the Mark III is about a full stop better than the Mark II. In other words, a 3200 ISO shot on a Mark III looks like 1600 ISO on a Mark II. Still not bad, since the 1600 ISO on a Mark II has long been considered very usable.
So ironically, I decided to get the Mark III primarily for the wedding side of my business, not the sports side. An additional 2 megapixels or 2 frames per second doesn't really do a whole lot for me since that really isn't adding a whole lot. It's the lack of noise and superior image quality that made the decision for me. I have a wedding in December where I might as well just be shooting in a cave (the ambient light for the ceremony will be 1/30, f/2.8, 1600 ISO - it would be fantastic to be able to push the ISO to get a higher shutter speed). I'm sure there will be future weddings in equally poor light, so I figured I might as well throw down the dough now. And yeah, for an added bonus, it would be great for my sports work, especially all the indoor stuff I do over the winter :-)
Despite the impressive tech specs, professionals have not exactly been jumping all over the Mark III yet. Why not? Well, it would seem like Canon jumped the gun on their new flagship camera and released it too early - before all the bugs were fixed. The big problem was that the autofocus would not work under all conditions. In low light, it was brilliant. However for some reason, when using the camera under bright daylight, the camera would consistently fail to achieve focus. Not good. Canon initially denied any problems but said that they would "investigate." Nearly 6 months after its release, Canon finally admitted a mistake and issued a recall on the 1D Mark III to fix a "sub-mirror" problem. Any subsequent Mark III produced would have a blue sticker on the box indicating that it has one of the new sub-mirrors. The Mark III that I received does indeed have a blue sticker on the box.
So my first game with it was the annual Northwestern vs Fighting Illini football game. This year it was in Champaign, and the conditions were bright and sunny: exactly the conditions where the Mark III has previously failed. I would have to say that the AF on my unit was very good. I had about the same hit percentage of images as I normally would using a Mark II. I will go on and also say that any focus problems I did have were due to user error. Canon completely revamped the menus and button menu on the Mark III, so I was frequently fumbling around trying to figure out how to set things the way I liked. In any case, my Mark III passed its initial test.
The next game I had was the Benedictine vs Northwestern basketball game. Benedictine is a division 3 school, so Northwestern just absolutely spanked them. Final score was 95-63. I don't think I have ever seen NU shoot so well, and score so many points. I have also never shot at higher than 1600 ISO at Welsh-Ryan Arena, so being able to do 1/500, f/2.8, at 2500-3200 ISO was fantastic. Being able to shoot basketball at 1/500 instead of 1/320 makes a huge difference because I am no longer losing so many images to motion blur. Still noisy, but fantastic.
So what's so great about it compared to the pair of 1D Mark II cameras that I've been using? The Mark II is 8 megapixels at 8 fps... What more could I need? You're right, I have been happy using the Mark II for a long time, and will continue to be happy using it. So why upgrade? The Mark III does 10 megapixels at 10 fps. That's the fastest frame rate of any DLSR out there on the market. However, in my opinion, the biggest reason to upgrade is the low noise at high ISO. There is a lot of user testimony out there claiming up to two, or even three stops difference in noise between the Mark II and Mark III. I don't know how they are judging the noise, but to me, that's a bit of an exaggeration. By my eyes, it looks like the Mark III is about a full stop better than the Mark II. In other words, a 3200 ISO shot on a Mark III looks like 1600 ISO on a Mark II. Still not bad, since the 1600 ISO on a Mark II has long been considered very usable.
So ironically, I decided to get the Mark III primarily for the wedding side of my business, not the sports side. An additional 2 megapixels or 2 frames per second doesn't really do a whole lot for me since that really isn't adding a whole lot. It's the lack of noise and superior image quality that made the decision for me. I have a wedding in December where I might as well just be shooting in a cave (the ambient light for the ceremony will be 1/30, f/2.8, 1600 ISO - it would be fantastic to be able to push the ISO to get a higher shutter speed). I'm sure there will be future weddings in equally poor light, so I figured I might as well throw down the dough now. And yeah, for an added bonus, it would be great for my sports work, especially all the indoor stuff I do over the winter :-)
Despite the impressive tech specs, professionals have not exactly been jumping all over the Mark III yet. Why not? Well, it would seem like Canon jumped the gun on their new flagship camera and released it too early - before all the bugs were fixed. The big problem was that the autofocus would not work under all conditions. In low light, it was brilliant. However for some reason, when using the camera under bright daylight, the camera would consistently fail to achieve focus. Not good. Canon initially denied any problems but said that they would "investigate." Nearly 6 months after its release, Canon finally admitted a mistake and issued a recall on the 1D Mark III to fix a "sub-mirror" problem. Any subsequent Mark III produced would have a blue sticker on the box indicating that it has one of the new sub-mirrors. The Mark III that I received does indeed have a blue sticker on the box.
So my first game with it was the annual Northwestern vs Fighting Illini football game. This year it was in Champaign, and the conditions were bright and sunny: exactly the conditions where the Mark III has previously failed. I would have to say that the AF on my unit was very good. I had about the same hit percentage of images as I normally would using a Mark II. I will go on and also say that any focus problems I did have were due to user error. Canon completely revamped the menus and button menu on the Mark III, so I was frequently fumbling around trying to figure out how to set things the way I liked. In any case, my Mark III passed its initial test.
The next game I had was the Benedictine vs Northwestern basketball game. Benedictine is a division 3 school, so Northwestern just absolutely spanked them. Final score was 95-63. I don't think I have ever seen NU shoot so well, and score so many points. I have also never shot at higher than 1600 ISO at Welsh-Ryan Arena, so being able to do 1/500, f/2.8, at 2500-3200 ISO was fantastic. Being able to shoot basketball at 1/500 instead of 1/320 makes a huge difference because I am no longer losing so many images to motion blur. Still noisy, but fantastic.
posted by Jerry at 8:07 AM
1 Comments:
Tempting... very very tempting....
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