Canon 40D or 1D Mark3 (1 Viewer)

tdodd said:

In terms of AF, here's a 100% crop example from the second image above

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Your words are timely and reassuring Tim, thank you. A usually reliable source told me yesterday that MkIII had severe problems with AF and would not be good for BIF. Your pictures answer that smartly. The 5th image of the duck coming in to land on water is especially interesting because the face and feet are in good focus but the wings are blurred. I am guessing that you used f5.6 because the light was not great and you needed a minimum of 1/800 shutter. What ISO did you use? Blackheaded gulls make delightful images.

Can you tell me what eventually happened to the rumour of AF difficulties with MKIII when it came out first?

After various firmware releases and a number of recalls, the most recent around March/April this year it seems that the negative remarks have quietened down a fair bit. I bought my camera in December 2008 and it was manufactured in September 2008. I personally did not notice problems with my copy. Others who did have problems were pleased to report noticeable improvements but some people seemingly could never get on with the camera. Before and since buying mine I did pay careful attention to the number of white lenses at various sporting events and figured the camera was not the lemon that some would have you believe. I don't doubt that there were problems with some early copies but I do believe that those problems are behind us.

As for my shooting, I used f/5.6 for several reasons....

1. I wanted as much background blur as possible, to isolate my subject;
2. I wanted high shutter speeds and low noise;
3. I wanted to test/prove the AF performance of the camera, and my most recent tweak of the AF microadjustment. At 400mm and f/5.6 your DOF does become pretty slender when pixel peeping at 100% and there is precious little margin for error.

Of course, at 400mm and wide open at f/5.6 the 100-400 zoom is perhaps not the sharpest option in Canon's lens lineup but it is the best I've got available to me.

By the way, shooting running dogs is quite a challenge too. Here are the last five frames (being nearest the camera they are the most demanding shots as the relative closing speed is faster) from a sequence of 18 (in under 3 seconds) that I shot of my lurcher (greyhound cross) coming towards me at a fair old lick. I've uploaded the full 18 frame sequence to an online album here - http://picasaweb.google.com/EezyTiger/Zippy. These were also at 400mm and f/5.6. They were shot raw and resized and converted to JPEG in Lightroom on default settings, no edits.

EDIT : p.s. there is a recommendation on another birding site to downgrade 1D3 firmware to version 1.2.3 rather than running the latest 1.2.5 - http://www.ukbirdphotographers.net/...1&t=4162&sid=a6d91d3520cf4c2fb65d72a2f82653fd. I don't know why. I'm running 1.2.5 and the results speak for themselves.

bmarnell said:

Can you tell me what eventually happened to the rumour of AF difficulties with MKIII when it came out first?

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The problems with the af on the mkIII initially came from sports photographers using f2.8 and f4 prime lenses and then spread to the wildlife 'togs. Sequences of shots that they claimed would have all been in focus with a 1d mkII weren't with the mkIII. Although there was plenty of internet chatter about the truth of this Canon did issue a variety of firmware upgrades and a couple of recalls so its reasonable to assume all was not well in the mkIII camp.
My first mkIII was to put it bluntly useless. It struggled to get a focus lock on a snail travelling at 1/2 speed, the shutter failed and it was a godsend when the USB socket packed up and I got it replaced.
My current mkIII is miles better although keeping a focus lock on a BIF against a distracting background is still difficult (piece of cake against a plain background), but then it is a big ask of any af system.

tdodd said:

......... I don't doubt that there were problems with some early copies but I do believe that those problems are behind us.

As for my shooting, I used f/5.6 for several reasons....

1. I wanted as much background blur as possible, to isolate my subject;
2. I wanted high shutter speeds and low noise;
3. I wanted to test/prove the AF performance of the camera, and my most recent tweak of the AF microadjustment. At 400mm and f/5.6 your DOF does become pretty slender when pixel peeping at 100% and there is precious little margin for error.

Of course, at 400mm and wide open at f/5.6 the 100-400 zoom is perhaps not the sharpest option in Canon's lens lineup but it is the best I've got available to me.

By the way, shooting running dogs is quite a challenge too. Here are the last five frames (being nearest the camera they are the most demanding shots as the relative closing speed is faster) from a sequence of 18 (in under 3 seconds) that I shot of my lurcher (greyhound cross) coming towards me at a fair old lick. I've uploaded the full 18 frame sequence to an online album here - http://picasaweb.google.com/EezyTiger/Zippy. These were also at 400mm and f/5.6. They were shot raw and resized and converted to JPEG in Lightroom on default settings, no edits.

EDIT : p.s. there is a recommendation on another birding site to downgrade 1D3 firmware to version 1.2.3 rather than running the latest 1.2.5 - http://www.ukbirdphotographers.net/...1&t=4162&sid=a6d91d3520cf4c2fb65d72a2f82653fd. I don't know why. I'm running 1.2.5 and the results speak for themselves.

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Thank you for that background info, Tim. I guess I'd be fuming if I bought a dud too. Slideshow of your houndog on Picasso is strong evidence of MkIII speed of AF and sharp at that. It's always so much better when the light is super. Some people on this forum say that MkIII is great in poor light. 100-400 IS is my best lens too; my Tamron 200-500 is not as sharp under pressure; and anything bigger is not for handholding more than a few minutes. The dog sequence makes me wonder what was the approx. range of your shutter speeds during the 18 frames, please?

EXIF should be in all the photos and can be displayed when viewing the online albums by clicking the "more info" clicky over on the right when viewing each photo individually. I almost always use manual exposure and for the dog sequence EXIF was 1/1600, f/5.6, 400 ISO, which is opened up one stop from "Sunny 16". The birds were mostly shot at 1/2000, f/5.6, 200 ISO, which is dimmed down 1/3 stop from "Sunny 16" as reflection from the water was increasing the illumination of the subjects a little. From the robin shot onwards it started clouding over and the exposures are a little more variable, but all still controlled manually.

I really do not find autoexposure to be at all helpful when shooting against constantly varying scenes in constant lighting. For example, as the black dog increased its relative size within the scene, floating autoexposure would have brightened the exposure as the dog got closer. Within the space of two seconds (even two minutes or twenty minutes) the lighting did not change and there was no need for the exposure to change at all. Manual kept it just where I wanted it.

It's the same things with the birds. When illuminated by constant light I want the same exposure whether the bird is framed against a clear blue sky or coming in to land with a backdrop of reeds or water. I also want the same exposure regardless of how large the bird is within the frame.

Take the attached shot as an example of a difficult scene for autoexposure. How would you meter that? Personally I didn't need to meter. Despite the generally dark background I could see that the swan was sunlit. I set up a variation of the "Sunny 16" exposure, fired a test shot and chimped the histogram to confirm that I had a perfect ETTR exposure. The net result was 1/1000, f/7.1, 200 ISO. That is exactly equivalent to "Sunny 16". I've included the histogram as well. As you will see, this is with no edits except a WB adjustment. This was shot with my 50D.

EDIT : I've attached another shot from the 50D, this time taken in late evening when the sun was low in the sky. Certainly the xxD bodies can AF on BIF, even against busy backgrounds, but it does take more operator skill to place the focus point accurately, and to be quick to release the AF-On button if the focus point drops off the bird. This was shot one stop brighter than "Sunny 16" due to the weakening light. You will note a small gap to the right of the histogram and that is because my exposure was set ready for anything, including a bird with substantial white, such as a gull, tern, lapwing etc. and i needed the extra headroom to cater for such a subject. Again this is with no edits except a WB tweak and you can see from the screen print and the last attachment how the unedited file looks at 100%. This obviously would need cropping, sharpening and a little NR to finish the job.

tdodd said:

Speaking as the owner of a 30D, 40D, 50D and 1D3 I can confidently say that my 1D3 performs superbly for BIF AF and absolutely walks all over the xxD bodies for ease of use and keeper rate with BIF.

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I've just found this thread and as a newcomer to BIF I'm finding the comments very informative.

I have a 40D and I'm currently using a Canon 100-400 IS with varying results. As long as the subject is big, close and in good light I'm satisfied with my results, other than that I'm finding it very frustrating!

I've added some comparative shots taken with the 40D which may be useful for anyone with a budget limited to the xxD and any remarks would be welcome, the exif data on the DIF shots may or may not be a surprise.

graham catley said:

sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't it all depends on subject movement and operator error but who would want a 100% success rate? you would run out of subjects after a year!

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A stunning Ruff shot there Graham, I'm sure your comments are tongue in cheek, poor Little Stint. :t:

Having had a recent run of success with the 1D3 with BIF I thought I'd drag the 50D out today, despite my reservations about the miserable grey overcast conditions and the need to shoot at 1600 ISO for BIF. Here are five of the better shots from today's efforts, in terms of AF performance and IQ. These are all uncropped and have been run through Neat Image because, quite honestly, the noise when processed in Lightroom alone was shocking. DPP did a much better job but I prefer Lightroom for day to day processing. Normally I would avoid the 50D altogether for shooting birds at anything above 400 ISO max, so today was a bit of a challenge.

Unfortunately the pass through Neat Image has stripped the EXIF on these but it was 1600 ISO and f/5.6 for all of them. The duck was at 1/640 and everything else at 1/1000. All were handheld at 400mm.

Clearly the xxD bodies can deliver results but I had plenty of throwaways and I'm pretty sure the 1D3 would have netted me more keepers. Also, these were, relatively speaking, not the most demanding shots to take. I'm not very good at demanding shots.

tdodd said:

EXIF should be in all the photos and can be displayed when viewing the online albums by clicking the "more info" clicky over on the right when viewing each photo individually. I almost always use manual exposure and for the dog sequence EXIF was 1/1600, f/5.6, 400 ISO, which is opened up one stop from "Sunny 16". The birds were mostly shot at 1/2000, f/5.6, 200 ISO, which is dimmed down 1/3 stop from "Sunny 16" as reflection from the water was increasing the illumination of the subjects a little. From the robin shot onwards it started clouding over and the exposures are a little more variable, but all still controlled manually.

I really do not find autoexposure to be at all helpful when shooting against constantly varying scenes in constant lighting. For example, as the black dog increased its relative size within the scene, floating autoexposure would have brightened the exposure as the dog got closer. Within the space of two seconds (even two minutes or twenty minutes) the lighting did not change and there was no need for the exposure to change at all. Manual kept it just where I wanted it.

It's the same things with the birds. When illuminated by constant light I want the same exposure whether the bird is framed against a clear blue sky or coming in to land with a backdrop of reeds or water. I also want the same exposure regardless of how large the bird is within the frame.

Take the attached shot as an example of a difficult scene for autoexposure. How would you meter that? Personally I didn't need to meter. Despite the generally dark background I could see that the swan was sunlit. I set up a variation of the "Sunny 16" exposure, fired a test shot and chimped the histogram to confirm that I had a perfect ETTR exposure. The net result was 1/1000, f/7.1, 200 ISO. That is exactly equivalent to "Sunny 16". I've included the histogram as well. As you will see, this is with no edits except a WB adjustment. This was shot with my 50D.

.........

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Thanks again Tim. I did find "more info" online and more revelation as a result though I have no experience of Sunny 16 (until I get MkIII?), not to mention "one stop from Sunny").

Your firm stance against autoexposure is helpful and overdue IMO. I've had a blind-spot-with-no-fixed-abode approach on exposure up to now. Your examples help me to see manual exposure as a matter of active concern; even if it takes me a year to get the habit of checking it & applying any adjustments.

For that purpose I could not, in my ignorance understand how the histogram confirmed a "perfect ETTR exposure", whatever that means. Please explain, in relation to the swan ... plumage detail there was superb ... my understanding of histograms is limited to expecting that "the hill" (before or after editing) should be away from both edges of the graph. You better recommend suitable reading material. I can't find your application of histograms discussed, not to mention confirmed, in David Busch's 40D book, but then he seems at times to prefer writing to educating. Your approach, so far, is more helpful. Don't go away! Thank you for taking the time to help me.

redeyedvideo said:

I've just found this thread and as a newcomer to BIF I'm finding the comments very informative.

I have a 40D and I'm currently using a Canon 100-400 IS with varying results. As long as the subject is big, close and in good light I'm satisfied with my results, other than that I'm finding it very frustrating!

I've added some comparative shots taken with the 40D which may be useful for anyone with a budget limited to the xxD and any remarks would be welcome, the exif data on the DIF shots may or may not be a surprise.
......

Click to expand...

I would like to see EXIF on your dog shots but I don't know where to look, please?

bmarnell said:

Thanks again Tim. I did find "more info" online and more revelation as a result though I have no experience of Sunny 16 (until I get MkIII?), not to mention "one stop from Sunny").

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"Sunny 16" is a quite well known guideline for setting exposure in conditions of bright sunshine. Simply put, when shooting in bright sunlight, if you set your aperture to f/16 then your shutter speed will be the reciprocal of your ISO. Thus with an ISO of 100 you would use 1/100 as your shutter speed. With ISO at 200 your shutter speed would be 1/200 etc. etc..

Of course, you don't have to use f/16. If you change the aperture then you just have to make an allowance in one of your other exposure variables to compensate. For example, if I wanted to shoot at f/5.6, which is 3 stops brighter than f/16, and I was at 100 ISO then I'd need to choose a shutter speed 3 stops faster than 1/100, which is 1/800. For BIF, if you have the light, then f/5.6, 200 ISO and 1/1600 should give you a pretty nice starting point - in bright sunshine. There are other modifications for differing light levels as well, but I only ever remember "Sunny 16". More here....

http://medfmt.8k.com/mf/sunny.html

As for ETTR, it means "Expose To The Right" and the idea is to maximise the amount of light "data" you capture and minimise noise. When shooting raw in particular ideally you would aim to have the histogram touching the right hand edge, but not climbing up it. A peak very close to the right hand side is fine. A peak or spike at the right hand edge is usually not. Have a look at these articles....

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml
http://www.ronbigelow.com/articles/exposure/exposure.htm
http://www.ronbigelow.com/articles/histograms-1/histograms-1.htm
http://www.ronbigelow.com/articles/histograms-2/histograms-2.htm

HTH

EDIT : p.s. in the absence of bright, sunny conditions, a favourite trick of mine is to spot meter off my own palm and set an exposure at +1.3 stops. That works well when I want to protect highlights in a bright subject, like a swan. Of course, that only works when my palm is in the same light as the subject, but it is another tool in my exposure armoury. When photographing a subdued scene, like my running dog against green grass then I will add another stop in order to capture more detail in the dark fur and shadows. The same thing would apply for a dark bird in amongst the branches of a tree (so long as the sky was not causing the problem of strong backlighting).

Another option, when shooting into a bright, backlit sky, is to spot meter off the brightest part of the sky and set an exposure of +3. That will put the brightest part of the sky at the clipping point (right hand edge of the histogram) while everything else should fall within the capabilities of the camera, as far as is possible.

At the end of the day these tools are all useful, but as with any tools you need to know how and when to use them. With experience you can evaluate the scene, form a judgement about the tonal content of the scene, and what is most important to your vision of the scene, and then figure out how best to set an exposure that places the important tonal values of the scene within the dynamic range that your camera can handle. Practice helps. I'm still practicing and learning. It's the same with BIF. I'm still practicing and learning there too. Gulls/terns etc. make for great practice targets.

For myself I have downgraded from the 40D to the 1D2, next to problem with the af of 2 40D. Don't misunderstood, I very like the output of the 40D, for me this is the best combination of mpx and camera control.The 1D body give you the opportunity to use a converter with the 400mm f5.6 with close to no slow down in AF speed and for sure a very very good AF. The opportunity arrise not long time ago for a used less than 5,000 actuations and the blue dot on the box 1D3, I make the switch. The output at high ISO are so good I even want to sale my 5D: a 1D3 1200iso shot is like a 800 iso shot with the 40D. I don't know why your 30D images are so noisy, let see some.