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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

1DMK3 Problem's (1 Viewer)

The jury seems to be out on the AF issue, Rob - for every post or article expressing concerns about the Mk III there are far more suggesting it is indeed the Bog's Dollocks - Andy Rouse raves about the AF.

But this is the risk you run in being an "early adopter" - I've done it before and will never do it again...
 
Keith Reeder said:
The jury seems to be out on the AF issue, Rob - for every post or article expressing concerns about the Mk III there are far more suggesting it is indeed the Bog's Dollocks - Andy Rouse raves about the AF.

But this is the risk you run in being an "early adopter" - I've done it before and will never do it again...
Click to expand...

a lot are happy and a lot unhappy -at leaaed when mine arives we will know for sure how good it is in an exspert's hands ;) ;) lol
iv just read yet another review and he say's it's ok although it's not on bif shot's but kids running most AF digital camera's should be able to do that .
it's fine by me if it carn't get Kids infocus as long as it will get bird's :)

Rob
 
Keith Reeder said:
The jury seems to be out on the AF issue, Rob - for every post or article expressing concerns about the Mk III there are far more suggesting it is indeed the Bog's Dollocks - Andy Rouse raves about the AF.

But this is the risk you run in being an "early adopter" - I've done it before and will never do it again...
Click to expand...

It's all quite bemusing... tempted to say amusing, but I've seen some smug posts on dpr, and the authors come across as pretty repulsive creatures, so bad luck to those who are having problems... someone has to be the first to buy a new product.

I've yet to find any issues with the MkIII, 'bifs', 'boas' or whatever. It's also odd that there seems far fewer complaints from this side of the atlantic?

If something arises, then I'm not too badly off... cps member and Canon service can be walked to from here on a good day (o.k., a very energetic day).

Still, where's the popcorn? ;)
 
Andy Bright said:
I've yet to find any issues with the MkIII, 'bifs', 'boas' or whatever. It's also odd that there seems far fewer complaints from this side of the atlantic?
Click to expand...

Same here, Andy. Just a shame all the birds seemed to dive for cover and never emerge as soon as I got it out of the box! ;)

Hope you get a good one Rob :t:
 
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Oh yeah Andy, "amusing" would be the wrong word - it's a real sickener when the new toy doesn't live up to expectations, and as you say, somebody has to make the first move.

It's a subject of much conversation on POTN too.

What baffles me in particular is that most people who have reported issues with BIFs seem to have been talking about situations where the background is cluttered, whereas Mr Galbraith is critical of the AF in situations where I'd expect pretty much any camera to manage well enough.
 
I would be more concerned with that lovely grey and yellow cast in the photos, more than whether it focused on a moving object correctly in autofocus.
 
Not had a problem yet

I have an M3 and have not experienced the problems these guys are having, mind you I am coming from 30D so I can't compare to a 1D MKIIn.

If you care to look there are few BIF images of common town birds in my gallery, I was just snapping away at these, nothing spectacular. Ideally to test this problem of OOF shots of Birds , objects coming at the M3 would be good to find a Heron flying towards the M3 with noisy BG. I don't get many Herons in Herts:-C
70-200mm f/2.8 IS + 1.4x
http://nickr.zenfolio.com/p344394880
300mm f/2.8 IS 10FPS shots
http://nickr.zenfolio.com/p162363799/
 

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some impressive looking shots there Nick; interesting that the flying Collared Doves have the eye sharp in a side on shot where the nearest wing often seems to catch the focus on a lot of my shots; any idea if you had a good DOF or did you speciifically have it one centre focus point and aim for the head or has the camera worked wonders?
 
graham catley said:
some impressive looking shots there Nick; interesting that the flying Collared Doves have the eye sharp in a side on shot where the nearest wing often seems to catch the focus on a lot of my shots; any idea if you had a good DOF or did you speciifically have it one centre focus point and aim for the head or has the camera worked wonders?
Click to expand...

Graham, I was shooting wide open f/4 but these are big crops which may explained why the hole bird is in focus, I used centre point AF focused on any part of the stationary dove, when he took flight I just panned and shot at 10FPS, the dove was no where near the AF point in a lot of these shots so I guess the camera has worked wonders, really though I guess M3 did not try and re focus on the sky?

I am not sure if I have the skill to focus on a birds eye;)

Cheers
 
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Andy Bright said:
I've yet to find any issues with the MkIII, 'bifs', 'boas' or whatever. It's also odd that there seems far fewer complaints from this side of the atlantic?
Click to expand...

It's good to read your comments. I'm picking mine up tomorrow (live on the other side of the Atlantic), and am a bit apprehensive, thinking perhaps I should have waited a bit. But, at least I'll have the camera, and if a fix is needed I'm about an hour away from the Canon service center.
 
New mark III camera seems to be excellent except obvious problems with focusing. It is not as good as mkII but I hope this will solved soon with some software updates.After 1000 shots I got also some sharp ones...

Does he mean that 1000 were OOF? I see they also think that the problems may be solved with a software update? anyone know if this might be possible without a major change to the camera circuits?
 
graham catley said:
I see they also think that the problems may be solved with a software update? anyone know if this might be possible without a major change to the camera circuits?
Click to expand...

It's very difficult for anyone to answer that... if it's a case of timing of focus locks and suchlike, then that should be easily done via firmware update.

I have had one problem in 2 weeks, and that was a small low contrast static subject with a 300/2.8 that i had the camera on to view rather than take a photo of... and the camera was in AI servo as well (not at all ideal for a static), and focus wouldn't lock at all, it was all over the place.... but I'm pretty sure my 1Ds would've locked on in AI servo though.

Some of those reporting problems are saying that they can't even get a lock in one shot mode... which is very bizarre, and thankfully one I have never encountered.

As it is, it seems like some pretty specific circumstances have to take place for the problems to arise... long fast lenses wide open, subject coming towards you at speed, high temperatures? heat haze? humidity? Mars in alignment with Saturn?

cheers,
Andy
 
graham catley said:
anyone know if this might be possible without a major change to the camera circuits?
Click to expand...

I would have thought so - most of the functionality in an AF system is basically a computer so I would hope the firmware could be updated - didn't one of their recent bodies get an AF update in a firmware release? This assumes that they haven't messed up the physical construction of the system...
 
Andy Bright said:
It's very difficult for anyone to answer that... if it's a case of timing of focus locks and suchlike, then that should be easily done via firmware update.

I have had one problem in 2 weeks, and that was a small low contrast static subject with a 300/2.8 that i had the camera on to view rather than take a photo of... and the camera was in AI servo as well (not at all ideal for a static), and focus wouldn't lock at all, it was all over the place.... but I'm pretty sure my 1Ds would've locked on in AI servo though.

Some of those reporting problems are saying that they can't even get a lock in one shot mode... which is very bizarre, and thankfully one I have never encountered.

As it is, it seems like some pretty specific circumstances have to take place for the problems to arise... long fast lenses wide open, subject coming towards you at speed, high temperatures? heat haze? humidity? Mars in alignment with Saturn?

cheers,
Andy
Click to expand...

Hi Andy,

I have been using the new Mk III for about 3 weeks. I have no problems with focusing on static objects in 1 shot mode, but trying to use al servo for flight shots is so far producing much poorer results than I was getting with my old 20D. If a bird is against a plain sky then I get focus lock but an annoyingly small percentage come out sharp - maybe 20 percent. Also if there is background clutter then I am usually struggling to get any focus lock at all with either centre point or multi-point focusing. I just wondered if you could tell me which of the Custom Function settings you have been using to get an improvement over the default settings.

One thing which I cannot work out - the centre focusing point on the 20D nails quite a lot of flight shots for me - especially when tripod mounted. The Mk III just doesn't - it is as though the centre fucusing point is just too big and still favours the background.

Any advice would be hugely appreciated.

Barry Boswell
 
John Malloy said:
I hope I have the same AF issues when mine arrives later this week! Check out MV's Swift, also with 1DmkIII...

http://www.birdphoto.fi/markus/0725.php
Click to expand...

Swifts area good test of any AF system---have a look at my blog to see how my 1DIIN and 300 2.8 fared on a gang of feeding birds on Friday---I still find that against the sky the 45 AF points work really well even with small subjects but get any background even water and off it goes ---one Swift attached

blog http://pewit.blogspot.com/
 

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Nice shots Graham!
I'm expecting delivery on Tuesday and am anxious to get out into the field to give it a go. There has been much discussion on digital photography review and it appears that custom functions may be part of the AF "issues" encountered by users to date - I guess familiarisation/experimentation with them may assist with the percentage of keepers taken. Here is a link to one of the suggested custom functions configuration for wildlife photography -

http://www.wildlifeimagesbyles.net/Technique/1DIII_Guide/1diii_guide.html

Obviously I can't comment as I have not got mine yet! It would be interesting to hear from other users if they have attempted any function setting changes and establish if this has resolved any issues encountered...
 
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