Canon 5DMKIII

Today some talk about the 5DMKIII.
When the 5DMKII was released I already shot with medium format but still bought the MKII rather quickly (actually maybe within 4 weeks after release) the main reason for me was the fact that the camera had a video option which I would love to play with. Since that time it took Canon a LONG time to upgrade their (I think) best camera.

When we left for the states I was eagerly awaiting delivery of my camera, and actually one of the first mails I got when I arrived in the states was that my camera arrived, and believe it or not we really talked about going back….. well ok just kidding but I did felt bad.
As soon as we were home I started using the camera and today I will share some of my opinions, do remember this will not be a review with 100% crops showing banding when pushed 4-5 stops (learn to expose), it will be a simple write up of my opinions and some sample shots just for illustration.

Internet opinions
Sometimes you read stuff online that make you go “what are they doing??”
For example…
On several fora there are reports about unacceptable banding even at the lower ISOs. Well to be honest I also never saw these on the 5DMKII and 5DMKI and 20D and 10D. When you read more in these posts you quickly find out that people are underexposing and pushing the files 4-5 stops and argue that it’s unaccetaple that there is banding…. well my answer is very simple…. learn to expose. Probably a lot of people will now be pissed off but let’s be honest, if you underexpose 1 stop ok, but when you are in need of pushing 4-5 stops…. ??? should I say more.

Then we have the people comparing the old MKII with the new MKIII and complaining that there is only an app 1MP “profit”, to be honest I’m so incredibly glad that the new camera has only 1 MP more because that would mean that high ISO performance must be a LOT better, because you don’t spend some years on a new sensor to only gain 1 MP 🙂 For me these are opinions from people that are just looking at the specs and have their opinion, OR don’t work with the machine but try to find every fault there can be… and I wonder if Nikon doesn’t have the same problem 😀

My own observations
As mentioned at the start I want to keep it really simple today.
I love the new MKIII, I was a bit let down when I saw the price increase but to be honest that went away when I handled the MKIII, the feel is different from the MKII which feels a bit “flimsy” compared to the MKIII, I also love the new method of operation with the lock button, new on off is a bit getting used to but much better.

What really caught my attention and which I love are the following improvements:

HDR
Let’s face it, now a days HDR is not going away, and you can love it, or you can hate it…. (I always said I did not hate it but would not use it a lot), but when you start playing with it you will be hooked. I still don’t really like the over the top versions (Highly Destructive Retouching) but the normal/slightly over the top images I really start to like. So I’m shooting more and more HDR. With the MKII you were limited to -2,0,+2 as a max and only 3 exposures. This was GREATLY enhanced on the MKIII. You can now go -8 and +8 with 7 exposures (now we’re talking), this opens a LOT of new options. Can’t wait to start playing with this, especially knowing that …..

FPS
Almost double the amount of frames per second, now that’s cool.
3 frames per second is nice, but going up to 6 is of course even better. This means you can shoot an 7 exposure HDR in almost 1 second, meaning you can still probably handheld the shot and a program like NIK HDR-Efex pro can still work it’s magic. But also sports, birds etc. will of course benefit from a doubling of the frame rate.

More focus points and much better AF
I don’t even want to spend a lot of words here.
See it as hitting a target with a piece of paper in the wind or hitting a target with a scoped sniper riffle without any wind…. yes it’s that much better. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve made some great sports images with the MKII, but when using the motor drive I would in almost 99% of the cases not have every image in focus, often the first one would be ok, the second one would be off and maybe the third one would be ok again etc. What I’ve tried with the MKIII now is MUCH better, let’s put it this way…. you really have to try hard to mess up with this AF (if you take some time of course to learn the cases and settings in the menu), this is really a very nice AF and this alone would be worth the upgrade for some people I think.

Combination of these two
Recently I took the MKIII to a sports game of our local team (soccer) and the amount of keepers was a lot more than with the MKII, I also got great results with the MKII don’t get me wrong but it looked like I used a totally new lens, images were much sharper and when using autofocus tracking (continues) the whole series was in focus/sharp where with the MKII it was often hit, miss, ok, ok, ok, hit. The added frames per second is also a very nice addition, I’m not a sports shooter but I was having more fun when going through the results than before. Also my new standard setting will be ISO1600 (was ISO800) I really can’t find any fault with the quality at 1600, razor sharp, hardly any noise, later in the game I lowered to 800 and 1250 and could hardly see a difference, very impressive.

Video improvements
I did not yet test the video improvements, but supposedly the image quality would be better, less rolling shutter, audio changes during video, AF adjustments during video (would not know why to use that) and 720P 60/50 for better slow-motion. I hope to be testing video more in depth in a few weeks, at the moment it’s way to busy with photography. And don’t forget the longer recording options in one take.

Smaller things
As with every release a lot of small things are changed, I like the new overlay in the viewfinder, the zoom option to go 1:1 at once. I also absolutely LOVE the new options for auto ISO. I love auto ISO when walking through a city like New York where you are often experiencing a lot of different light situations, before I started using auto ISO I missed a lot of shots, or by accident shot a lot of images on ISO1600 because I forgot to set it back. With the old auto ISO I did not like the effect that sometimes the shutter times would be too low for what I shot. On the MKIII you can now not only set the ISO on auto but also determine on which shutter speed the ISO goes up…. THAT ROCKS and I love it.

The double card feature is nice but why not use a fast SD option, now CF is much faster than SD meaning I will only use SD for “security” when I run out of card space during a “heated session” and I can’t switch quickly.

ISO performance and dynamics
Some reports on the net claim there is no difference between the MKII and MKIII, to be honest I wonder what and how they test because the difference is HUGE. From what I see I can now say that ISO3200 and ISO6400 are more than usable, ISO3200 actually looks better than ISO1600 on the MKII, sometimes just a LITTLE bit of luminance noise control takes away “all” the noise without making the image look like a soft mess. I’m more than impressed to be honest. But not only with that, I also have the feeling that on the higher ISOs the dynamic range is MUCH better than on the MKII, and I could be wrong but when I took this image the ambient light was completely gone and the only light was this huge easter fire and it was far away from where the girl was sitting. Seeing the dynamic range in this image I wonder if the 5DMKII would be able to capture this the same way, especially with noise.

Overall I’m more than happy with the new MKIII and let’s be honest, 22MP is really more than most people would ever need and if you need more it’s now a days very easy to blow images up to much larger dimensions when they are low on noise and properly focussed.

I do hope it will not take as long to have a successor, not because there are things I miss now, but I’m always interested in seeing what will be improved and seeing the improvement in ISO performance from the 5DMKIII I’m very anxious to see where this goes, maybe one day we will be able to use a noise less ISO100.000 ?