THE STANDARD KIT

A couple weeks ago we took our summer vacation to the New England area for the fall colors. This was 1Ds Mark III’s first real outing. Shooting close to home is a safe - generally the shooting conditions are known, the destination is known and there is not much chance of the unexpected. When traveling everything is unknown. Where are the best places to go? When is the best light? Which lens to use? Under these changing conditions equipment and gear choices reveal their strengths and weaknesses.

I have two well trusted pieces of gear - the Contax 100mm F2 Planar and the Canon 24-105mm F4 L IS. The Canon 24-105mm L is a great range for walk-around lens with a useful and focal range. Image stabilization (IS) helps immensely when shutter speeds start dip due to fading light. The Contax 100mm F2 Planar bangs out portraits one after another without any grief. Besides these two I usually pack three or four other lenses. The 24-105L and 100/2 do most of the work, and the other lenses usually just stay in the bag.

CANON 1Ds vs. THE MARK II vs. THE MARK III

Reflecting back it is pretty easy to summarize the past Canon bodies. The original 1Ds required a watchful eye on exposure. If the exposure was good, then the file was solid. In terms of dynamic range the original 1Ds was not so good with maybe 8 to 8.33 useful stops of dynamic range. After upgrading to the 1Ds Mark II it took about six months before I felt like the 1Ds Mark II was a better camera. Out of the box the increase in MP was not a big difference. Over time I came to appreciate the improved noise performance and expanded dynamic range. In use the 1Ds Mark II had between 8.67 and 9.33 stops of dynamic range. The 1Ds Mark II clearly held the highlights better than the original Canon 1Ds. And the Mark II also had better shadow performance, but the biggest difference in everyday shooting was the highlight range.

Now comes the Mark III. In past entries of talked about the color “vibrance” and how the 1Ds Mark III files have a nice twinkle in the highlights. While the 1Ds Mark III has a nice color character in the upper ranges, it clips highlights faster than the 1Ds Mark II. I think the dynamic range in the highlight range took about a 1/2 step backwards. It is just enough that clouds clip on a regular basis and specular highlights clip very frequently. The 1Ds Mark III does have better shadow performance, so one solution would be to shoot with a slight negative EC adjustment and boost mid-tones during post processing. Probably 50% of the scenes were shot 3 or 4 times to find the right amount EC adjustment to minimize clipping. To improve the odds I used graduated filters and circular polarizers, but this is not a sure fix.

HIGHLIGHT TONE PRIORITY

By about about the fourth day I gave up and enabled Highlight Tone Priority (HTP). In practice I avoid HTP because it means shooting at ISO 200, so the noise floor is higher. Also, Canon is monkeying around with the levels and boosting the mid-tones. As a consequence Highlight Tone Priority can create some telltale effects. On more than one occasion I found banding in the dark shadow areas and some form of gamut clipping in the dark shadows. These images required considerable processing to hide the banding. Instead of the improving dynamic range, I feel that Canon cheated and hoped most people would be fine HTP. HTP is nothing more than a post processing trick.It does nothing to improve the actual amount of dynamic range captured. On a $8,000 camera we expect more than modern day parlor tricks.

The 1Ds Mark III delivers good results, but had the 1Ds Mark III maintained the same highlight range as the Mark II, then I would be using words like “amazing” and “incredible”. The impact of clipped highlights goes beyond file quality, it effects my shooting as well. After each image I check the LCD to see if another shot with EC adjustment is needed. And then it is a question of how much EC adjustment. In New England some scenes needed 5 or 6 tries to find a decent compromise. And I am talking about shooting conservatively with the sun to my back. Shooting with filters led to increased flare and ghosting, plus the hassle of constantly rotating filters (hood off, rotate filter, hood back on... click, chimp, nope... do it again...)  Grrrr... The hassle can kill all the fun.

If digital files had a lovely, warm feel as their highlights rolled off, I would not complain. But when digital clips, colors shift, transitions looks fake and banding or posterization can be visible. It gets ugly. I would like to see Canon focus their efforts on improving dynamic range with the next 1Ds. I do not care about video. I do not want ISO 12,800. And 30 megapixel does not matter either. Give us a solid stop of dynamic range improvement....  PLEASE!