When Canon announced the 1Ds Mark III, they also released a white paper and lengthy press release citing numerous improvements over its predecessor, the 1Ds Mark II. When a new camera arrives, there are some changes which make an immediate impression - “wow, that’s neat” or “why the $%^&* did they do that?!?!” Today’s Gear Talk entry highlights several features which I initially dismissed as marketing hype, but after some time I have come to appreciate their value.

LIVE VIEW

When I first heard of Live View my initial thought was Canon has added another “me too” feature to keep up with Olympus. Using Live View reinforced my preconceptions as the camera paused and made various clunky and clicking sounds. It did not “professional” at all. But that was then and this is now. It has been about four months with the 1Ds Mark III and ~15% of my pictures are taken with Live View. The 1Ds Mark III’s viewfinder is amazingly big and bright - using it is joy. So, I am not using Live View because of a sub-par viewfinder. The truth is - there are times when Live View is just easier.

Last 4th of July (2007) I set the lens to manual focus and focused it at infinity. Later that evening when reviewing the images at home on the computer, it was clear all the pictures were slightly out of focus (OOF’d). Infinity focus was too far. The previews looked fine in the 1Ds Mark II LCD, but on a 30” monitor the focus error was painfully obvious. This year I was ready! Set-up the tripod, mounted the 1Ds Mark III and turned on Live View. Using the 0% magnification view with the grid lines enabled, I lined up the horizon, zoomed the lens, set the composition and locked down the ball head. Next, picked the focus area and zoomed-in to the max magnification and adjusted focus until perfectly sharp. Even the Mrs. remarked that it was pretty cool. I could have used the viewfinder, but focusing at night in the dark is not easy. I blew it once before, so surely I could do it again.

The picture to the left was taken with an 18mm lens about 12 inches from the ground. The 1Ds Mark III was angled upwards to capture the blowing grass contrasted against the sky and clouds. Getting into that position to look through the viewfinder would have been extremely uncomfortable. I would have needed to lay on the dirt with the fire ants, spiders and allergies in 98F heat. Worse yet, the wind was blowing 30-40 mph, so the shot required waiting for the blowing grass to fall into position. Without Live View I would have passed on the picture. In addition to these examples, just about every product shot taken in the past 3 months has been with Live View - that’s a no-brainer. And many, many other pictures too when shooting with the manual focus lenses. Live View has not “changed my life”, but certainly make some shots much easier.

IMPROVED HIGH ISO

In my world high ISO is anything above ISO 400. I avoid bumping ISO because higher ISO’s have reduced dynamic range and the inherent noise limits the file in post processing. Once in awhile the 1Ds Mark II would see ISO 200, and maybe ISO 400 if there was no other option. The 1Ds Mark II had very clean files - even up to ISO 800. I knew that, but I still avoided bumping ISO.

Yesterday’s fireworks pictures were taken at ISO 400, and they came out of DPP beautifully clean. With the 1Ds Mark III, if I do need to bump ISO then I usually skip ISO 200 and just bump straight to ISO 400. ISO 400 is probably as clean as the Canon 1Ds Mark II’s ISO 200, so I figure the added shutter speed never hurts. Compared to the 1Ds Mark II, from ISO 200 on up the 1Ds Mark III noise levels have improved by 1 stop, maybe slightly more. These days I even use ISO 1600. The quality is not perfect, but it is good.

CANON PICTURE STYLE EDITOR

I touched on this already topic in the past two entries, but this is a BIG deal for me. I have no interest in Canon’s stock picture styles and do not use any of them. Although, I will try the new portrait styles when an opportunity presents itself (click here for more info on the portrait color styles). With Canon’s Picture Style Editor I have been able to tame the Canon reds. And by remapping the very low shadow tones I am seeing more detail in the shadows while maintaining very low noise levels. I really like how these edited styles are then loaded back into the 1Ds3 and available on demand. Canon closed the loop very nicely on this one. If you haven’t tried creating and optimizing your own custom Picture Styles with Picture Style Editor software, give it try. It’s not easy, but stick with it and there are benefits.

OTHER HONORABLE MENTIONS

The new 3” LCD is better in the sense that everything is bigger - fonts are easier to read, histograms are easier to see, settings are easier to read, etc. Higher resolution would be nice, but the new LCD is improvement enough for now. The 1Ds Mark III does seem to do a better job rendering magnified image previews. With the 1Ds Mark II it was difficult to tell if the image was focused correctly or not. With the 1Ds Mark III I trust the magnified views a bit more.

Next, the thumb stick. It is handy for selecting AF points when the camera is in landscape orientation. In portrait orientation the thumb-stick is too far away and probably impossible for most people to reach. For going through the menus it is handy - and the new menu system is cleaner too. The thumb stick is okay, but needs improvement.

There are smaller improvements in the 1Ds Mark III - like a dedicated ISO button, the My Menu option, cleaner system menus, longer battery life and the ultimate viewfinder. Auto focus and metering were improved, but I have not noticed anything different compared to the 1Ds Mark II. The camera is lighter, but it is still heavy - 6 ounces hardly matters. I am not done on this topic, but that’s it for now.