I bought my Canon 1D Mark 3 more than four years ago. Since then it has repaid its rather substantial purchase price several times over doing sports and event photography for clients who are happy to pay for the photos but would not be happy for me splashing them all over Pattaya Days (there are no babes involved so you are not missing anything).
A couple of years ago Canon introduced the Mark 4 which was faster and produced bigger and better images; but I was happy with my Mark 3 and planned to wait till the Mark 4 dropped in price before upgrading. Now Canon have announced the 1DX which will be available around April of next year, which means the Mark 4 price is starting to drop. But it also appears that Canon are stopping production, because it is becoming hard to find and prices seem to be creeping up again.
Which is a long-winded excuse for why I travelled to Chonburi this morning and picked up a Mark 4.
Apart from the badge, it’s an identical body to the Mark 3; but the insides are very different and I am hoping for stellar performance and a quick repayment of my investment.
Had to take it out this afternoon for a test. Shooting a subject moving towards you at speed is a real test of your camera’s predictive focus. Hold down the shutter half way and the camera will continually calculate where the subject is now and, crucially, where it would be if you took a shot. During the fraction of the second between you pressing the shutter and the mirror lifting and taking the photo, the subject will move closer to you; enough to throw it out of focus if it doesn’t calculate correctly. The Canon 1D can calculate exposure and focus, lift the mirror, take a shot and drop the mirror again, ten times every second; quite a feat. With the 1D3 I could achieve a success rate of about 70%, seven out of every ten shots would be properly focused. How would the 1D4 perform?
I started with some karts, not too demanding.
The ID3 is a bit of a disaster at higher ISOs, so tried a high ISO shot with the new camera:
ISO 3200 with minimal noise reduction.
Time for something faster, so I shot motorbikes coming down the road. This guy was barrelling along at quite a speed and I took a fifteen shot continuous sequence. Every single shot was tack sharp.
In fact, every one of the 174 photos I took this afternoon was perfectly focused. What a camera.
Comments 🔗
2011-11-14| genuinej saysYou seem to be well on the way to becoming an accomplished photographer. Don’t give Canon too much credit.