1ds3 review on dpreview

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Archive 2008 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

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p.2 #1 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

I have to wonder who is buying a 1DsMk3 and shooting jpeg? It would never occur to me to use an $8k camera and not shoot RAW. Sports and PJs, who mostly use jpegs, are not buying this camera anyway...they want a higher frame rate.

Aug 19, 2008 at 04:51 AM

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p.2 #2 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

MSC wrote:
I have to wonder who is buying a 1DsMk3 and shooting jpeg? It would never occur to me to use an $8k camera and not shoot RAW. Sports and PJs, who mostly use jpegs, are not buying this camera anyway...they want a higher frame rate.

I shoot events, not sport. 5 fps is fast enough. Low light performance is crucial, and the 1Ds3 at least matches both the D3 and 1D3 at iso 12800 (http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/663088). The extra resolution also allows me to crop liberally, and helps with shots which contain groups of ten people or more. I think it's an ideal choice for a serious wedding or event photographer. I shoot JPEG about half the time, i.e. when I know the colour-balance and exposure are right, and the file needs little or no processing. Switching to JPEG when conditions allow saves a lot of time in processing.

Many photographers have to take a wide range of picture styles, not just one. For a non-sports photographer, the 1Ds3 is the most versatile pro DSLR available, and JPEG is a crucial feature.

Edited on Aug 19, 2008 at 12:15 PM

Aug 19, 2008 at 12:11 PM

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p.2 #3 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

Well I guess...I do events too, and newspaper work all the time for 4 newspapers and for a wire now and again, and the Mk3 is just not the camera of choice--in fact, no one I know of uses one. As for weddings, I have no idea...not interested.

Aug 19, 2008 at 12:30 PM

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p.2 #4 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

MSC wrote:
I have to wonder who is buying a 1DsMk3 and shooting jpeg? It would never occur to me to use an $8k camera and not shoot RAW. Sports and PJs, who mostly use jpegs, are not buying this camera anyway...they want a higher frame rate.

What has the price of a cam to do with if one shoots JPEG or RAW? It is just a cam that does a great job with both formats

Reasons for me to use JPEG:

1) Occasionally I need a larger buffer
2) JPEG saves time and space
3) Quality of JPEG engine is very good

However, most of the time I shoot RAW

Aug 19, 2008 at 12:31 PM

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p.2 #5 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

Daan B wrote:
MSC wrote:
I have to wonder who is buying a 1DsMk3 and shooting jpeg? It would never occur to me to use an $8k camera and not shoot RAW. Sports and PJs, who mostly use jpegs, are not buying this camera anyway...they want a higher frame rate.

What has the price of a cam to do with if one shoots JPEG or RAW? It is just a cam that does a great job with both formats

Reasons for me to use JPEG:

1) Occasionally I need a larger buffer
2) JPEG saves time and space
3) Quality of JPEG engine is very good

However, most of the time I shoot RAW

The price of a camera means a LOT to a newspaper...and they would rather have a high frame rate Mk2 or Mk3 than the S model. I'm a freelancer and in a position to choose what I want to cover...so I'm not a good representation, but I know those guys. Also there is a newspaper in my family, albeit a small one, so I grew up around the newspaper business, middle and small market. And many event shooters (at least in the DC market) are very bottom line oriented...they are not spending $8k on a camera. Grip and grins are not generally populated by high priced cameras. But then again, maybe the embassy event shooters are using them...can't say.

Like I said, I have no idea about weddings tho...maybe lots of weddng shooters use an $8k camera. I only know a few in that market, one very high end, and they all use 5Ds and none shoot jpeg, but that is not a big sample at all. Richard, I see you are in the UK, it may be different there.

Edited on Aug 19, 2008 at 01:08 PM

Aug 19, 2008 at 12:45 PM

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p.2 #6 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

MSC wrote:
Daan B wrote:
MSC wrote:
I have to wonder who is buying a 1DsMk3 and shooting jpeg? It would never occur to me to use an $8k camera and not shoot RAW. Sports and PJs, who mostly use jpegs, are not buying this camera anyway...they want a higher frame rate.

What has the price of a cam to do with if one shoots JPEG or RAW? It is just a cam that does a great job with both formats

Reasons for me to use JPEG:

1) Occasionally I need a larger buffer
2) JPEG saves time and space
3) Quality of JPEG engine is very good

However, most of the time I shoot RAW

It would be a very stupid business decision to use a 1Ds3 exclusively for low-res output (like newspapers). If you don't need the 21MP resolution, stay away from this cam. Because it is the 21MP resolution why it is so darn expensive in the first place. But because it is so expensive, should its usage be limited to RAW only? That part of your initial statement made no sense to me (but maybe I misunderstood you). I guess it all depends on the line of work and personal preferences

Edited on Aug 19, 2008 at 01:17 PM

Aug 19, 2008 at 01:14 PM

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p.2 #7 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

Frankly all of the Canon and Nikon pro models and the 5D are good enough for most tasks, so really it comes down to personal preference. I was definitely spoiling myself when I forked out the small fortune for the 1Ds3, but I take enough pictures in a year to feel that I deserve to use the tool with which I am most comfortable.

However, there's no question that when a client requests a shot like this...

This image is copyrighted by the owner

and this...

This image is copyrighted by the owner

...you need every pixel you can muster. Stitching something like this invisibly can take hours, and I would rather be in the pub.

The 1Ds3 can give you a bit of extra headroom for detail and cropping, with the right lenses, and it makes good jpegs too. It saves you buying and carrying two different cameras for different applications. Compared to a medium format kit, it's cheap and light, and it's very nearly as good in many ways. Bargain!

Edited on Aug 19, 2008 at 01:38 PM

Aug 19, 2008 at 01:36 PM

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p.2 #8 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

Yeah, re-read it...maybe it should have said "who is buying a 1DsMk3 to shoot jpeg." Which is what I was thinking. If one primarily shoots jpeg, there are better options...that was the idea. But if you are a portait shooter, or perhaps a wedding shooter, and do events and PJ also...and want to have a versitile camera...and can afford it, then yes, an S model would be the ideal choice.

All that being said, I love the S.

Aug 19, 2008 at 01:40 PM

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p.2 #9 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

brainiac wrote:
The 1Ds3 can give you a bit of extra headroom for detail and cropping, with the right lenses, and it makes good jpegs too. It saves you buying and carrying two different cameras for different applications. Compared to a medium format kit, it's cheap and light, and it's very nearly as good in many ways. Bargain!

This is VERY true and a primary reason I got it...and use as a second cam for sports too...the ability to heavily crop and still get printable shots is great, as you show here!

Aug 19, 2008 at 01:43 PM

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p.2 #10 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

brainiac wrote:
Wow - the great Phil hasn't worked out that he needs a sharper lens to see a resolution difference between the 1Ds3 and 1Ds2:
"switching to raw and using the same processing (and crucially the same sharpening) shows that the resolution gap between the Mark III and the Mark II is minimal, and (aside from differences in depth of field) the output from the new camera is pretty similar, just bigger..."

Many of his 1Ds3 crops show the lens limiting sharpness.

To be honest, these days I treat DPReview with extreme suspicion. It contains so many technical errors.

Phil provides the most trustworthy information to me. Because he does every testing exactly the same way CONSISTENTLY.

Lens limiting sharpness ? Oh, give me a break. He uses primes and L zooms. If those lenses are not good enough, what good is the Camera for ? Is it a Lab equipment ?

As he precisely pointed out, the pixel pitch in H and V dimension is just 13% more over the Mk-2. The expectation should be set correctly.

Edited on Aug 20, 2008 at 02:04 AM

Aug 20, 2008 at 02:03 AM

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p.2 #11 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

fraga wrote:
brainiac wrote:

Many of his 1Ds3 crops show the lens limiting sharpness.

I agree totally.

In fact, his sample images at the end of the review show that the 1Ds MIII is not very fond of zooms. Even L zooms. At least the ones he used (or his particular copies of such lenses). Most of the sample images from the 24-70L and the 70-200L 2.8IS are somewhat on the soft side.
The ones taken with primes are definitely better, specially the small girl's portrait(5th pic from the right), and the beautiful black woman (7th pic from the left), where he used a 85mm 1.8.

While that is to be expected and considered normal, I think that this particular body does broaden the gap between primes and zooms in terms of IQ (sharpness wise, at least), more so than previous bodies.

As may have stated before, the 1DsMIII appears to demand the best optics for the best results.

I don't buy this. As far as I know (which isn't all that much :-) the 1Ds3 has less pixel density than the 40D and XSi. By that measure the 40D and XSi should be harder on lenses than the 1Ds3. I just haven't seen any plausible data that suggests the 1Ds3 is limited in this area.

Aug 20, 2008 at 02:13 AM

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p.2 #12 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

Pondria wrote:
Phil provides the most trustworthy information to me. Because he does every testing exactly the same way CONSISTENTLY.

Consistently wrong. For example, comparison crops at varying magnifications.

> Lens limiting sharpness ? Oh, give me a break. He uses primes and L zooms. If those lenses are not good enough, what good is the Camera for? Is it a Lab equipment ?

Like I said, the extra sharpness it is capable of can only be had with a more limited range of lenses. Many L's aren't good enough.

> As he precisely pointed out, the pixel pitch in H and V dimension is just 13% more over the Mk-2. The expectation should be set correctly.

He fails to show the extra 13% in many of his crops. If I offered a 13% sharper lens, who wouldn't want one?

Aug 20, 2008 at 02:13 AM

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p.2 #13 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

ghozer wrote:
> the 1Ds3 has less pixel density than the 40D and XSi. By that measure the 40D and XSi should be harder on lenses than the 1Ds3.

The XSi is harder on lenses. The 40D is about the same. But don't forget that they only use the lens' central sweetspot.

Aug 20, 2008 at 02:19 AM

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p.2 #14 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

regarding sharpening, very often on my 1Ds 3 with one of my big guns lenses - i.e. 35/1.4, 200/2.8, 85/1.2 - the file is so sharp to begin with that I'll often not sharpen them.

especially the 200!

incredibly good bit of gear the 1Ds 3, I'll be using my 2 for years to come. I'd only add a 3rd body if the 5D mk2 could do silly high iso's at good quality (i.e. 6400/12800)

Aug 20, 2008 at 02:24 AM

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p.2 #15 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

brainiac wrote:
ghozer wrote:
> the 1Ds3 has less pixel density than the 40D and XSi. By that measure the 40D and XSi should be harder on lenses than the 1Ds3.

The XSi is harder on lenses. The 40D is about the same. But don't forget that they only use the lens' central sweetspot.

Sure but that's true of any crop camera vs. a full frame camera. I still have yet to see any evidence that suggests the 1Ds3 is harder on lenses than cameras with higher pixel densities.

Aug 20, 2008 at 02:56 AM

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p.2 #16 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

I am not under the impression that any of my lenses are less sharp on my 1Ds3 than they were on my 5D. Actually, all of my L primes give excellent performance because of the MA. They have never been sharper. To take this a bit further... A while ago we did some comparisons between the Nikon D3 + 85 1.4 + 24-70mm and the 1Ds3 + 85L II + 24-70L and there was no real world difference between the files regarding sharpness. Of course when equalizing the files the 1Ds3 showed the impact of having more resolution... it's files were sharper and more detailed. Unfortunately we didn't do a noise comparsison

IMHO this whole "the 1Ds3 needs the best lenses argument" is a bit of a myth. YMMV

Edited on Aug 20, 2008 at 07:02 AM

Aug 20, 2008 at 07:00 AM

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p.2 #17 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

Daan B wrote:

IMHO this whole "the 1Ds3 needs the best lenses argument" is a bit of a myth. YMMV

I'd say yes and no. In order to achieve the absolute maximum resolution posible from the sensor it's obvious you need a very precisely focused, quality optic, the same way you would on any format.

However, because of the number of pixels you can get away with a 'poorer' lens because you don't need to enlarge the 'defects' so much.

I posted here some time ago a shot taken at 3200 ISO with my 1Ds3 and my prosumer 70-300IS which I thought was astonishing, considering. You can actually read the label on the apron on his hip, at 200%:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

David

Edited on Aug 20, 2008 at 08:15 AM

Aug 20, 2008 at 08:14 AM

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p.2 #18 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

brainiac wrote:
ghozer wrote:
> the 1Ds3 has less pixel density than the 40D and XSi. By that measure the 40D and XSi should be harder on lenses than the 1Ds3.

The XSi is harder on lenses. The 40D is about the same. But don't forget that they only use the lens' central sweetspot.

The 1DS3 has a pixel density of 156/mm the 40D 175/mm that is 12% more that is not about the same in my book.

Aug 20, 2008 at 08:58 AM

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p.2 #19 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

I don't buy into the assumption the 1Ds3 is more demanding on the lenses than the 5D or any other lower pixel count camera. Of course if the purpose of taking pictures is to examine them at 100%, then yes, the above assumption would be true. But most people take photos to display them as prints and in this case an 8x10 print from a 1Ds3 and a 5D should look similar. A good sharp lens will be good on both cameras and a soft mediocre lens will look bad on both. It all depends on the final output.

Aug 20, 2008 at 08:58 AM

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p.2 #20 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

edwardkaraa wrote:
I don't buy into the assumption the 1Ds3 is more demanding on the lenses than the 5D...

I use both at every job. If you want the 21 megapixels to earn their space on your hard drive, you have to choose lenses and apertures more carefully than with the 5D. For example, my 35 f2 and 35 f1.4 each show more pixels of CA on the 1Ds3. My Zeiss 24-85 often requires extra sharpening on the 1Ds3, whereas the 200 f1.8 doesn't. Some lenses don't seem to resolve as crisply, PER PIXEL, on the 1Ds3 as they do on the 5D. The lens isn't worse, but the extra pixels aren't showing good data and earning their keep. To use the extra resolution of the 1Ds3 to good effect, you need to tighten up lens choice, technique, and focus accuracy. It's a small effect, but it's there.

Here's the 450D revealing faint CA and slightly soggy (zone B!) corners in the Leica R 28 at f8:
http://cyberphotographer.com/450d/wall.jpg

Aug 20, 2008 at 12:54 PM

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p.2 #21 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

Yes of course, I agree completely with you. But I'm making a slightly different point, in that when we used to shoot Velvia 50 for example instead of Provia 100, we knew the Velvia had an extra 20 pl/mm resolution over the Provia, but I personally was careful with my lens selection only when I knew the photos were going to be enlarged substantially. Otherwise, my choice of Velvia over Provia was purely of esthetic reasons not resolution. The 1Ds3 files, if they are destined to be reproduced at sizes within the reach of the 5D, I believe that the final output would be similar with both cameras. Only when you intend to use the 1Ds3 to the maximum of its resolving capabilities, to produce huge enlargements, then of course you need a lens that walks the walk. I never doubted that, per pixel, the 1Ds3 requires much more from lenses than the 5D, this is absolutely true.

Aug 20, 2008 at 04:10 PM

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p.2 #22 · 1ds3 review on dpreview

edwardkaraa wrote:
I don't buy into the assumption the 1Ds3 is more demanding on the lenses than the 5D or any other lower pixel count camera. Of course if the purpose of taking pictures is to examine them at 100%, then yes, the above assumption would be true. But most people take photos to display them as prints and in this case an 8x10 print from a 1Ds3 and a 5D should look similar.

Who on earth buys either a 13 or 21 megapixel camera for an 8X10 print? In my experience 100% view on screen pretty much shows exactly what the print will look like at native resolution in print unless you buy into the whole 'viewing distance' bull**** (like viewers ever stay behind an imaginary line!). I've found that 50% on screen is accurate for 'official' viewing distance detail wise.

This very indepth and technical article http://luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/resolution.shtml explains why testing has to be at the limits of the mediums capability but also I think answers the question this thread is dealing with.

A lot of the issues seen with the 1Ds mkIII may well be diffraction based, I decided not to buy one for a specific project as I was pretty certain that I would be negating any resolution benefits due to the high level of DOF needed and the resulting small apertures (f16/22).

There seems to be a physics brick wall if you are attempting to resolve a certain level of detail with sufficient DOF and without using wide angle lenses. Bigger sensors demand longer lenses for an equivelent FOV which in turn requires a smaller f-stop and the resulting diffraction. At present I decided to fall back on stitching for when I need a lot of resolution for huge prints, but don't want to use wide angle lenses. I shot this picture today, 30 megapixels from a 5D (7 frames), shot at f22 (due to 100mm lens) and sufficient resolution to easily outweigh the diffraction limitations of using f22 which on the 5D, though noticeable, are far from as bad as on higher pixel density sensors.

This image is copyrighted by the owner

Edited on Aug 20, 2008 at 05:00 PM

Aug 20, 2008 at 04:50 PM


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