The first two days (june 6 and 7) of show jumping for the spring/summer season at Spruce Meadows was my real test bed of the 1D-III. (visit the spruce meadows web page at http://www.sprucemeadows.com/ ). The interesting thing that I noticed was the images (except for lower high iso noise) were only slightly better than the 1D-IIn. Neutral picture style is super for JPG out of camera.
I tried the motor drive - yep! it works at 10 FPS. However, I quickly reverted to shooting single frames rather than motor drive. The motor drive chews up too much unnecessary card space, demands to much post processing editing and only very rarely results in better shots than single frame. In truth, I run the camera with the low speed set to 4 fps but only fire a single frame - in case there is a fall or other spectacular incident, I can still keep my finger down for more shots.
The body is really quite fine - the new menu interface is excellent (much better than the old style). The only serious complaint is the very poor layout of the new AF-ON buttons - very uncomfortable button locations and the vertical shooting and horizontal shooting buttons are very differently placed - Canon really screwed this up! None the less, the camera and delivered images are excellent.
Oh well, here are a few images from the first two days of the 5 week series of competitions.
7. Carla Fedje is really a fashion photographer who wanted to shoot some sports. She came out with me for a few hours and is now really hooked on shooting the horses (and the many male competitors :-)
Impressive. I was pretty much resigned on the 5D but the 1D just has more punch. Must be the 14 bit. I suppose the 10 frames a second does not really have to be used.
The ISO 3200 is really impressive - I think I can use this on a regular basis for many shots without much concern. Of course, the detail of the tone rendition is not quite as nice as low ISO. For many subjects, particularly the average sports shot or available light shooting in the performing arts, the colouration and the tone separation will be very acceptable indeed.
Holy cow Tony, 9 is amazing! I'm learning... its all about the angles. None of mine are really decent... yours though, nice crops on the athletes, and good not awkward angles. Hm!
And uh, its weird seeing myself in pictures. I need to hit the gym, yo. haha
I like the pictures but really like how you have the information at the bottom of the photo, did you ahve to type all that in or is there some kind of action to do that, thanks in advance
I'd have to say that your conclusion on 10 FPS is a little lacking. It can't capture any better than single frame? Perhaps timing is easier when the 1 horse is predictably jumping over a stationary hurdle. However, try something a little less predictable like football, where multiple subjects are running unpredictably in an number of directions, and 10 FPS is going to increase your chances of capturing a photo where expression, body position, action all meet at one unpredictable moment to make a great capture.
pinball wrote:
I like the pictures but really like how you have the information at the bottom of the photo, did you ahve to type all that in or is there some kind of action to do that, thanks in advance Bill
This is done with a script to retrieve the EXIF information and an action to generate the frame. Sorry, this is not mine - I cannot give it away.
Daniel Bates wrote:
Spruce Meadows! I was there, in Calgary, once a long time ago... this brings back the memories.
Lovely work, Tony! #9 and #11 are my favourites - very nice images.
Thanks for the comments (blush)....
After seeing you images on SportsShooter, you should come up here again - you have 4 more weeks of competition here at Spruce Meadows - you would be very welcome by the folks in charge of media. Besides, you could always shoot the Calgary Stampede and maybe get some good stock images .
roblumba wrote:
I'd have to say that your conclusion on 10 FPS is a little lacking.
Actually this is a conclusion for the general things I shoot - short/long track speed skating, show jumping, boating, motorcycles, skiing, theatre, dance, figure skating etc.
I also find that many of the guys I know shooting beside me use the motor drive for these events as "insurance".
For example, one of the long-time pros shooting the horses this week is typically set up at max drive speed (8-10 fps depending on camera). He shoot 5 to 10 frames on one jump - pressing the button just before the anticipated peak action - and actually captured one and maybe two usable frames per jump.
I also shoot with dance photographers who do the same.
Yes, football, baseball "at the bases", and some others work sometimes better at high frame rate. For example, even in figure skating high frame rate is useful particularly when shooting high end skaters that can do a decent double, triple or quad benefit from high frame rate to capture the fact pointing toward the camera. Even with this, 10 fps is not necessarily optimum - each jump has a different ideal frame rate and this is also tied to the skill of the skater. This is where the Nikon D2 series is better than the 1D-II(n) in that the "low frame rate" can be easily adjusted on the spot - just like (finally) the 1D-III.
An other group that often uses high frame rate are those shooters that are not familiar with a specific sport and MUST come home with a usable image. Spray and pray usually will get the job done.
I don't short sell high frame rate. I just don't use it unless I have a good reason to do so.
I'd love to come up and shoot both, but unfortunately transportation is not permitting right now.
I used to live in Red Deer, actually, quite close to Calgary and Edmonton both. It's beautiful country up there... central Texas just doesn't quite compare.
As far as high frame rates, I've only shot sports for pay since the beginning of last semester, and only owned a DSLR since last September (I had a good P&S before that). This means that I'm a rather inexperienced photographer. When I was sent to my first NCAA swimming and diving competition, I had no sense of timing for the sport, and wound up blowing through about 1,500 shots in just a few hours. I quickly learned when to shoot, and got my keeper rate quite a bit higher, but the 8 fps on my 1D got me a few good images that I wouldn't have made otherwise. Sometimes technology does substitute for skill - a little bit, at the beginning...
ha! The images are really nice, especially for that high ISO, but the frame rate thing is a funny discussion... I just shot dance tofay... I went through 16gb worth of raw files on a d2h in three hours all at 8fps.
I was at 1/400 shutter priority, ISO 1600 because 3200 is too much on my camera and was usually at f/1.4 or f/1.8 the whole time... Seeing a dance for the first time and trying to capture the right moments lends itself to "spray and pray"... Now hopefully at 1.4 some of them are sharp!
I suppose a person can do the math on reaction time to see which is better.
[Human reaction time] + [Camera Reaction Time] = Single Shot Precision Time
On the other hand. 10 FPS means that the best precision you can hope for is 1/10th of a second per frame. Anything in between those 1/10ths of a second are missed. It really is a gamble because if you hit the shutter at the at the start of some action, you are really counting on the best moment to occur on a 1/10th boundary.
However, if the best human reaction + camera reaction time is more like a range of 1/20th-1/30th of a second, then you area also gambling. But if a human + camera reaction is also 1/10th of a second or less, then also consider a humans ability to predict and time the reaction based on the prediction, then it can be very hard for the camera to compete with that!
