Anything I should know about this thing thats a quirk or technique? Any input appreciated!

Let's see... The first thing I noticed was the short battery life - if you are more than a hobbyist - I would pick up a second one...

The second thing I noticed was soft images - I AFMA'd all my lenses with FoCal and doubled my shutter speed - that helped a lot... You really have to watch your technique with this camera.

It seems to consistently underexpose - when in Av mode - I keep +1/3 dialed in all the time...

The AWB is the best I have ever used - I shoot with a gray card - and a lot of times I can't even see the difference between the camera setting and a custom WB...

I got mine yesterday and am still learning. The things I have noticed so far:

Zooming in liveview and playback is done differently, you now use the magnifying glass button and then the front control dial. I don't like this much, nor do I like the Rating button or the other one with a pen on, I will never ever use them.

The menus now have many sub-menus, which are great but if you want to skip them you can do so with the Q button, this saves a lot of time. Don't look for custom functions they aren't there - they are now individual menu items instead

The AF is very similar to the 7D and fairly easy to fathom and very accurate but don't use the all-AF points option, it's useless and focuses on the nearest thing regardless (like the 7D)

The battery life is very poor, at least with a new un-refreshed battery. It seems to lose charge quite a lot if you leave the camera on too- even if it is sleeping (about 6% overnight for me).

The dual card slots are fantastic, but you can't use sd->CF adapters as they won't fit - small size CF cards only

The camera is just fantastic and a big upgrade from the 5DII, I can't imagine there being more I would want from a dslr than this (including for me a godsend an easy to use two-way level). There are one or two foibles but it is a fantastic bit of kit.

As noted above some controls are different. At first some seemed a little annoying but as I use the camera moe I now find my mk2 annoying.
Battery life seems fine to me. I see no diference between the mk2 and mk3.

What I REALLY like is the silent shooting mode. It creates an entirely different and high quality feel to the camera. I use this mode all the time.

My only peeve is slow AF in dim light with the 580exII focus assist beam. That needs to be a lot better.

Regarding the battery, I don't find it that much different from 5D2 if you use only one card. Writing data to two cards at once will definitely consume much more battery.

dhphoto wrote:
The AF is very similar to the 7D and fairly easy to fathom and very accurate but don't use the all-AF points option, it's useless and focuses on the nearest thing regardless (like the 7D)


I think you would find the all-AF point option useful in ai servo where you use a manually selected point for initial focus, then track with all of them after that. Otherwise I agree that controlling your focus point is key for the FM gang.

There is a nice 44 page "manual" on the AF system online that can help get you up to speed on that quickly.

I think it is marked as a 1DX guide, so do a search on that.

There is also a series of videos that you can play online, etc., or on the camera.

Have fun!

Michael

dgdg wrote:
dhphoto wrote:
The AF is very similar to the 7D and fairly easy to fathom and very accurate but don't use the all-AF points option, it's useless and focuses on the nearest thing regardless (like the 7D)


I think you would find the all-AF point option useful in ai servo where you use a manually selected point for initial focus, then track with all of them after that. Otherwise I agree that controlling your focus point is key for the FM gang.



I'm very happy to agree you are right. I have almost no experience with AI Servo mode on any of my dslrs!

I have not seen any issues with short battery life or soft images on the 5D III.
Quality glass helps

5D III has been fantastic for any subject I have tried. From portraits, low light stage show, sports, or birds in flight.

The only quirky issue I had with my first copy of 5D3 is that the right side AF points were miscalibrated compared to the center and left side points. So I would just recommend checking out the AF points for consistency before your first important shoot. I totally bollocksed up some images that I really wish I hadn't before I figured out that my AF points that I use for portrait orientation were messed up.

Second copy of the body is much better.

Haven't noticed any deficiency with the batteries compared to the 5D2 and
7D, both of which I own.

The problem in the last several months with the 5D3 is that when 600 flash is used

with it, the camera "freezes." I just pull out the battery and put it back in.

Everything is then OK.

dhphoto wrote:
Zooming in liveview and playback is done differently, you now use the magnifying glass button and then the front control dial. I don't like this much, nor do I like the Rating button or the other one with a pen on, I will never ever use them.


I actually found a good use for the rating button somewhat by accident.

Sometimes when doing portraits of friends and family, I will ask them to quickly go through the pictures and flag the ones where they like their own look. Young women seem to partcularly appreciate this as they can be very particular about the expressions they feel comfortable showing. Me, I do not always pick up on this myself, so I like getting some direction

Since the rating is automatically imported into Lightroom, I can concentrate on the cross-section of the photos I would choose (technically good, etc) and the photos the subject chose. Since the screen on camera is relatively small, it also automatically hides smaller imperfections that I might fix in post anyway, so that is ususally not an issue.

Of course, this might not work for all subjects or situations (paying high-end clients come to mind), but it has helped me a lot on a couple of occasions.

Also, I believe that it is possible to re-configure the rating and "pen" button for other functions, so it's not like they're useless.

DavidCH wrote:
dhphoto wrote:
Zooming in liveview and playback is done differently, you now use the magnifying glass button and then the front control dial. I don't like this much, nor do I like the Rating button or the other one with a pen on, I will never ever use them.


I actually found a good use for the rating button somewhat by accident.

Sometimes when doing portraits of friends and family, I will ask them to quickly go through the pictures and flag the ones where they like their own look. Young women seem to partcularly appreciate this as they can be very particular about the expressions they feel comfortable showing. Me, I do not always pick up on this myself, so I like getting some direction

Since the rating is automatically imported into Lightroom, I can concentrate on the cross-section of the photos I would choose (technically good, etc) and the photos the subject chose. Since the screen on camera is relatively small, it also automatically hides smaller imperfections that I might fix in post anyway, so that is ususally not an issue.

Of course, this might not work for all subjects or situations (paying high-end clients come to mind), but it has helped me a lot on a couple of occasions.

Also, I believe that it is possible to re-configure the rating and "pen" button for other functions, so it's not like they're useless.

I am starting to like the rate button more and more for exactely this reason.
Concerning zooming: you can configure the set button to immediatelly zoom in on the point you focussed on. Once you get used to it, it's better and quicker than the old method, at least for me.

Jeroen

I found when using one-shot using the joystick to move my focus point (manual plus surrounding support) on the fly is great for quick composition. No more focus and recompose. If my little subject is moving a bit too quickly for one-shot but I still like the location of my focus point, I will push the dof button. I configured it to toggle into ai servo.

Jeroen Heus wrote:
Concerning zooming: you can configure the set button to immediatelly zoom in on the point you focussed on. Once you get used to it, it's better and quicker than the old method, at least for me.

Jeroen

How do you do this? I have reconfigured the SET button to zoom, but it doesn't seem to zoom in any further than the magnifying glass icon does. I can't anything in the manual either

wow thanks for all the pointers guys! I will mainly use it for my son's hockey, and family portraits and stuff. The AI servo that actually works unlike my 5d2 would be awedsome!

How do you do this? I have reconfigured the SET button to zoom, but it doesn't seem to zoom in any further than the magnifying glass icon does. I can't anything in the manual either

I did not mean to say you can zoom in further, but using the set button leads you directly to the point where you focussed on. At that poin, using the top control dial, you can zoom in a bit further. It is on page 252 in the manual (at least in my dutch manual don't know if the numbering is the same in all manuals..)

Jeroen Heus wrote:
How do you do this? I have reconfigured the SET button to zoom, but it doesn't seem to zoom in any further than the magnifying glass icon does. I can't anything in the manual either

I did not mean to say you can zoom in further, but using the set button leads you directly to the point where you focussed on. At that poin, using the top control dial, you can zoom in a bit further. It is on page 252 in the manual (at least in my dutch manual don't know if the numbering is the same in all manuals..)

I misunderstood you, my bad. I have obviously configured as much as I can. Just pressng one button or the other on the back was a lot easier! I do like the Set button double-press for x5 and x10 in liveview, that helps me.

Still, it really doesn't matter much, the rest of the new camera makes up for it easily.

I have 1061 shots on my first battery charge and still have 28% battery left, and that's with writing RAW to both cards, a lot of chimping, changing settings, etc. I think that's great battery life. Are others not getting the same type of battery life out of theirs, or is everybody else just used to the insane battery life of 1-series cameras?

Focus calibration out of the box was dead on (or close enough to it that I couldn't tell) for all but 2 of my lenses. Usable outer AF points is a whole new world for this former 5D Classic shooter.

I agree with the tips to configure the zoom button to automatically zoom in to the AF point used to take the shot. I would add that you can also adjust the level of zoom. I put mine at 100% zoom.

The joystick to directly select AF points is also a great tip. My one annoyance with that is you still have to press another button to activate it, i.e. half-press the shutter button, so in that sense it's not much different than pressing the AF point selection button first (upper right on back of camera).

Repurposing the DOF preview button to switch between One Shot and AI Servo AF is another function that comes in handy for me.

Agreed with adding +1/3 to exposure in Av mode. Then again I've done that on Canon DSLRs going back as far as I can remember.

I've only had it for a short while but this is about 95% of that mythical Last Camera I'll Ever Need. Best camera I've ever used.

I've had mine a few days. I too have noticed the battery seems to drain a bit quicker.

On the CF and SD, I'm really confused from searching on the web. I get that the SD cards will be max 133, I have also sussed that the buffer will fill twice as quick with both cards writing and the option to use the SD as an overflow.

How have the early adopters used the two card set-up? Is it preferable to write to both, RAW to CF and JPEG to SD? Or is there a better solution that uses both cards?

I'm thinking that I am best just to use the CF card and use the SD as a back-up that's not being written to so I keep a larger buffer. It's a bugger to suss this out!