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


Mine was down to 60% after 67 frames, including some chimping, some playing with menus and a few seconds video. I don't regard this as good!

Although this did include a 6% or so drop overnight when it was left on, but sleeping.

This is much much worse than my 5DII

dhphoto,
what does the battery show when you check it on the back of the camera in the menu?
does this occur with multiple batteries?

I am using the new battery and a few old one I had with the 5D II and not seeing that

EyeBrock wroten 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!

Depends what you want to accomplish. Do you need a backup of every file? If so I'd go RAW on both cards. Reports I've read say that RAW on one and JPEG on the other is actually slower than RAW on both, probably due to the overhead of processing the JPEG before writing it.

Do you care more about a fast buffer over having a backup copy of your images? Then as you said use the CF card primarily and the SD card as overflow only if you run out of room on the CF.

abqnmusa wrote:
dhphoto,
what does the battery show when you check it on the back of the camera in the menu?
does this occur with multiple batteries?

I am using the new battery and a few old one I had with the 5D II and not seeing that



It shows 60% and three green dots. The same.

I'm hoping it's just a new battery that needs some running in but I'm more concerned about it losing overnight. I don't remember my 5DII losing anything at all.

Yohan Pamudji wrote:
EyeBrock wroten 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!

Depends what you want to accomplish. Do you need a backup of every file? If so I'd go RAW on both cards. Reports I've read say that RAW on one and JPEG on the other is actually slower than RAW on both, probably due to the overhead of processing the JPEG before writing it.

Do you care more about a fast buffer over having a backup copy of your images? Then as you said use the CF card primarily and the SD card as overflow only if you run out of room on the CF.

I'm really not sure.

I'm sure having two cards recording the same image is good for some. I think I'll just see the SD card as a spare card and not record to it. I'm pretty happy with the reliability of my CF cards and I'd rather have the option to have a larger buffer. Thnaks for your input!

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


Mine was down to 60% after 67 frames, including some chimping, some playing with menus and a few seconds video. I don't regard this as good!

Although this did include a 6% or so drop overnight when it was left on, but sleeping.

This is much much worse than my 5DII

I think you have a bad battery. On multiple occasions (at football games) I have shot over 500 shots on one battery in my 5D3, and it still shows half-charged. I don't chimp much or change the settings much during a shoot, however. And of course I turned off the feature that automatically shows the image on the LCD after capture.

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


Mine was down to 60% after 67 frames, including some chimping, some playing with menus and a few seconds video. I don't regard this as good!

Although this did include a 6% or so drop overnight when it was left on, but sleeping.

This is much much worse than my 5DII

That's not normal. Complete shot in the dark: are you using a 3rd party grip?

i have two oem batteries from my 5d2 so I should be good.

As you may or may not know, upcoming in April is a firmware update for the 5D MkIII. Not a big deal but may be for those who shoot birds and some other minor upgrades if you'd consider it being worth it to you...5D MkIII firmware

I shoot horse shows with my 5D3, and the battery life has been excellent. I can get over 1000 shots in a day and still have battery life left. I did buy an extra battery, but have never needed to use it.

Incidentally, this season I have used the camera in all kinds of awful conditions, hot, humid, pouring rain, cold, dusty. I'd been using 1-series cameras exclusively until I got this 5D3, and I am very impressed with it.

pizdets17 wrote:
Anything I should know about this thing thats a quirk or technique? Any input appreciated!

Congratulations.
Pleasure and success with your new body.

Ralph

Got brand spanking new 5D3 as well

pizdets17 wrote:
Anything I should know about this thing thats a quirk or technique? Any input appreciated!


Congrats on the new camera. I think you will find that the 5DMK3 does well at almost all types of photography. I can't think of a more versatile camera.

As for tips, shoot a lot and play with the AF settings. There are a lot of options and it will take a little time to determine which settings work best for your situations.

Have fun!

yea having trouble with ai servo for hockey already...

You can tweak AI servo sensitivity and point/cluster to fit your style and subject. Might take a while to work through all the possibilities...

I see that... Any recomendations for shooting goalies in hockey lol?

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 believe this is by design. I don't think it's useless, in the sense that it makes its behaviour 100% predictable. I did not use this setting with my D700 as it would usually "overthink" what I was pointing the af zone to, sometimes misunderstanding the scene.
Combined with the ability to switch AF selection in a jiffy by pressing the DOF button, it's fairly easy to switch between zone or extended point AF when the subject isn't the closest in the AF frame and auto selection when the subject is the closest object within the AF frame

pizdets17 wrote:
yea having trouble with ai servo for hockey already...

There is a 44 page auto focus guide for the 1DX that also applies to the 5DIII. Do a search on that.

Basically, you can tune how quickly it picks up on a moving object, whether it stays with that object or jumps to a new one, how certain it is of focus before the first shot versus next shot, whether it tracks a smooth, continuous object, or one that changes direction.

There are also articles on some sports forums on settings for different sports. Quite a sophisticated system!