Steven Kelley wrote:
My 1dIII does this........does anyone elses?

In single shot mode, it will lock onto the subject, and "most" of the pics will be in focus. There is that occassional one that is soft or just completely OOF for no reason, but 8 out of 10 are in focus.

In ai servo shooting a stationary subject from a tripod, the focus point is constantly shifting. The distance ring on the lens constantly moves back and forth slightly, and looking through the viewfinder you can see the focus shifting. If it can't lock onto a stationary object in ai servo, how's it going to consistantly track a moving object?

My camera is in the affected range and is scheduled for the mirror adjustment. I've tried fw v1.1.0 and v1.1.3, and the focus acts the same. I've adjusted the focus sensitivity just to see if that affected the instability, and it didn't.

And speaking of the "ghost" images seen in RG's photos. I've seen that as well. Today I was taking shots of a focus calibration chart. The numbers on the chart that were in front of the focus area showed ghost images, the ones behind the focus area were just fuzzy, no ghost images. I took dozens of shots and the ghost images were always present in the same way, on the front end of the focus area, but not the back.

Has anyone else seen this with their camera?

Yes - and so did my 1dII. It's like it can't decide on a focus point. Even on one shot (shooting a ruler at 45 degrees) the focus will shift from front to back. If the sub-mirror is not working right, that might account for it, but anymore, I just don't know...

Steve

Yes,
I had 6 copies of Mark IIIs, all had the problem as you described at one shot mode.

Lide


Steve Perry wrote:
Steven Kelley wrote:
My 1dIII does this........does anyone elses?

In single shot mode, it will lock onto the subject, and "most" of the pics will be in focus. There is that occassional one that is soft or just completely OOF for no reason, but 8 out of 10 are in focus.

In ai servo shooting a stationary subject from a tripod, the focus point is constantly shifting. The distance ring on the lens constantly moves back and forth slightly, and looking through the viewfinder you can see the focus shifting. If it can't lock onto a stationary object in ai servo, how's it going to consistantly track a moving object?

My camera is in the affected range and is scheduled for the mirror adjustment. I've tried fw v1.1.0 and v1.1.3, and the focus acts the same. I've adjusted the focus sensitivity just to see if that affected the instability, and it didn't.

And speaking of the "ghost" images seen in RG's photos. I've seen that as well. Today I was taking shots of a focus calibration chart. The numbers on the chart that were in front of the focus area showed ghost images, the ones behind the focus area were just fuzzy, no ghost images. I took dozens of shots and the ghost images were always present in the same way, on the front end of the focus area, but not the back.

Has anyone else seen this with their camera?

Yes - and so did my 1dII. It's like it can't decide on a focus point. Even on one shot (shooting a ruler at 45 degrees) the focus will shift from front to back. If the sub-mirror is not working right, that might account for it, but anymore, I just don't know...

Steve

Some of you have probably seen this before. A Seattle Times sports shooter talks about this blurryness in his blog (serach for "Mark III Misses the Mark, Part I")

http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/bestseatinthehouse/2007/10/

I stated the following opinion on NatureScapes a couple of months ago regarding similar over-all blurring of photos as shown by a Seattle Times photographer on SportsShooter.

Restating it now, my opinion is what we are seeing is the lens elements being driven by the focusing motor during exposure. The look is similar to what you would see if you exposed a frame with an IS lens very quickly after IS started up, before it has a chance to settle down. Those of you with a first generation IS lens which takes near a second to settle down can easily see this over-all blurring if you make an exposure before the stabilizer has stabilized. The commonality is moving lens elements.

An explanation for the directional aspect of the blurring is that for the focusing elements to move as quickly as they do with very little power draw, is there has to be a little bit of slop or play between the bearing surfaces. As the lens focusing elements are rotating to move forward or backward, they will also move slightly to the side, taking up that play, much like your car will always slide to one side or another if you spin the wheels on ice.

With exposure of these photos being so short I do not think subject motion is an explanation for the ghost image phenomenon. But I do think mistiming of the camera exposure and focusing sequence is a possibility, especially given all the other troubles the camera has exhibited, some of which would have masked this one. Is it correctable in firmware? One can hope.

Steve J

Jammy Straub wrote:
MHJS wrote:
Steven Kelley wrote:
My 1dIII does this........does anyone elses?

In single shot mode, it will lock onto the subject, and "most" of the pics will be in focus. There is that occassional one that is soft or just completely OOF for no reason, but 8 out of 10 are in focus.

In ai servo shooting a stationary subject from a tripod, the focus point is constantly shifting. The distance ring on the lens constantly moves back and forth slightly, and looking through the viewfinder you can see the focus shifting. If it can't lock onto a stationary object in ai servo, how's it going to consistantly track a moving object?

My camera is in the affected range and is scheduled for the mirror adjustment. I've tried fw v1.1.0 and v1.1.3, and the focus acts the same. I've adjusted the focus sensitivity just to see if that affected the instability, and it didn't.

And speaking of the "ghost" images seen in RG's photos. I've seen that as well. Today I was taking shots of a focus calibration chart. The numbers on the chart that were in front of the focus area showed ghost images, the ones behind the focus area were just fuzzy, no ghost images. I took dozens of shots and the ghost images were always present in the same way, on the front end of the focus area, but not the back.

Has anyone else seen this with their camera?
I'm on my 2nd 1D3 the latest 'blue dot"
I have experienced the same thing.
The oscillation is worse with the 300 than a 70-200.
Also approximately 1 out of 10 single shots are off.


Both of you should know AI Servo has never been intended for stationary subjects. It assumes subject movement is present. There is no reason to be alarmed that it isn't working with a stationary subject, it never has. That's why you pump you AF ON button to acquire focus on a stationary subject and then let off as soon as focus is achieved while in servo mode.

That's like trying to remove a philips head screw with a straight slot screw driver and being upset it's not working correctly.

The one shot in my case was not with AI Servo.

I'd be very interested to see your school's test results and methodologies, if you'd care to share the results.

It was more than two months ago with three different MkIII bodies that finally were returned. (Two by private owners, one by the institution.) Of course none of them had the so called fix. We never were able to detect heat-related problems anyway (attributed to the sub-mirror issue). But we had different long test series indicating what I said before: Unidirectional blur and supposed real-time processing errors. We actually did not try to test the cameras, we tried to produce photographic documents of a production process, where a high-speed hydropneumatic press had to be watched. The incapability of the AF-system to follow the movement of a high contrast well lit area led to further judgments and verifications regarding the camera.

I wonder if the ghosting you refer to may be something to do with the IS mechanism??

*note to self, read all posts before posting*

Obviously others feel it may be IS related.

In the shots where they look blurry... it's very hard for me to tell and/or see if they are front or back focused... For the most part the focus/DOF seems to be pretty well situated on the runner... yet as is noted throughout this thread the are blurry...

Forgive me if I'm way off base here... but could this somehow be caused by the IS? It's never been totally clear to me if IS is fully independent of the body, or if the lens and body do work together somehow...

If not IS... then surely something is moving...either the sensor or a lens element, etc... I don't think these are simply out of focus, but then as I said earlier it is somewhat hard for me to determine the exact focus point on those frames that are blurry...

I guess if nothing else... I'm glad I'm not a owner of the 1DMIII.

Next question though, is... has anyone ever done any extensive testing like this on a 40D (I do own one of these, but I don't typically shoot AI Servo in full speed sequential shooting)

I don't think it's IS-related (it happens on my non-IS lenses), though I do think that the idea that the lens continues to AF while the exposure is happening might be what is happening, and that, in the end, should be correctable via firmware. The other alternative is that it's the vibrating filter is somehow moving, which will involve a pretty major change.

I also doubt it's IS-related, as one would expect to also see the effect in the MkIIn images, which were shot (presumably) using the same lens and settings.

Its funny, I went to the Seahawks game this weekend with the Seattle PI's photo editor (gee think the seats were any good) and he gave me a couple tid bits. First he told me that Getty Images is telling Canon that they want over a hundred bodies replaced flat out. Second that they will not buy any new bodies (they even held off buying any so far) until canon gets this fixed.

could this be due to the dust cover?? I was thinking I was the only one that had seen this on his own camera. Guess I'm not :-( Class action here we come

Sad thing is no matter how much we discuss, unless someone's able to bring this issue up with Canon like Galbraith did with the heat issue (perhaps some sort of high-readership blog), there's virtually no chance that it will be fixed. Sad thing too; this problem bothered me much more than the (AF mirror-caused) out of focus shots did - I don't know how many images I've deleted that were "almost there" or "why the hell is nothing quite in focus". Looks like a MkIIIn is soon forthcoming eh?

JH

You got admit the 1D III is the ideal Xmas present as it's the gift that's keeps on giving oke:

I have a excellent condition 1D II I'm willing to sell for $4000

jianghai_ho wrote:
Sad thing is no matter how much we discuss, unless someone's able to bring this issue up with Canon like Galbraith did with the heat issue (perhaps some sort of high-readership blog), there's virtually no chance that it will be fixed. Sad thing too; this problem bothered me much more than the (AF mirror-caused) out of focus shots did - I don't know how many images I've deleted that were "almost there" or "why the hell is nothing quite in focus". Looks like a MkIIIn is soon forthcoming eh?

JH


Hopefully Jeff will contact RG with his analysis of the photos Rob posted. I'd say there's no reason to believe RG's coverage of this is over. He knows there's still a problem, and if someone presents the problem in a well thought out manor, he has no reason to not bring it to the public eye.

So yeah.. um anyone got Robs number for Jeff?

Things like the Cnet article that just ran aren't going to let help this just go away either.

Jeff wrote:

Note in the screen grab below that virtually every time the MkIII has an out-of-focus image, it almost ALWAYS exhibits some sort of secondary 'ghost' image, suggestive of some sort of movement (which at 1/8000th, I'd think is unlikely on RG's part). This is very clearly and consistently exhibited on the 'Brooks' logo the runner's blue shirt, since it has a high-contrast area (dark background with white lettering). With the camera in the vertical orientation, the 'Brooks' logo has a ghosted image above it, indicating some sort of movement somewhere in the system (side-to-side in relation to a landscape orientation). This would obviously contribute to an image's overall softness regardless of the actual focal plane, though it appears to me to be consistenly manifested mostly when the camera ALSO has focused either slightly in front of (or more typically) slightly behind the subject. Note that the MkIIn's OOF images do not exhibit this odd characteristic (at least that I could find), suggesting the lens has nothing to do with it.

Whether the cause of this apparent 'movement' in the system is also causing the focus errors becomes the question in my mind (there is also a chicken-and-egg component here). I suppose there is always the slight chance that it could be lens/IS related, but I would doubt that he was using IS for such sequences, and one would expect it would have been duplicated in the MkIIn images. I have no idea what component in the system could be moving, whether it is a result of the new anti-dust mechanism, due to the sensor moving (which seems unlikely), or some sort of overall 'looseness' in the parts of the camera that is exacerbated by the MkIII's extremely fast shooting rate.

Like I said, I have noticed these 'ghosted' secondary images in several of my OOF MkIII images, and as you all have probably seen, there is a fair amount of internet chatter about overall image softness (not the all-over OOF 'misses' that we've seen so much of), though image softness can often be attributable to user error of a variety of sorts.

Hi Jeff,

I just mentioned the following in DavidP's thread, but I think it may be valid here too....

The ghosting is something that I have seen before with my 1DS2 and a 16-35 L II. Would you agree that this is a similar effect?....

pixelpix,
were you trying to manual focus during the exposure?

My plans to buy the 1D Mk III have been postponed again. I am getting desperate. Will this saga never end?

Canon, a fix is needed ASAP or there will be more black lenses in Beijing that white ones….

Happy shooting,
Yakim.

Hi Marcel,

No.... the focus was set using AF and switched off to MF on the lens. The camera was not touched during the exposure, as it was tripod mounted and used MLU and 2 second timer release.

Remember that the above 100% crops are from the very same image, so any bump or knock (which there was none) would effect the whole image.

Rusty

Hmm... Interesting, it does look very similar. Do you have any images shot at the same time that does not exhibit this phenomenon? i.e., is it random? If not, I might expect this to be some sort of more typical optical quirk (similar to the 'longitudinal spherochromatic aberration' that someone referred to earlier in this thread). Does it move around the image, or is it never shown in the center?

Interesting, though...