jomor wrote:
That crack about the weather was a bad one. We here in the Nations capital have had a hot summer. The thing with being in the Arizona you have no idea what humidity is! We had 3 weeks of over 40 degrees celcius this summer and it sucked big time!
I really want a mark 3 and I have been debating getting one for the longest time. I figure I will have one by the end of the month and I hope that the 1.1.1 firmware will do the trick of fixing this puppy!!
Not a crack, a little kidding, please don't take it the wrong way. Besides, I'm a living breathing expert on humidity, any RH reading over 22% is WAY too much; you can take this bit of expertise to the bank. :-)
I am wondering - is it not simple to test this systematically?
Put a target on a trolley, attach to a powered winch. Put camera on tripod and engage winch at say 15 mph coming directly at camera. Take shots of target in burst mode. Check number of 'keepers'. Repeat with fast and slower speed and in different heat levels and with f1.4, f2.8 and f4. Now you have a good feel for keepers vs different conditions and can simply isolate that 'yes, f1.4 in 90+ heat is an issue and that must be due to something, preferably something fixable - while everything may be fine so nothing to fix there.
I would like to think Canon is doing this in some large building somewhere right this moment.
Edited by yellowducky on Sep 03, 2007 at 09:13 PM GMT
I had a shoot down in Cabo San Lucas on the beach this past weekend (96 F, 60% humidity, bright and sunny)... Did several AF Servo tests with shorter lenses (less than 100mm)... I was very pleased with the results... I wish I had a 300 or 400mm to test out on my body, but for what I have and what I shoot, it does seem to be working well.
Just wanted to post about my results this past weekend.
ow ,ow ,ow , what an uppercut to Canon and their Mark III ; now they are certainly lie
down on their back on the floor . I start counting : one , two , three , four , .........................
Sorry guys , no reaction at all ( as always ).
I doubt they are so nerdy that they didn't do real world as well. Do you have a better way to test things - that are replicable so that they can see precisely what is the problem? I don't make or test cameras for a living and doubt you do either. The above I mentioned could control for a lot of factors - heat, angle, speed etc. Would be a start to maybe isolating the problem.
That said, how the issue got past both sets of QC (I am assuming both would have been used), I dunno.
Was at my dealer today - picked up a gitzo 2560t monopod for 173 bucks so I finally found something cheaper in HK! - he said he is back ordered 6 names for a 1D even with the problems. He also said only one has come and mentioned that out of 20 shots 5 are oof. No other complaints - although they could theoretically go straight to service center and this guy wouldn't know about it. Seems the HK crowd has either got good copies generally or they are less discerning (which is my guess).
Since the camera does its AF at max aperture,
and the problems seems to exist with long lenses of 2.8 and slightly slower,
and the center (and other) points are supposed to have higher precision than the other points,
could it be that the 2.8 focus sensitivity might be the problem ?
Certainly pre-production cameras were shot by sports photographers. With the multiple firmware releases, I'm leaning towards a hardware issue in production units.
Perhaps the firmware changes are trying to improve focusing until repair kits are available? This argument suggests there are good and bad camera. But if this is true, why wouldn't Canon hand pick the "good" cameras and supply replacements to the 'A' list sports photogs? This doesn't appear to have happened, at least not in large numbers.
"Recently, some issues about Mark III cameras have been reported throughout the online photographer communities. These relate to the AI mode, to stripes within the picture, cursor navigation failure, and Err 99 messages. Canon are investigating these issues, and many are believed to be addressed in firmware release 1.1.1 (which is currently being installed by selected Canon service centres), and scheduled for release Sep 07.
Most significant of the issues is the autofocus (AF) issue. The Mark III has a completely redesigned AF system that works better in low-light than nearly all other D-SLRs. However, under certain conditions, notably warm, bright, sunny days, conditions under which AF usually operates the best, the Mark III returns below-par focus performance. This occurs typically in the form of the camera achieving focus, but the focus being off.[1]"
"Recently, some issues about Mark III cameras have been reported throughout the online photographer communities. These relate to the AI mode, to stripes within the picture, cursor navigation failure, and Err 99 messages. Canon are investigating these issues, and many are believed to be addressed in firmware release 1.1.1 (which is currently being installed by selected Canon service centres), and scheduled for release Sep 07.
Most significant of the issues is the autofocus (AF) issue. The Mark III has a completely redesigned AF system that works better in low-light than nearly all other D-SLRs. However, under certain conditions, notably warm, bright, sunny days, conditions under which AF usually operates the best, the Mark III returns below-par focus performance. This occurs typically in the form of the camera achieving focus, but the focus being off.[1]"
Studio58 wrote:
not windy & monopod used. I have had shots clearly OOF & some ok. I am confused now but very suspect...
Take this for example @ 250 second
Which focus point was selected, or were you using auto selection?
Studio58 wrote:
not windy & monopod used. I have had shots clearly OOF & some ok. I am confused now but very suspect...
Take this for example @ 250 second
Her hair in the center looks pretty good ...
Try some in better light at a much higher Tv. Eliminate variables ...
dcmiller wrote:
Certainly pre-production cameras were shot by sports photographers. With the multiple firmware releases, I'm leaning towards a hardware issue in production units.
Perhaps the firmware changes are trying to improve focusing until repair kits are available? This argument suggests there are good and bad camera. But if this is true, why wouldn't Canon hand pick the "good" cameras and supply replacements to the 'A' list sports photogs? This doesn't appear to have happened, at least not in large numbers.
Sure, if you look at Canon's Mark III sample pix, there are the shots of the skier and kayaker... which according to the exif were shot in December 06 and January this year respectively.
But to put some perspective on this, what I think is more telling is the RG preview of the Mark III from back in April:
quote:
"....our preproduction EOS-1D Mark III is a mess. It can't hold focus on static subjects very well and it can't track moving subjects very well. While Canon didn't provide any details about the autofocus limitations we would encounter in the preproduction body, we hope this is what they were referring to and this is what engineers have been solving since. The autofocus does show signs of brilliance. But we can't check off too many items from our autofocus wish list until a non-beta EOS-1D Mark III is in the house."
This indicates the problems were already prevalent with preproduction cameras. In an email to RG I asked if the problems he experienced with the preproduction cameras were the same as what he has experienced with production cameras. He indicated it's the same problem.
Studio58 wrote:
not windy & monopod used. I have had shots clearly OOF & some ok. I am confused now but very suspect...
Take this for example @ 250 second
I would try some tests under controlled conditions to determine first whether or not it's not a lens calibration issue. Clearly the focus is not where you want it to be...
