scowl wrote:
If you had read Rob's articles about the 1D Mark II, you would have read over and over that the 1D Mark II's had the best autofocus system of any camera in history. No one felt his claim demanded proof, I guess because no one disagreed with him.
Actually, I (and I think others) disagree with him quite a bit on that statement.
With the mkIV the importance of correct CF function has been stressed. This was somewhat lacking with the mkIII. One user,one set of results is hardly any form of conclusive evidence just personal opinion.
I am manufacturer sponsored in the field of sport & whilst trying to maintain objective impartiality towards suitability I am always going to have some bias towards my sponsor. That is why I receive sponsorship and, when asked, my first recommendation is their product & its benefits.
I think that's hardly a valid comparison over there. Galbraith already said that nothing beats the 1D IV shooting track runners, which would be more or less the same experience as the birds Scott is showing us. It's in other sports where RG has experienced problems. Now had Scott Bourne been shooting erratic moving birds (swallows come to mind) against a busy background and they were all (or 90%+) in focus, it would be completely different. I envy the man though: 5 x D3s + 5 x 1D IV = one heck of a nice toolkit!
Boy, and I so wanted not to post in this thread anymore
A hypothetical explanation of how using surrounding AF points can result in sudden frontfocus, in front of any object:
With the main focus point locked, everything is fine.
Any object in one of the surrounding points is a little bit closer to the camera, say 0.1% closer.
Then, the main point loses contrast.
A very short time later, say 5 milliseconds, the AF system locks on one of the surrounding points.
The AF system interprets this as the object that was in the main point, has started moving towards the camera.
With the prediction of 50 milliseconds mirror delay, the AF system predicts that the object of interest will be 1% closer to the camera at the time of capture.
Yakim Peled wrote:
"He says the Nikon D3s offers better autofocus. I agree." So Canon did lose its autofocus mojo (whatever that is).
Happy shooting,
Yakim.
Perhaps, it's fairer to quote more from the article:
"In my tests, the Canon 1D MK IV is indeed reliable. Remember that I have shot extensively with the D3 and the D3s. I made the switch to Nikon FROM Canon about two years ago because of the 1D MK III AF. After shooting the D3, I bought five D3 bodies and then replaced them with five D3s bodies. So when I make the comparison, it’s based on actually owning and using the bodies day in and day out, not just testing them over a weekend.
I have two 1D MK IV bodies in hand and two more in the studio back home and one on order. You can bet I wouldn’t commit $25k to bodies that won’t autofocus well. On location in Florida I have made countless sequences of shots using the Canon that were in tack sharp focus....
In conclusion, I don’t think Canon has completely caught up to the D3/D3s autofocus, but I do think that it’s close enough that technique and lens choice can make the margin negligible. I also think there’s no reason to assume you can’t trust the Canon 1D MK IV autofocus – based on my own extensive use of the camera in the last three weeks I’m convinced it focuses just fine."
I think it would be interesting to see the "olympic" shots and whos shooting with what- to determine if the MK IV really cuts the mustard........as I'm ready to get one and all this info has thrown a blanket over my plan to move ahead......
DavidP wrote:
Actually, I (and I think others) disagree with him quite a bit on that statement.
I didn't hear a single complaint from anyone when the 1D Mark II was released years ago. All I heard from photographers who used both the 1D Mark II and the D2h was that the AF systems were surprisingly similar. When we compared what we got from NCAA basketball games there was never a clear AF winner. Sometimes the Mark II would get a shot that the D2h would miss and sometimes it was the other way around. It was not a major issue at all -- both worked great.
IMO, the 1D-3 improved upon the 1D-2 AF ability.
Yes, but at the expense of other AF abilities. That why I continued to shoot a Mark IIn along with a Mark III for two years.
DavidP wrote:
The test was hardly "objective", IMO.
Hmmm, shooting actual sports in real world conditions and posting gigabytes of photos to let photographers judge for themselves how well the camera did? How do you get more objective than that?
This was far more informative than the reviews by photographers who claimed that the Mark IV's never took out of focus shots, and to prove this included a couple of reduced shots that could have been taken by a D30 ten years ago.
scowl wrote:
This was far more informative than the reviews by photographers who claimed that the Mark IV's never took out of focus shots, and to prove this included a couple of reduced shots that could have been taken by a D30 ten years ago.
The best review is the one done by the owner of the camera, for his own personal use, when he decides how well the AF (or any function) is working for the scenarios he shoots in.
It's pretty obvious there's a lot of people who don't want to like this camera for a myriad of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with it's AF performance. Anyone here who's going to let RG's review be the reason for not buying the MKIV probably wasn't going to anyhow.
