OK I'm breaking a rule and cross-posting this from the Sports forum. Since I started this thread I feel like I ought to let y'all know where I am with the camera so far.
The short answer is I'm still shaking it down and getting the hang of it, but I have to say I'm pretty happy with it. These are far from the best soccer images I've ever made, but they demonstrate one of the main reasons I'm happy with the camera, which happens to be this particular stadium and a couple others like it where I am sentenced to shoot. The lights at this one in particular are so bad that with the Mark II and IIn, I would simply pack up and watch the game once it got full dark. My Mark II's wouldn't focus, and wouldn't produce anything remotely usable even if they could. Believe me, I tried.
These are all ISO 8000, 1/400 or 1/500 at f/2.8. RAW converted in Capture One v5.1 with fairly stock settings, html & jpg's generated by BreezeBrowser Pro.
Not having the great success that everyone is having on this thread. Only had the Mark IV for a week know. Shot a gymnastics meet Friday. Total disaster. Used single expansion on focusing point. Just didn't work. Vault, Bars, Beam and floor. Even simple stuff on beam and floor were out of focus. Was using canon 85 f1.8. Saturday shot a track meet and was happy with the results. No expansion this time. One thing though. Every once in a while, focus would lock on to something and not let go for a 4 or 5 frame burst. Checked later in DPP and my focus point never left my subject? Was using a Canon 300 f2.8. Tomorrow some golf and this weekend softball. Will keep practicing. Also I'm coming from a Mark IIn
Jonesy wrote:
I shoot weddings and portraits with mine.
Nice pics Jonesy - are the lenses you used primes, or zooms? I just received my Mark IV today, but I have been a bit leary about if I made the right decision.
I know the IV is ideal for sports action, BIF, etc - but I also need a camera that can do portrait work too, glad to see this Mark IV appears to be an all-around, multi-purpose camera that produces great images no matter what the function.
Your pics put my mind at ease, can't wait to start using it!
I'm wondering if other shooters using the 1D IV with long lenses have tried CF III-2? That is the setting recommended by Peter Reid Miller in his SI settings: AF Expansion to Surrounding points.
In the past on my 1D III I seemed to get the best results with Single Focus point and no expansion. BUT the problem I always had was when the subject (usually soccer/football/lacrosse player) was distant and was "small" in the frame...the focus point would sometimes slip off the subject and onto the background. Today it hit me--could it be that on the IV, with CF III-2, that when the focus point slips off the subject one of the surrounding points would then pick up the subject, hence maintain focus on the subject...and not go to the distant background?
I will try it but if the experience of others is out there I'd like to know.
One more question--is experience showing that the 1D IV tends to require/benefit from Focus Micro Adjustments on each lens to a similar degree as the III? I guess I need to buck up and take half a day to micro adjust to several lenses. Wish I could just waive a magic wand!
bwhip62 wrote:
My wife took a couple of our Goldens out for some agility training today, so I decided to tag along to do some testing with the 1D Mark IV, and my freshly recalibrated 70-200 f/2.8 IS. I was really pleased with how well the Mark IV's AF tracked the dogs through the weave poles.
nice shots...... OT: even more impressive is to see goldens doing agility runs....nice.
Mom and dad use to train golden and labs for field trials / hunt test - later.
Yep ... they drag us kids out there....
in Canon 1D_Mark_IV_guide_en
they say the following:
"With shooting situations like this, when using area expansion to shoot moving subjects, the continuous priority setting is effective in almost every situation. When there is no specific target, as we will introduce on the next page, it is probably best to remember, if area expansion is used, use C.Fn III-4 option 1: ‘Continuous AF track priority. "
however i see most ppl keep Cfn 4 at 0.
any comments
I have it set to 1. That would seem to be the preferred setting for sports, where presumably you don't want the referee running between you and the player to throw the AF off. OTOH, it might also be the case that this setting causes the camera to take longer to acquire the subject if you make the mistake (which I frequently do) of starting AF with the focus point on the background instead of the subject. In that case, the default setting of 0 might be preferable. I experimented with this on Saturday by shooting one match with 1 and the other with 0, but I haven't had time to compare the results yet.
In addition, we should bear in mind that the AF guide suggests this setting has no effect whatsoever unless you also have focus point expansion active. That's not entirely clear, because it also seems to draw a distinction between AF jumping from a near target to a far one (e.g., background) vs. going the other way and jumping from far/background to a nearer target.
This would benefit from someone doing some very careful and controlled testing and reporting back to us all. Who will volunteer? ;-)
uz2work wrote:
Perhaps, differences in technique or in the type of shooting being done yield different results with turning focus search off, but I've experimented with turning it off now on 5 different bodies going back to the 1D Mark II. With every new body since then, I've given turning off focus search a good test with a full day of shooting. With every one of those cameras, including the 1D Mark IV, turning focus search off has resulted in an especially high number of shots that were close to being sharp but that were not quite sharp and that, therefore, ended up getting trashed. My conclusion is that, while I allow for changing a number of the custom functions depending on what I'm shooting, the one that I don't ever consider changing is III 5. For me, focus search stays on all the time.
Call it trial and error at the moment. I found the AF to be fairly aggressive in trying to capture the planes and when the landing light shone directly into the lens, the camera would lose AF. So rather than having it hunt across the range, I sent the Cf5 to off. This stabilised the AF for a while but did mean that when the AF lost focus, it took a while to regain.
I honestly think this a bit of learn as you go and there doesn't seem to be any default AF set that is fit for all occaisions.
I repeat once again,i am canonist from ever;this "professional" camera it seems to be the best product of canon from digital begin.....but can i ask you,Nill, if, have you never shot with last Nikon camera products ( D3 ,or better DS3 )?
I have seen,noise, is better if you shot in Raw or better ,middle Raw format,but when i have to send photos to agency,i have no time to convert them,and in JPEG mode ( try it ) the noise ,( over 2000 iso) is huge,compared to the last DS3.
I have send my new camera,with long lenses ,to Canon,to perfectly calibrate them; this because i am not able to use any sharp mask in post production,@ 2000 iso palasport light ( while i am able to sharp mask 5D Mk II files @ 2500 iso) with 1/500 f 2.8.
I have set Picture Style: sharpness 5 ( vs 3 standard) contrast 1 ( vs 0 standard) saturation -1 (vs 0 standard).
I have not had the opportunity to shoot the Nikons, but it is my clear understanding that while the Mark IV might come close to the D3 in terms of high ISO noise performance, it is at least a stop behind the D3s in that regard. And yes that was a fairly significant disappointment to me — I had hoped the Mark IV would be just as good in that respect.
So yes, as happy as I am with the Mark IV, I could have been happier. But that's life. And I have too much invested in Canon equipment and experience to seriously consider switching at this point.
As for settings, I shoot RAW exclusively, so I can't help you on the jpg side.
I finally got to shoot some field sports this week. I've done a track meet and a Girls soccer game that started at 6PM and had amazing light for the first half, then went under the lights at night. I shot with my 300 and no converter tonight. I just want to say I want to weld these two together......
I have just finished a days shooting on my 3rd MK4 body, the first was producing black (over exposed) frames every 70 or so exposures and also "froze" on me for a few mins and would not accept input from any dials or buttons, the second body would not take a sharp image no matter what lens or focus setting combination I tried, despite being calibrated by Canon, my third..... well, this one works so far with my 85mm F1.8 on HIF photography, (that's, Horses in flight, or show jumping). More HIF this week on same lens then next week HIT (Horses in Trot or dressage). If it works then with my 70-200 F2.8 I will be happy.
I got my 1DMKIV a few days ago. So far the results are looking very promising. I would say image quality is at least one stop better with high ISOs for equivalent output size and compared to my ex. 1DMKIII.
Not yet much bif, but af has been so far spot on for more static subjects with 500/4 + tube or extender. Both servo and one shot.
The lacking AC adapter is pita, this camera costs awful lot here in Europe, yet they had cheek to drop ACK-E4
First example is ISO3200, the second one slightly cropped ISO1600
I'm not entirely sure, because I haven't been paying close attention, but I think I might be pushing 10k frames or so on this battery charge, and it's only down to two bars. I had noticed it was still showing a full charge or one bar down after shooting a game, so I just quit charging it — and that was at least eight, and maybe ten matches ago. I shoot anywhere from 1000 to 1500 frames a match, so that means I'm probably up around 10k.
Next time I change batteries I'm going to make a note of the frame counter and see what it's really doing, but it definitely keeps going and going and going. Maybe Canon found a way to have the USM motor in the BWL's charge the battery. ;-)
Nill Toulme wrote:
I'm not entirely sure, because I haven't been paying close attention, but I think I might be pushing 10k frames or so on this battery charge, and it's only down to two bars. I had noticed it was still showing a full charge or one bar down after shooting a game, so I just quit charging it — and that was at least eight, and maybe ten matches ago. I shoot anywhere from 1000 to 1500 frames a match, so that means I'm probably up around 10k.
Next time I change batteries I'm going to make a note of the frame counter and see what it's really doing, but it definitely keeps going and going and going. Maybe Canon found a way to have the USM motor in the BWL's charge the battery. ;-)
Nill,
You can go into the menus and go to the 6th menu from the left and then select "battery info". It will tell you how many pictures you've taken since the last battery charge.
Cool. The darn thing really is a computer, isn't it...
OK, I was a little optimistic. It's only 7k frames, with 15% charge remaining. In any case I'm certainly not complaining. My Mark IIn battery performance wasn't that good, and I thought it was pretty wonderful.
Nill Toulme wrote:
Cool. The darn thing really is a computer, isn't it...
OK, I was a little optimistic. It's only 7k frames, with 15% charge remaining. In any case I'm certainly not complaining. My Mark IIn battery performance wasn't that good, and I thought it was pretty wonderful.
Nill
I have no idea how you are getting that many frames. I'm getting about 1/4 of that. You must have gotten a "special" battery.
Portatufi64 wrote:
I repeat once again,i am canonist from ever;this "professional" camera it seems to be the best product of canon from digital begin.....but can i ask you,Nill, if, have you never shot with last Nikon camera products ( D3 ,or better DS3 )?
I have seen,noise, is better if you shot in Raw or better ,middle Raw format,but when i have to send photos to agency,i have no time to convert them,and in JPEG mode ( try it ) the noise ,( over 2000 iso) is huge,compared to the last DS3.
I have send my new camera,with long lenses ,to Canon,to perfectly calibrate them; this because i am not able to use any sharp mask in post production,@ 2000 iso palasport light ( while i am able to sharp mask 5D Mk II files @ 2500 iso) with 1/500 f 2.8.
I have set Picture Style: sharpness 5 ( vs 3 standard) contrast 1 ( vs 0 standard) saturation -1 (vs 0 standard).
Have you experimented with the high ISO noise reduction settings? You might want to try standard or strong. It appears that Nikon takes a different approach to noise reduction than Canon. Canon seems to be more hands off, at least giving an option to disable NR whereas the D3/D3S always appears to have some NR applied. But, if you're shooting directly to JPEG on deadline, that might be the right approach.
One suggestion for IV NR is if you're getting a lot of speckles (white spots), try the Dust & Scratches filter at 1/70 or 1/50. The only problem with the D&S filter is that it can also blur or distort fine high contrast details. If you shoot with the in-camera sharpness at 5 and also want to do some sharpening in post I'm not surprised there are problems. Perhaps setting it around 2 in camera and modifying your post production sharpening?
? Was using a Canon 300 f2.8. Tomorrow some golf and this weekend softball. Will keep practicing. Also I'm coming from a Mark IIn
