5D3 for sports/action?

[LetTheRightLensIn]

@pwp: Thanks for the pre-owned 1D4 idea. I hadn't considered it seriously before you mentioned it.

After thinking it over since yesterday, I'm coming to the conclusion that the 5D3 will probably be my best choice at the moment. During the last 3 years, about half of my shots have been of motorcycle riding at trackdays.
But for the next two years, I'm in mainland China for the company so I will have few opportunities to do this. More likely the majority of my shots will be of the landscape, buildings, fauna, etc. For the situations where I will shoot sports, the 5D3 AF system will most likely do very fine.
Surely Bosman, Wilmark and others' comments attest that the 5D3 AF is no turd when it comes to sports - it will be legions better than my 50D.

A second reason not pursuing a pre-owned 1D4, is that I would have a much harder time finding one here in CN than a new 5D3.

In two years time, I might be able to pick up a used 1DX for action if I still have the need want and the 5D3 cannot deliver. We'll see

Thanks for all the comments, I really appreciate it.

Yeah if you are also going to be doing tons of other stuff an dnot just 100% sports with it then the 5D3 all the way, APS-H is a bit awkward match to many landscape lenses (although you can certainly get around that) and it's a bulky pain of a brick to lug around to everything, the 5D3 has better movies and UI and such.

[Jamesy]

14 shots with a slow Lexar 16GB 200x card
17 shots with a 30MB/s SanDisk Extreme III 8GB card
20 shots (3.3s) with a 32GB SanDisk Extreme Pro 90GB/s card
35 shots (5.8s) with a 32GB Lexar 1000x card (whoa! 35! vs 20! 5.8s of continuous shooting vs only 3.3s!)

This is consistent with my findings, I get 21 @ 6fps before it starts to slow down on my 32GB Sandisk 90MB/s card.

[kaihp]

The 7D has a deeper buffer (~25 RAWs), vs 18 RAWs using a UDMA-7 card on the 5D3. Here the 5D3 and 50D are similar (16 RAWs).

The 7D vs 5D3 buffer depth in real life was not as in the Canon manuals per my experience

You're right I should have said that this were numbers from the manuals. The 50D seems to fairly spot-on WRT buffer depth.

14 shots with a slow Lexar 16GB 200x card
17 shots with a 30MB/s SanDisk Extreme III 8GB card
20 shots (3.3s) with a 32GB SanDisk Extreme Pro 90GB/s card
35 shots (5.8s) with a 32GB Lexar 1000x card (whoa! 35! vs 20! 5.8s of continuous shooting vs only 3.3s!)

(so the Lexar 1000x makes a surprisingly large difference on the 5D3 and is well worth the $ if you seriously shoot action with the 5D3, do note that the 16GB 1000x card is said to be slower than the 32GB and larger 1000x cards so the advantage may be less if you go for the 16GB size; with this speed card the 5D3 continuous shooting time easily beats the 5D2 and 7D)

Your test data just supports my excuse to invest in a couple of 32GB Lexar 1000x cards :-)
Clearly the CF controller in the 5D3 can take full advantage of the UDMA7 cards, and the v2.0.0 FW update shows that while the CF controller was UDMA7 capable when the 7D was designed, Canon lacked the 1000x-type card to do the FW development to do the finetuning needed to make it peak, and instead chose the conservative route to ensure correct functionality over speed.

[Bosman]

I never said the 5dm3 was a turd for sports, i said you need to understand the custom af functions to fit the type of photography and when you find what settings work best then the only compromise it he FPS. Personally I have shot the 1dm3 in 10fps since 2007 when i got it, but the 5dm3 with 6fps doesn't leave me wanting. The 5dm3 renders color so very well! I get excited when see my work later. When shooting in a church last week i was in auto white balance on the 5dm3 but had to go to 2600k on the 1dm3 when not using flash. The triathlon i also shot last saturday had very few misses in focus usually a fluke miss or due to rapidly having to change focus but like i said few misses none the less. Sure its not a 1dm3 but hey changing how i use focal lengths being FF on sports and the settings means things feel a little diff but it isn't a bad diff.

[kaihp]

I never said the 5dm3 was a turd for sports

Sir, we are in violent agreement.

[bdunbar79]

The 5D3 will do just fine.  Especially if you put a 300 f/2.8L I IS lens on it.  It'll lock and track at center point just as well as a 1D4 or 1DX in that situation.

[kaihp]

I received my 5D3 yesterday evening (hand carry by a friend). The battery was flat so I left it the night over to charge.

Plopped the battery in this morning, played around with the menus and took a couple of shots of the rising sun.
Now I just have to re-adapt to not having a crop camera again. Guess the 70-200 will get more use now.

Damn, this looks like the beginning of a long and good relationship with this camera

Thanks for all your comments, either way.

[Bosman]

I received my 5D3 yesterday evening (hand carry by a friend). The battery was flat so I left it the night over to charge.

Plopped the battery in this morning, played around with the menus and took a couple of shots of the rising sun.
Now I just have to re-adapt to not having a crop camera again. Guess the 70-200 will get more use now.

Damn, this looks like the beginning of a long and good relationship with this camera

Thanks for all your comments, either way.

Congrats!

[bdunbar79]

I received my 5D3 yesterday evening (hand carry by a friend). The battery was flat so I left it the night over to charge.

Plopped the battery in this morning, played around with the menus and took a couple of shots of the rising sun.
Now I just have to re-adapt to not having a crop camera again. Guess the 70-200 will get more use now.

Damn, this looks like the beginning of a long and good relationship with this camera

Thanks for all your comments, either way.

Awesome!  Have fun with it!  If you get bored go out and play with the multi-exposure and HDR features.  It can be really fun at night!  The color smoothness is really nice with this camera, at ISO's above 6400.

[kaihp]

Awesome!  Have fun with it!  If you get bored go out and play with the multi-exposure and HDR features.  It can be really fun at night!  The color smoothness is really nice with this camera, at ISO's above 6400.

Actually, already thought about using HDR for the sunrise this morning but didn't spend time on it. There was quite a bit of haze in the air, so the pictures aren't the greatest. I'll look at the tonight though.

Edit: Oh, and I need to update the firmware. Got delivered with v1.1.2, and the light leak fix applied.

[Bosman]

Awesome!  Have fun with it!  If you get bored go out and play with the multi-exposure and HDR features.  It can be really fun at night!  The color smoothness is really nice with this camera, at ISO's above 6400.

Actually, already thought about using HDR for the sunrise this morning but didn't spend time on it. There was quite a bit of haze in the air, so the pictures aren't the greatest. I'll look at the tonight though.

Edit: Oh, and I need to update the firmware. Got delivered with v1.1.2, and the light leak fix applied.

That new firmware doesn't really do much, other than maybe screw up focussing. I think my random not being able to auto focus could be tied to the update. Just sayin...I'd wait for the next update where more issues are addressed.

[Jamesy]

That new firmware doesn't really do much, other than maybe screw up focussing. I think my random not being able to auto focus could be tied to the update. Just sayin...I'd wait for the next update where more issues are addressed.

I never got around to updating mine since day1 (March 23rd) and I have not really had any issues sO I think I will wait until the next one comes out.

[Bosman]

That new firmware doesn't really do much, other than maybe screw up focussing. I think my random not being able to auto focus could be tied to the update. Just sayin...I'd wait for the next update where more issues are addressed.

I never got around to updating mine since day1 (March 23rd) and I have not really had any issues sO I think I will wait until the next one comes out.

Good call!

[bdunbar79]

I'll be testing out the 5D Mark III to its fullest this Friday.  I have a tennis match to shoot at 3pm and will likely be shooting mainly with the 5D3 due to silent shutter and how close I'll be. 

[swampler]

That new firmware doesn't really do much, other than maybe screw up focussing. I think my random not being able to auto focus could be tied to the update. Just sayin...I'd wait for the next update where more issues are addressed.

I never got around to updating mine since day1 (March 23rd) and I have not really had any issues sO I think I will wait until the next one comes out.

Good call!

Didn't mess up my focusing and this is the only place I've seen it mentioned of being a potential issue.