1DXMKIII - Just OK

GoldWing

Canon EOS 1DXMKII
Oct 19, 2013
404
279
Los Angeles, CA
en.wikipedia.org
Four days with the camera and our firm is going to hold off on placing our staff with the new cameras. We are surprised with the noise and virtually no increase in picture/image quality.

We have soft and oof shots that exceed what's acceptable, plus noise at 800 ISO we dont have on our MKII'S. We tried a few color charts and find the awb to be less than desired.

This camera is not ready.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: 3 users
Mar 25, 2011
16,848
1,835
We are not going to see any huge advances in new cameras, the money to develop the technology further is not there. What is available is going to be spent on mirrorless. There is new technology already in the pipeline and we will see that, but the amount we see is going to decrease. Of course, money is being invested, just less, and its shared with mirrorless.
 
Upvote 0

GoldWing

Canon EOS 1DXMKII
Oct 19, 2013
404
279
Los Angeles, CA
en.wikipedia.org
We are not going to see any huge advances in new cameras, the money to develop the technology further is not there. What is available is going to be spent on mirrorless. There is new technology already in the pipeline and we will see that, but the amount we see is going to decrease. Of course, money is being invested, just less, and its shared with mirrorless.

You know I didn't want to believe this but after using the 1DXMKIII vs. the 1DXMKII I completely agree with you.

The flat, almost muddled and lack of definition shots are not what any of us expected. We tried to manipulate images in post with Adobe and Canon DPP and One and there is almost channel deprivation but the noise and apparent purple, green should not be in shots at low ISO recovering shadows. There is a lack of DR where bright and dark subjects are close we did not expect. We really expected more from an image quality perspective across a broad spectrum of shooting. Glass that works perfectly on the 1DXMKII is not on the MKIII. Our agency was ready to purchase multiple copies until our hand-on experience. We think this is way beyond firmware fixes and this is the best Canon can do.

Unless you shoot video, I can't think of any reason to get the 1DXMKIII, with everything else about to come down the pipe.

I don't know that the D6 will be any better, but our agency looks forward to taking a look.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: 1 users
Upvote 0
May 11, 2017
1,365
635
You know I didn't want to believe this but after using the 1DXMKIII vs. the 1DXMKII I completely agree with you.

The flat, almost muddled and lack of definition shots are not what any of us expected. We tried to manipulate images in post with Adobe and Canon DPP and One and there is almost channel deprivation but the noise and apparent purple, green should not be in shots at low ISO recovering shadows. There is a lack of DR where bright and dark subjects are close we did not expect. We really expected more from an image quality perspective across a broad spectrum of shooting. Glass that works perfectly on the 1DXMKII is not on the MKIII. Our agency was ready to purchase multiple copies until our hand-on experience. We think this is way beyond firmware fixes and this is the best Canon can do.

Unless you shoot video, I can't think of any reason to get the 1DXMKIII, with everything else about to come down the pipe.

I don't know that the D6 will be any better, but our agency looks forward to taking a look.
So Digital Photography Review Is once again wrong about a Canon Camera.
 
Upvote 0

slclick

EOS 3
Dec 17, 2013
4,634
3,040
You know I didn't want to believe this but after using the 1DXMKIII vs. the 1DXMKII I completely agree with you.

The flat, almost muddled and lack of definition shots are not what any of us expected. We tried to manipulate images in post with Adobe and Canon DPP and One and there is almost channel deprivation but the noise and apparent purple, green should not be in shots at low ISO recovering shadows. There is a lack of DR where bright and dark subjects are close we did not expect. We really expected more from an image quality perspective across a broad spectrum of shooting. Glass that works perfectly on the 1DXMKII is not on the MKIII. Our agency was ready to purchase multiple copies until our hand-on experience. We think this is way beyond firmware fixes and this is the best Canon can do.

Unless you shoot video, I can't think of any reason to get the 1DXMKIII, with everything else about to come down the pipe.

I don't know that the D6 will be any better, but our agency looks forward to taking a look.
And if you find the D6 to be any or much better than the D5 you will be alone, much like how many here think you are about the Canon. The reviews for both have been in for a little while now and all I've seen and read (over 12) except yours are glowing about the 1DX3 and all are flat about the Nikon. I do appreciate you sharing as an experienced 1D2 user. Thanks.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 users
Upvote 0

SecureGSM

2 x 5D IV
Feb 26, 2017
2,360
1,231
You know I didn't want to believe this but after using the 1DXMKIII vs. the 1DXMKII I completely agree with you.

The flat, almost muddled and lack of definition shots are not what any of us expected. We tried to manipulate images in post with Adobe and Canon DPP and One and there is almost channel deprivation but the noise and apparent purple, green should not be in shots at low ISO recovering shadows. There is a lack of DR where bright and dark subjects are close we did not expect. We really expected more from an image quality perspective across a broad spectrum of shooting. Glass that works perfectly on the 1DXMKII is not on the MKIII. Our agency was ready to purchase multiple copies until our hand-on experience. We think this is way beyond firmware fixes and this is the best Canon can do.

Unless you shoot video, I can't think of any reason to get the 1DXMKIII, with everything else about to come down the pipe.

I don't know that the D6 will be any better, but our agency looks forward to taking a look.
Could you please share some RAW files that demonstrate issues you are referring to? Thank you. You have taken numerous awb test shots of the target, according to you earlier post. So any of those plus images that you are referring to that are lacking definition and are excessively noisy. Etc.
I would like to help forum members to understand issues that you have reported. Thank you.

P.S. does Adobe even support 1Dx III camera profile? What is your workflow with 1Dx III?
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: 4 users
Upvote 0

slclick

EOS 3
Dec 17, 2013
4,634
3,040
I am curious how many bodies demonstrated this issue? Was it more than one? I can easily imagine a one off copy variation issue. Then there's PEPCAK but I am sure your crew is well versed in the 1DXll and configuring an advanced dslr. Purple and green? But not CA? As in a sensor problem but noise would be a Digic problem. Very interesting if it was more than one body seeing how every reviewer had better than 1DX2 noise levels at base and much higher with nary a mention of color rendition issues.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 2 users
Upvote 0
You know I didn't want to believe this but after using the 1DXMKIII vs. the 1DXMKII I completely agree with you.

The flat, almost muddled and lack of definition shots are not what any of us expected. We tried to manipulate images in post with Adobe and Canon DPP and One and there is almost channel deprivation but the noise and apparent purple, green should not be in shots at low ISO recovering shadows. There is a lack of DR where bright and dark subjects are close we did not expect. We really expected more from an image quality perspective across a broad spectrum of shooting. Glass that works perfectly on the 1DXMKII is not on the MKIII. Our agency was ready to purchase multiple copies until our hand-on experience. We think this is way beyond firmware fixes and this is the best Canon can do.

Unless you shoot video, I can't think of any reason to get the 1DXMKIII, with everything else about to come down the pipe.

I don't know that the D6 will be any better, but our agency looks forward to taking a look.

Already shot a local Football (Soccer) match with it and I kinda agree with you BUT the issue is BECAUSE of the faster frames rates, shutter speeds and HIGHER ISO people TEND to use with this camera! At 20 fps for Soccer, I'm shooting 1/200th of a second minimum (I STILL like SOME motion blur in my photos for that SOCCER ACTION look!) AND because it's mostly cloudy/rainy in Metro Vancouver, I'm also shooting ISO 3200 or even ISO 6400, so I am DEFINITELY noticing more noise in the shadows and dark colours of the player uniforms on my photos versus the 1D Mk2 ...BUT... that's because I'm boosting my ISO setting all the time AND using a faster shutter speed in my high-speed sports/action shots BECAUSE the Canon 1Dx mk3 ACTUALLY IS capable of handling those sort of bad-lighting/late cloudy afternoon of super-intense sports/action scenarios that the 1Dx Mk2 WAS NOT ABLE TO DO !!!!

For Editorial Purposes, I don't actually find this a problem since image distribution is mostly online via end-user 1920 by 1080 pixel displays or in PDF files, so we DOWNSAMPLE the image using a Lanczos-3 Algorithm down to EXACTLY 50% on the horizontal and vertical axes to 2736 by 1824 pixels which averages out pixels (i.e. a form of fast and cheap noise reduction!) and use an UNSHARP MASK to get my edges and details back!

Works so far!

If I shoot 20 fps burst at ISO 1600 at 1/800th of a second on semi-bright days or indoors (Basketball), i'm getting action shots with the 1Dx3 I never could on a 1Dx2 so it's a trade-off. (i.e. up the ISO the faster your shutter speed up to ISO 6400 at 1/8000th of a second on BRIGHT days for sports like F1 and Skiing or hockey !)

I just do more post-production before sending my keepers into the editors!

For birding (fast moving ones such as diving falcons or hummingbirds) the 20 fps IS DEFINITELY A GREAT NOTCH in Canon's belt BUT you have to up your ISO and your shutter speed which means you also get more noise!

I should ALSO NOTE it's actually the HEIF image file format that mostly sucks so I shoot FULL RAW now! HEIF kills the shadows and highlights too much because of it's "enhanced" DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) tables AND has "noisy macro-blocking" which I think is what your real issue is! SHOOT RAW PHOTOS to get less noise !!!!

Since HEIF tries to stuff the same visual quality image into HALF the space what is usually used by the older JPEG file format, of course there are sacrifices in image quality being made! Canon is trying to give you more photos per battery charge and more photos per CFexpress card when shooting on HEIF image compression, Ergo, you NEED to SHOOT RAW to get much higher-end image quality!

Canon will LIKELY supply a camera BIOS update later this summer to fix SOME of the HEIF file format issues and SOME of the inherent-to-HEIF file format "Noisy Macroblocking" problems ....BUT.... that won't happen until AFTER the Olympics around September 1st, 2020 my bet! Again .... SHOOT RAW --- you WILL get better looking, less noisy photos!!!
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: 1 users
Upvote 0