1DXMKIII - Just OK

[HarryFilm]

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If world famous pro photographer Jared Polin can do it --- i.e. "I SHOOT RAW" --- You can too in order to high quality pro-level imagery!
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[AlanF]

Harry, you have only just now gone over to RAW?

 

[Kit.]

Real sports photographers don't shoot RAW! The image would be ready for publishing half a second later than from the competition.

 

[SecureGSM]

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!!!

Stop the press. we have got confirmation.. Harry has spoken... Golden now!

 

[unfocused]

Real sports photographers don't shoot RAW! The image would be ready for publishing half a second later than from the competition.

I must not be a real sports photographer. Am I a hologram? Or maybe just a figment of some superior being's imagination? Are the games that I cover also an illusion? How do we ever know what is real?

 

[Kit.]

I must not be a real sports photographer. Am I a hologram? Or maybe just a figment of some superior being's imagination? Are the games that I cover also an illusion? How do we ever know what is real?

And how many dosens of 1DX III camera bodies do you buy per one order?!

 

[AlanF]

I must not be a real sports photographer. Am I a hologram? Or maybe just a figment of some superior being's imagination? Are the games that I cover also an illusion? How do we ever know what is real?

I photograph therefore I am (In camera obscura ego cogito ergo sum - apologies Descartes)

 

[unfocused]

And how many dosens of 1DX III camera bodies do you buy per one order?!

Just one. What's your point? There are far more sports photographers like me than like GoldWing. That's not to take anything away from him, but just a fact.

 

[arthurbikemad]

I hope this is ok but I thought I would post a link to some images of the 1DX3 pushed a little, see HERE does it hold up well, I thought so, OP please post some examples of the problems you have, genuine ones only

 

[Kit.]

Just one.

Just one dosen? That's not serious!

What's your point?

I'm, of course, exaggerating a little, but for some people, how the camera captures in RAW is irrelevant. They need in-camera JPEGs.

 

[Jack Douglas]

I hope this is ok but I thought I would post a link to some images of the 1DX3 pushed a little, see HERE does it hold up well, I thought so, OP please post some examples of the problems you have, genuine ones only

Almost seems like we might regress to the good old days (previous CR threads) of pushing to the nth degree as if any of us shoot so badly exposed. I'm sure this camera is going to be just fine.

Jack

 

[arthurbikemad]

Almost seems like we might regress to the good old days (previous CR threads) of pushing to the nth degree as if any of us shoot so badly exposed. I'm sure this camera is going to be just fine.

Jack

Yeah I agree. I was just reading on FM forum a user who also just has his Mk3. He seems to be impressed with the new AF and the new files, other than this I have yet to find much negative info re the new camera. He also mentioned a few features that others have not. Like the OVF and the fact it has a clean sensor from new, that's a new feature for sure haha
See:-

1Dx Mark III - initial user notes.

I got the camera last Thursday, but for the next 2 days the mercury was parked between - 21 C and -32 C keeping me grounded, so I had time to scrib...

www.fredmiranda.com

Mine is with me tomorrow.

 

[StoicalEtcher]

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.

This doesn't just sound like "not a good upgrade", it sounds positively faulty.

What have Canon said about it (I assume such a large customer with poor experiences causing a hold on future multiple purchases would be high on their concern level)?

 

[Kit.]

Almost seems like we might regress to the good old days (previous CR threads) of pushing to the nth degree as if any of us shoot so badly exposed.

Technically, the exposure there was fine - for highlights.

But with Mark III, one shouldn't use ISO 400 if they want to pull shadows instead of exposure blending. If it were shot at ISO 100, the shot noise in the shadows would have been one stop lower. Still worse than blending, but better than nothing.

 

[Jack Douglas]

Technically, the exposure there was fine - for highlights.

But with Mark III, one shouldn't use ISO 400 if they want to pull shadows instead of exposure blending. If it were shot at ISO 100, the shot noise in the shadows would have been one stop lower. Still worse than blending, but better than nothing.

I don't dispute your comment at all but do we as humans want a scene that has very high contrast to become a bland low contrast one. For me too much lifting can result in an unnatural appearance, which I don't like and so I live with deeper shadows. I'm certainly not qualified to really dispute this though.

Jack

 

[HarryFilm]

And how many dosens of 1DX III camera bodies do you buy per one order?!

60 of the 1Dx3's in our case .... even though we did help design a Video/Stills CODEC for a Canon competitor ....

.

 

[HarryFilm]

Harry, you have only just now gone over to RAW?

Actually, I've been shooting mostly on 1Dc's using the 24 fps MJPEG codec in video mode and C-log OR I use the Canon C700 4K Global Shutters or the 5.9K FF C700's in RAW video mode to get 60 fps frame captures and using those video frame grabs as sports/action and industrial/aerospace still shots for PDF files and online distribution. I have also used our 8K/ MF cameras over the past year in both 120 fps DCI 8K video AND 8k by 6k stills mode and those work THE BEST out of all the normal cameras we have, but since we're now in lock-down mode I can't take them out publicly any more.

I just got a 1Dx3 out of inventory (we bought 60 of them and they'll be showing up a few at a time over the next three months) and we did some test shoots which worked out great for the most part! No complaints at all! Again, most people will shoot 20 fps and up their ISO's and shutter speeds because the camera CAN DO ITS JOB VERY VERY WELL ... BUT .... the end result is you tend to get more noise in the dark black shadow areas and/or on darker colours. To put it mildly, the 1Dx3 is actually a FANTASTIC SPORTS AND WILDLIFE CAMERA ... You just need to get off of the high horse of the convenience and space saving aspect of the HEIF image compression format and go FULL RAW !!!!

For the foreseeable, I will STILL be using the 1Dc's, C300 mk2's and the C700 GS/FF's since those are used a lot less than the 1Dx2's and 1Dx3's we have. We are now replacing all the literally HUNDREDS of 5D3's, 5D2's and 1DxMk1's we still have in inventory with new gear LIKE the 1Dx3, so the "real" staff -- (i.e. NOT me!) -- get first dibs on those (they get them for free) and the rest get donated to schools along with a few of the cheaper lenses.

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[AlanF]

I don't dispute your comment at all but do we as humans want a scene that has very high contrast to become a bland low contrast one. For me too much lifting can result in an unnatural appearance, which I don't like and so I live with deeper shadows. I'm certainly not qualified to really dispute this though.

Jack

The human visual processing system lifts shadows as we view scenes whereas the camera records the actual dynamic range. So, lifting shadows in post processing actually renders the image closer to what we thought we saw at the time.

 

[Joules]

Almost seems like we might regress to the good old days (previous CR threads) of pushing to the nth degree as if any of us shoot so badly exposed. I'm sure this camera is going to be just fine.

Jack

You make it sound as if the pictures demonstrated something negative about the 1DX III. Did I miss something? Looking at the pictures I got the impression that the new camera is an improvement across the board in IQ.

 

[Kit.]

I don't dispute your comment at all but do we as humans want a scene that has very high contrast to become a bland low contrast one.

I'm not a fan of it, but it obviously sells.

Besides, that "bland low contrast" is a limitation of the reproduction media, which can be different in future, allowing more natural presentation of the same high-contrast captures.

For me too much lifting can result in an unnatural appearance,

There are at least two factors in this unnaturality: unexpectedly flat contrast (not a factor in that particular image, at least for me) and non-uniformity of noise and/or of microcontrast. The latter can be alleviated by getting higher exposure in shadows.