5DIII has a minimum shutter speed setting!!!

[briansquibb]

Why would anyone shoot sports or any other action shots in Av mode? Most would use Tv and set a good shutter speed to catch action with the option of letting the camera auto adjust ISO.

But wait, now we have changing lighting conditions and are afraid that the auto ISO won't be enough...Since I may not be thinking about light, Do I actually have to check my exposure and adjust my high dollar camera, which has infinitesimal adjustments in it, turning a knob here and dial there to get a good exposure?? NOOOOO! Just put it in the green box! Yes, now the camera will do everything and I don't have to think about what it's doing, and since you can now buy a cheaper camera that comes with a green box you will save money. Bonus! it will even come with a flash...

I also like that auto ISO has been included in M mode on the mkIII. And FYI on the mkII the ISO is not "locked" at 400, it is automatically set to 400. You can adjust it to whatever you want.

On the series 1 you can

- set the camera to AV mode

- set the min shutter speed

- set the iso to auto

- set exposure compensation

All with one setting

There are lots of sports where 1/250 is too slow, not to mention birds and wildlife. With a 600mm + a 1.4 then 1/250 is too slow

 

[Loswr]

And FYI on the mkII the ISO is not "locked" at 400, it is automatically set to 400. You can adjust it to whatever you want.

True, but the point is that there is no functional auto ISO in M mode on the 5DII, like there is on the 5DIII (and on the 7D).

 

[briansquibb]

Objective: Set set a minimum and maximum shutter speed. In Av mode if the shutter speed dropped below the mimimum then the ISO would be bumped up so that the minimum was reached again.

Method:

- enable safety shift (iso speed) C.Fn 1 - 8
- set shutter speed range C.fn 1 - 12 ( set the minimum shutter speed )

In the field:

- set the Av value
- set the base iso value (can be L so then it acts as auto iso)
- set exp comp as needed (yes we get exp comp and auto iso this way)

I have photographed karts so I set the minimum Tv to 1/500, Av at f/4 and iso100 which was about the critical point. ISO went up and down as expected, Tv went above 500 when the cloud lifted

So there you are - how to get auto iso with iso and Av limits set.

This applies to the Series 1 only

M mode does not have ec nor a mechanism to adjust when the iso limit is reached

TV mode adjusts the dof without you in control

 

[smirkypants]

I was just reading through the 5D3 manual and I think I came across a solution. You can set a minimum ISO anywhere in the range of 100-12,8000 and the maximum ISO anywhere in the range of 200 to 25,600.

If you set in in AV to say f4 with Auto ISO set to a minimum of say 400 and maximum of 1600, on a bright day your shutter speed will be forced into a very fast range. Depending on the amount of light in the day, setting minimum and maximum ISOs will generally always force the shutter into a particular range. If the day is grayer, you can set the range from like 800-3200. I think in theory this works. I think.

It's inelegant, and I'll have to test it once I get back to the States and pick up my 5D3, but theoretically it works.

 

[briansquibb]

I was just reading through the 5D3 manual and I think I came across a solution. You can set a minimum ISO anywhere in the range of 100-12,8000 and the maximum ISO anywhere in the range of 200 to 25,600.

If you set in in AV to say f4 with Auto ISO set to a minimum of say 400 and maximum of 1600, on a bright day your shutter speed will be forced into a very fast range. Depending on the amount of light in the day, setting minimum and maximum ISOs will generally always force the shutter into a particular range. If the day is grayer, you can set the range from like 800-3200. I think in theory this works. I think.

It's inelegant, and I'll have to test it once I get back to the States and pick up my 5D3, but theoretically it works.

It should work!!

Only issue is that you would have to know what the minimum shutter speed would be as there is no bottom limit apart from the 1/250 etc

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

I always envied how my Nikon friends had a minimum shutter speed setting.
And maybe like me you also signed the petition www.petitiononline.com/Canon5D/ to give Canon users settings for minimum shutter speed and maximum ISO.

Now 5DIII users have minimum shutter speed and maximum ISO limit! Anyone as excited about this as me?

This way, if I shoot in Aperture mode, the camera can always choose the lowest ISO in Auto ISO mode such that the minimum shutter speed is satisfied.

I would have been had that not made the absurd and pointless decision to not let you make it higher than 1/250th! Come on. What does 1/250th do for wildlife or sports action? BLUR CITY is what it does. Utterly ridiculous. Even cheap alternatives from other makes let you set min speeds ten times higher. They need to update the limit in firmware. I don't know if they set it this way because nobody there actually shoots or because marketing came up with some new beyond ridiculous way to protect the 1 series.

 

[briansquibb]

I always envied how my Nikon friends had a minimum shutter speed setting.
And maybe like me you also signed the petition www.petitiononline.com/Canon5D/ to give Canon users settings for minimum shutter speed and maximum ISO.

Now 5DIII users have minimum shutter speed and maximum ISO limit! Anyone as excited about this as me?

This way, if I shoot in Aperture mode, the camera can always choose the lowest ISO in Auto ISO mode such that the minimum shutter speed is satisfied.

I would have been had that not made the absurd and pointless decision to not let you make it higher than 1/250th! Come on. What does 1/250th do for wildlife or sports action? BLUR CITY is what it does. Utterly ridiculous. Even cheap alternatives from other makes let you set min speeds ten times higher. They need to update the limit in firmware. I don't know if they set it this way because nobody there actually shoots or because marketing came up with some new beyond ridiculous way to protect the 1 series.

Of course there is always the option of doing it the manual way.

I thought real photographers only did it manually ;D ;D ;D ;D

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

No idea why they didn't do it. Perhaps to create a gap between the 1Dx and the 5DIII? Just a guess

I suspect that's exactly the reason. Surprisingly to me, Canon gave the 5DIII the same AF as the 1D X - that used to be their big separator between the 1-series and everything lower. But most of the 'little' differentiators, like full customization, are still there...

exactly this type of marketing differentiation and unnecessary firmware castration that is so often used by Canon drives me more and more towards Nikon. The D800 has full blast AF, Metering etc. - just like the D4. Apart from sensor and integrated vertical grip there is very little in the way of petty product differentiation. And all of that for 600 Euro less.

With Canon I always feel "nickeld and dimed".

This rant is basically not over anything really all that important in the end, but more about the new Canon's marketing department.

And they take it to such maddening levels. I mean will anyone actually chose the $7000 giant brick over a 5D3 just because of this? Anyone? No.

So what did Canon marketing accomplish? Slowly P.O. their long time user base more and more over the years for utterly ridiculous reasons. People will still get the 5D3 anyway of course, but maybe start bashing Canon here and there in forums perhaps costing them a sale here or there and maybe get them seriously eyeing Nikon, for the first time ever, the more and more the keep doing silly little things like this. Even if they don't actually lose many sales, I bet it still must be a little bit more than they gain for getting people to 1 series instead.

They really need to turn back into the old Canon that didn't constantly pull junk like this.

All I've heard from Canon is how we are the kings and we don't need to get a 5D3 out soon or this or soon or do this or that, we are so far ahead, we are selling so well, we just sit back and react if we need to. Well goal accomplished they are now over a stop beyond in non-exmor sensors compared to other makers and 2.5+ stops behind exmor for dynamic range and still lagging with daring to put little things like non-ridiculous auto iso limits, zebra striping for video, etc in. They did listen more this time, but still, when you see such silly little things as this limitation you really do wonder what on Earth is going on over there. Is marketing that in control of every last thing and have they really gone this far off the deep end. Look at 5D2 video. Apparently they really thought that nobody would want manual control for video and thought only a few PJs would want to run and gun video in auto mode. That seems shockingly short sighted to me. 90% of people on the forums would've known that was not something sensible.

Anyway, rant over. ;D

They did finally listen about AF ;D ;D, something many thought they might never do and they did finally outline the histogram etc. so there are starting to get there again.

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

For the sports shooters that want faster than 1/250 shutter speed as minimum, what is your application?

With the feature set of the 5DII, I would always shoot sports in shutter priority (Tv) (which can be fixed to as fast as 1/8000). Now with the flexibility of AutoISO in manual mode (M), I also have ability to fix the shutter speed and the aperture while leaving AutoISO to compensate for changes in lighting.

Now with the 5DIII, I would use the minimum shutter speed in Aperture mode, which I would use for events not sports. The minimum shutter speed would safely ensure that I don't have blurry pictures as my subjects will not not moving fast.

actually hardly anyone uses Tv mode for sports, it's almost all Av or M

autoiso might be useful if you shoot a field with really uneven, poor lighting where for same aperture and shutter it might be ISO6400 in the dark parts, ISO 2500 in the brightest

or for a bird jumping in and out of shadows at the edge of the woods

etc.

the shutter limit is too low for Av to work and M mode has no EC allowed, so their autoiso is still limited

It's hardly the end of the world, since lots of the time various scenarios still won't make it work perfectly no matter how well they make the mode, but it could be useful at least a little bit here and there if they implemented it properly, certainly more often than it is now. Mostly it's just silly to still not get such a basic and semi-trivial little thing correct after like a decade of working at it. Every other maker got it perfectly years ago across their product lines. I guess it has to be Canon marketing ordering engineering to slowly dribble it out bit by bit by bit, but that's pretty ridiculous.

 

[briansquibb]

And they take it to such maddening levels. I mean will anyone actually chose the $7000 giant brick over a 5D3 just because of this? Anyone? No.

Yes I prefer the bricks - far easier to use

As for the miniumum shutter speed that is so trivial to do manually it is not a dealbreaker nor to have every simple function done by the camera

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

I was just reading through the 5D3 manual and I think I came across a solution. You can set a minimum ISO anywhere in the range of 100-12,8000 and the maximum ISO anywhere in the range of 200 to 25,600.

If you set in in AV to say f4 with Auto ISO set to a minimum of say 400 and maximum of 1600, on a bright day your shutter speed will be forced into a very fast range. Depending on the amount of light in the day, setting minimum and maximum ISOs will generally always force the shutter into a particular range. If the day is grayer, you can set the range from like 800-3200. I think in theory this works. I think.

It's inelegant, and I'll have to test it once I get back to the States and pick up my 5D3, but theoretically it works.

say you want f/2.8, 1/640th min
dark scenes would do that at ISO6400 and bright at ISO2500

set lower limit to ISO2500

maybe it just uses ISO2500 for everything then and keeps dropping shutter speed instead when it hits the darker parts of the field, so you get your f/2.8, 1/640th, ISO2500 near the mouth of the goal, but then why won't it just stay ISO2500 and lower your shutter speed as it hits the darker parts of the field?

if you set min ISO6400 then you get your f/2.8,1/640th guaranteed, but then in the brighter areas you may get ISO6400 1/1600th, if you want to favor less blur over noise that is fine, but if you wanted the ISO2500 dynamic range/noise?

Then again at the higher ISOs the ISO settings don't actually do all that much for you compared to just pushing things in post so maybe it's not so big a deal in this case.... but if it is a bird going from forest interior to sunny patch it might be an ISO200 vs ISO2500 difference and then you are losing out for sure.

Granted the scenarios where everything works out ideally and it makes a big difference may are semi-few, but it's still a silly limitation all the same.

 

[smirkypants]

It should work!!

Only issue is that you would have to know what the minimum shutter speed would be as there is no bottom limit apart from the 1/250 etc

It's not a safe floor, Squibby. Like I said, you have to know something about your conditions to make sure you set maximum and minimum ISOs to keep the shutter speed within a safe range. Often a sports shooter will just shoot straight AV, set an ISO (to say 400 or 800... more if the light is bad) and let the shutter speed float. Setting a minimum and maximum ISO still lets the shutter speed float, but now it'll float within a much more restricted and predictable range.

The most important field that I shoot has huge variations between light and dark. There are massive shadows at one end of the pitch. Honestly, though, I'm not sure why I've spent so much time thinking about this since it won't be my weapon of choice for this kind of shooting.

And yeah, it really does irk me that Canon goes about crippling their gear. It makes me feel unloved. Fanboys want to be shown some love, right?

 

[briansquibb]

My 1D4 will get a real run with the AV method as I am going to MotoX on Sunday which will be in and out of shade.