Canon 5D Mark III for Sport

[smirkypants]

I shot four polo matches today using a Canon 5D and a lowly 100-400L lens. I often shoot important matches with a bigger lens, but my luggage weight limit is being eaten up by my other big lens, the Nikon 200-400/f4.

Anyway, let me preface this by saying that I am not a photojournalist. I don't shoot for newspapers or magazines; rather, I shoot for clients who like big bold prints and who pay to see their faces in the shot. That being said, how I shoot is relatively similar. On this bright day I shot in manual at around 1/2000 wide open using auto ISO. Here are some observations.

1. Image quality is stellar. I just can't get over how good the images are. What I get out of the 100-400 is much better than the 1D4 and simply no contest with the 7D. Moreover, the files are extremely ROBUST. By this I mean that they are highly amenable to extreme Lightroom adjustments without beginning to look like crap. Impressive as hell.

2. 6 fps is barely adequate. The swing of an arm happens in a fraction of a second and the length of time between clicks means an entirely different picture. I think to do it right you need minimum 8. Ten is borderline overkill, and you start getting quite a few of exactly the same shot. I think beyond 10 is a recipe for filling your hard drive needlessly.

3. The autofocus is "jumpy" and a bit frenetic. I just don't know how better to put this. Over the course of the day I tried ever different autofocus preset and it remained jumpy. It would latch onto subjects, then unlatch. This all happened very quickly, but I found myself missing shots because of the hair-trigger nature of the autofocus. Maybe I'll get used to it. I don't know. As of right now, I'm not entirely happy with it. Additionally, I do not like the way the autofocus zones are laid out and really wish I could change them. In portrait mode using action the zones just don't work for me.

4. Reach. Obviously I miss the crop factors of the 1D4 and 7D a LOT on a huge polo field. This is partially remedied by the fact that the files are bigger, which gives you a touch more room to crop, but also the quality of the files is so damned high that you can chop more and still retain quite a bit of sharpness. A down side is also that I miss a lot of shots because no matter how you slice it, your giving up a huge number of millimeter equivalents by choosing full frame. You get fewer shots, but the shots you do manage to get are better.

I'll attach a shot of Sapo Caset from Lobos, Argentina. I know several of you will disapprove of the oversaturation and the nature of the crop. I attach it to show how amenable the file was to Lightroom. This was shot in noon sun and the face was entirely in shadow. I pushed shadows to +100 to recover the face nicely and highlights to -75 to get rid of the harsh glare on the whites. This is the kind of shot that clients love.

Anyway, cheers. Those are my musings on using the 5D3 for sports. On a 10 point scale I'd probably give it a 7.5. It was definitely serviceable. I'm pretty happy with it. The truth is I got it more for the "social" photographs of the games. The second attachment is of Adolfo Cambiaso, the #1 player in the world. This was shot under a gloomy tent. I NEVER would have been able to get this shot with the 1D4 or 7D.

 

[pwp]

I shot four polo matches today using a Canon 5D. The files are extremely ROBUST. By this I mean that they are highly amenable to extreme Lightroom adjustments without beginning to look like crap. Impressive as hell.

6 fps is barely adequate. The swing of an arm happens in a fraction of a second and the length of time between clicks means an entirely different picture. I think to do it right you need minimum 8. Ten is borderline overkill, and you start getting quite a few of exactly the same shot. I think beyond 10 is a recipe for filling your hard drive needlessly.

The autofocus is "jumpy" and a bit frenetic. I just don't know how better to put this. Over the course of the day I tried ever different autofocus preset and it remained jumpy. It would latch onto subjects, then unlatch.

Reach. Obviously I miss the crop factors of the 1D4 and 7D a LOT on a huge polo field.

This is exactly the type of real world feedback I've been waiting to read. Thanks Smirkypants. +1

6 FPS feels slow? Yes, it's amazing how much action happens between frames shooting at 10 FPS on the 1D4. Anyone serious about shooting action needs to sit tight for the 1DX or stock up on 1D4 bodies with the very useful x1.3 APS-H sensor. I've said it before & I'll say it again...I like APS-H. Canon?

Reach? Yep this is another issue with expensive solutions as we move from APS-C & APS-H to FF whether that be 1DX or 5DIII. Who else is looking at less useful 300 f/2.8 lenses and realizing they are going have to drop the Mastercard on a 400 f/2.8 sometime this year. Sigh...

AF? We were told the 5DIII would AF better than the 1D4. Maybe it will improve when the grip ships with the twin battery option. Could be the complex configuration of the AF didn't suit your subject.

Paul Wright

 

[briansquibb]

1. Image quality is stellar. I just can't get over how good the images are. What I get out of the 100-400 is much better than the 1D4 and simply no contest with the 7D.

I wonder if it is the 100-400? The reason that I say that is I did the same side by side shots with the 1D4 and the 5DIII and the same 70-200 f/2.8II and I didn't see any IQ difference on the prints.

It was in good light ie iso100,1/1000, f/4

 

[smirkypants]

6 FPS feels slow? Yes, it's amazing how much action happens between frames shooting at 10 FPS on the 1D4. Anyone serious about shooting action needs to sit tight for the 1DX or stock up on 1D4 bodies with the very useful x1.3 APS-H sensor. I've said it before & I'll say it again...I like APS-H. Canon?

Reach? Yep this is another issue with expensive solutions as we move from APS-C & APS-H to FF whether that be 1DX or 5DIII. Who else is looking at less useful 300 f/2.8 lenses and realizing they are going have to drop the Mastercard on a 400 f/2.8 sometime this year. Sigh...

AF? We were told the 5DIII would AF better than the 1D4. Maybe it will improve when the grip ships with the twin battery option. Could be the complex configuration of the AF didn't suit your subject.

Paul Wright

Paul. One of the things I didn't realize until I shot full frame sports is just how much the extra reach helps with autofocus. No amount of cropping power in the world will help if you miss the point of focus. If you're zoomed in closer to what you want AF to latch onto, you're more likely to nail it. I have lots of shots that in theory could be cropped but the AF chose a different horse. I could center point focus but I hate sports images where the subject is plopped in the center of the picture. Sure I can crop to a different framing, but that doesn't help me when the horses pass close and are filling the frame. In that case I've learned to extremely quickly shift the zone. Things further away, though, make it tough.

This isn't a problem just for the 5D3. I shot with a D800 (rented) and a Nikon 200-400 lens. The HUGE upside of this combo... and I mean huge, is that you can set it to a 1.2 crop and still get pretty massive 25MB files to play with. I gotta say, color me impressed as hell. I still had trouble latching on to particular horses at 100 yards. Still, 5fps is brutally slow. I think if they dropped another couple of processors in the D800 to up the frame rate to around 8 or 10, you'd have a pretty killer machine.

Squibby: I have no answer for you as far as the lens goes, having shot only 1 lens for sports with the 5D3 (I have shot the Siggy 50 and the kit lens messing around though). I find the IQ just a little bit nicer on the 5D3 files. Were the prints you looked at based upon an essentially uncropped image? Image quality differences become more obvious when you start hacking away parts of the photo.

One more observation, and this one you'll have to help me with because I have NO explanation. I have shot a lot of outdoor sports with the last generation of cameras... probably somewhere between a million and two million shots, so I can gauge pretty accurately looking at the sky where my ISO/Shutter Speed/Aperture should be. I found that the auto ISO was consistently choosing ISO values of about a full stop lower and getting the same exposure. In other words, on the 7D and 1D4, in my experience, if the shot called for 1/2000 at f5.6 with an ISO selection of 800, The 5D looked to be selecting ISO values of 400-ish, or maybe even less. My personal guess is that this is a fluke caused by lack of crop; that is, less dark horse and more sky in the framing, but I can't be sure.

 

[JR]

Is it possible also that this af system requires more "getting use to" then that of the 1div? I am not a sport photographer by all mean, but when i tried a few sport shots with the 5 dmkiii i was quite happy with the af gsystem and did not find it erratic for my situation...

 

[JR]

1. Image quality is stellar. I just can't get over how good the images are. What I get out of the 100-400 is much better than the 1D4 and simply no contest with the 7D.

I wonder if it is the 100-400? The reason that I say that is I did the same side by side shots with the 1D4 and the 5DIII and the same 70-200 f/2.8II and I didn't see any IQ difference on the prints.

It was in good light ie iso100,1/1000, f/4

Hey Brian, do you know have a 5D mkiii?

 

[CanineCandidsByL]

2. 6 fps is barely adequate. The swing of an arm happens in a fraction of a second and the length of time between clicks means an entirely different picture. I think to do it right you need minimum 8. Ten is borderline overkill, and you start getting quite a few of exactly the same shot. I think beyond 10 is a recipe for filling your hard drive needlessly.

To be fair, the fps is specific to the sporting situation. Seeing 12 or 14 fps isn't unreasonable for some, but I wish "we" could dial in back as we see fit. I don't like have to choose between single, 3fps and max fps. In some cases max fps matches a cadence and I keep getting the same couple of photos over and over with just slightly different background. Being able to adjust fps (or even randomize a bit) would allow those types of problems to be cleared. However at over 10fps, not many things will be able to stay in cadence, so its less of an issue, but then I do have to delete a much of unwanted images.

 

[scottkinfw]

Very nice

Despite shortcomings, you caught some great shots that were fast moving. I am wondering what percentage were keepers would you say? Also, It would be nice to see the pics without any pp to see exactly how much you can push in photoshop.

Thanks.

sek

I shot four polo matches today using a Canon 5D and a lowly 100-400L lens. I often shoot important matches with a bigger lens, but my luggage weight limit is being eaten up by my other big lens, the Nikon 200-400/f4.

Anyway, let me preface this by saying that I am not a photojournalist. I don't shoot for newspapers or magazines; rather, I shoot for clients who like big bold prints and who pay to see their faces in the shot. That being said, how I shoot is relatively similar. On this bright day I shot in manual at around 1/2000 wide open using auto ISO. Here are some observations.

1. Image quality is stellar. I just can't get over how good the images are. What I get out of the 100-400 is much better than the 1D4 and simply no contest with the 7D. Moreover, the files are extremely ROBUST. By this I mean that they are highly amenable to extreme Lightroom adjustments without beginning to look like crap. Impressive as hell.

2. 6 fps is barely adequate. The swing of an arm happens in a fraction of a second and the length of time between clicks means an entirely different picture. I think to do it right you need minimum 8. Ten is borderline overkill, and you start getting quite a few of exactly the same shot. I think beyond 10 is a recipe for filling your hard drive needlessly.

3. The autofocus is "jumpy" and a bit frenetic. I just don't know how better to put this. Over the course of the day I tried ever different autofocus preset and it remained jumpy. It would latch onto subjects, then unlatch. This all happened very quickly, but I found myself missing shots because of the hair-trigger nature of the autofocus. Maybe I'll get used to it. I don't know. As of right now, I'm not entirely happy with it. Additionally, I do not like the way the autofocus zones are laid out and really wish I could change them. In portrait mode using action the zones just don't work for me.

4. Reach. Obviously I miss the crop factors of the 1D4 and 7D a LOT on a huge polo field. This is partially remedied by the fact that the files are bigger, which gives you a touch more room to crop, but also the quality of the files is so damned high that you can chop more and still retain quite a bit of sharpness. A down side is also that I miss a lot of shots because no matter how you slice it, your giving up a huge number of millimeter equivalents by choosing full frame. You get fewer shots, but the shots you do manage to get are better.

I'll attach a shot of Sapo Caset from Lobos, Argentina. I know several of you will disapprove of the oversaturation and the nature of the crop. I attach it to show how amenable the file was to Lightroom. This was shot in noon sun and the face was entirely in shadow. I pushed shadows to +100 to recover the face nicely and highlights to -75 to get rid of the harsh glare on the whites. This is the kind of shot that clients love.

Anyway, cheers. Those are my musings on using the 5D3 for sports. On a 10 point scale I'd probably give it a 7.5. It was definitely serviceable. I'm pretty happy with it. The truth is I got it more for the "social" photographs of the games. The second attachment is of Adolfo Cambiaso, the #1 player in the world. This was shot under a gloomy tent. I NEVER would have been able to get this shot with the 1D4 or 7D.

 

[briansquibb]

1. Image quality is stellar. I just can't get over how good the images are. What I get out of the 100-400 is much better than the 1D4 and simply no contest with the 7D.

I wonder if it is the 100-400? The reason that I say that is I did the same side by side shots with the 1D4 and the 5DIII and the same 70-200 f/2.8II and I didn't see any IQ difference on the prints.

It was in good light ie iso100,1/1000, f/4

Hey Brian, do you know have a 5D mkiii?

A good friend of mine lent me his 5DIII for the morning. He upgraded from a 50D and obviously is very impressed.

I was very impressed with the 5DIII as well - but I would possibly upgrade the 1Ds3 to the 5DIII - not the 1D4. The 1D4 has different strengths and weaknesses. However I didn't find the IQ different although I found the non AF point metering of the 5DIII irritating (I thought at first the metering was out until Neuro pointed out that it wasn't linked)

 

[smirkypants]

Despite shortcomings, you caught some great shots that were fast moving. I am wondering what percentage were keepers would you say?

I guess I don't know how to answer that question. Shooting polo is very demanding because the horses go very fast and framing it is tough because the horses also move up and down... one frame the riders head will be in the center (top to bottom), and in the next the head will be clipped. not to mention the constant changes is direction; indeed, the best shots are those that happen in the midst of chaos, which inherently increase the likelihood of bad composition.

So if by keeper you mean a shot that is focused and metered properly, I'd probably say around 80-90%. If by keeper you mean focused, metered and framed properly, that drops to about 50%. Maybe one shot in 10 is a truly worthy shot. Like I think I said, there were a lot more throwaways than I get with the 1D4 or 7D, but the really good shots are generally better.

 

[JR]

1. Image quality is stellar. I just can't get over how good the images are. What I get out of the 100-400 is much better than the 1D4 and simply no contest with the 7D.

I wonder if it is the 100-400? The reason that I say that is I did the same side by side shots with the 1D4 and the 5DIII and the same 70-200 f/2.8II and I didn't see any IQ difference on the prints.

It was in good light ie iso100,1/1000, f/4

Hey Brian, do you know have a 5D mkiii?

A good friend of mine lent me his 5DIII for the morning. He upgraded from a 50D and obviously is very impressed.

I was very impressed with the 5DIII as well - but I would possibly upgrade the 1Ds3 to the 5DIII - not the 1D4. The 1D4 has different strengths and weaknesses. However I didn't find the IQ different although I found the non AF point metering of the 5DIII irritating (I thought at first the metering was out until Neuro pointed out that it wasn't linked)

Yeah make total sense. I think the metering of the 1dx should be better...

 

[swampler]

What auto focus mode have you been using? I've had mine set mainly on Case 2 and I don't find it jumpy at all. This is the mode made for when something comes, briefly, between you and your subject.

Regarding the 6 fps, you just have to learn to time your shots. I've gotten pretty good about getting the ball in the picture when shooting softball and baseball with only 6 fps, but it's a single shot to get it. I imagine you could do the same in polo?

 

[smirkypants]

It would be nice to see the pics without any pp to see exactly how much you can push in photoshop.

Ok Scott. I am attaching a JPG of the original RAW file as shot and a JPG of the Lightroom edit (no Photoshop). Mind you, the edit isn't going to suit everyone's taste but it does show you how far you can go.