Pairing the R with the 1DX III

unfocused

Photos/Photo Book Reviews: www.thecuriouseye.com
Jul 20, 2010
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Springfield, IL
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With things looking a little brighter for sports at our small college this fall (limited season and limited venues) I decided to go ahead and pull the trigger on the 1Dx III so I could get familiar with it.

It arrived late last week. No real chance yet to shoot action, but today I did shoot some of our student peer mentors who are on campus early.

Ordinarily, I would be using the R with the 25-105 and the 5DIV with the 70-200, but decided to substitute the 1Dx III for the 5D, just to get a few more hours of practice with the body.

My first impression is very positive. One of the things I fell in love with with the R was the touch screen selection of autofocus points using my thumb. It's a feature that I never thought about until I tried it and quickly realized how superior it is to a joystick for selecting autofocus points and composing when shooting. With the 1Dx III I instantly found that the new smart controller offers about 95% of the same benefits with a DSLR.

It used to be very frustrating when I would shoot with both the R and the 5D and have to switch between the touch screen control on one and the joystick on the other. But with the 1Dx III paired with the R, it just was very intuitive and almost seamless to switch back and forth between the bodies.

For the past year, my 1Dx II has pretty much been used exclusively for sports with the R and the 5DIV used for everything else. I feel that now the 5DIV is going to see limited use. It's still better than the R for birds and wildlife and I still like having the extra megapixels over the the 1Dx also for birds and wildlife. But I can see myself using the 1Dx III and the R for most of my work photography.

The biggest downside I see is the strain it's going to put on my neck, shoulders and camera bag having to lug around the 1Dx III plus a gripped R (the poor battery life of the R has made a grip indispensable for me).

Offering the smart controller on any future DSLRs seems like a no-brainer to me and I expect that whatever body Canon offers to merge the 5D and 6D series, it's likely to have the new smart controller.
 
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Michael Clark

Now we see through a glass, darkly...
Apr 5, 2016
4,722
2,655
With things looking a little brighter for sports at our small college this fall (limited season and limited venues) I decided to go ahead and pull the trigger on the 1Dx III so I could get familiar with it.

It arrived late last week. No real chance yet to shoot action, but today I did shoot some of our student peer mentors who are on campus early.

Ordinarily, I would be using the R with the 25-105 and the 5DIV with the 70-200, but decided to substitute the 1Dx III for the 5D, just to get a few more hours of practice with the body.

My first impression is very positive. One of the things I fell in love with with the R was the touch screen selection of autofocus points using my thumb. It's a feature that I never thought about until I tried it and quickly realized how superior it is to a joystick for selecting autofocus points and composing when shooting. With the 1Dx III I instantly found that the new smart controller offers about 95% of the same benefits with a DSLR.

It used to be very frustrating when I would shoot with both the R and the 5D and have to switch between the touch screen control on one and the joystick on the other. But with the 1Dx III paired with the R, it just was very intuitive and almost seamless to switch back and forth between the bodies.

For the past year, my 1Dx II has pretty much been used exclusively for sports with the R and the 5DIV used for everything else. I feel that now the 5DIV is going to see limited use. It's still better than the R for birds and wildlife and I still like having the extra megapixels over the the 1Dx also for birds and wildlife. But I can see myself using the 1Dx III and the R for most of my work photography.

The biggest downside I see is the strain it's going to put on my neck, shoulders and camera bag having to lug around the 1Dx III plus a gripped R (the poor battery life of the R has made a grip indispensable for me).

Offering the smart controller on any future DSLRs seems like a no-brainer to me and I expect that whatever body Canon offers to merge the 5D and 6D series, it's likely to have the new smart controller.

It's too bad you can't use a cable to plug into an external port on the 1D X Mark III's LP-E19 battery and power the EOS R with it.
 
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