new gear

5dmk3 arrived friday. On first outing stafford motor. Speedway
photos to follow. Very excited about af for motorsports

 

Focusing system on the 5D Mark III will work excellent for that gary.....have fun. ; I've been shooting a theater production this weekend and the ISO capabilities and the silent shutter mode are awesome!

 

NICE!!!! Wish I could be giving you some input myself Tim. Maybe late this year? Once can hope.

 

Congrats, Gary! ; Glad to see Canon upgrade their focusing system for the sports guys in the 5D bodies.

 

I'm thinking the AF System would do nicely for shooting swim meets. Especially when I'm laying flat on the deck shooting an oncoming swimmer in their Butterfly stroke. ;

 

First impressions are more than positive. I will probably not be
home in time to post any, but this thing seems lightning fast
On focus lock. Plus 9 frames per second. I already know i scored one car going around
In a spin complete with dust cloud. This moght be the camera i have been waiting for

 

Jeff - We would be hypocrites if we DIDN'T dream. After all, our favorite place does say to.... "Wish Upon a Star". LOL

 

ok first impression, this is a pretty good motorsports camera, i had on the 70-300 f4.0-5.6 L most of the day, you can use all 61 focus points with this lens, but not in all configurations, those are reserved for the 2.8 lenses, although the straight f4 lenses also get most of the crosspoint configuration. there are even a bunch of tables , A-H, in the manual listing what options each lens has. ; unfortunately i was shooting through a catch fence and the focus works so good that without thinking i set up in my usual f8 and be there, well i should have opened up as wide as i could because most of my shots have a beautiful fence right up there in your face. on the plus side the fencing is all crisply in focus. i had given up shooting most motorsports with the mk2, the motorcycles i have infield access so no fence in the way. not to worry, more racing next month, and now that i know the mistake i won't make that one again. colors are great, the bigger lcd is nice, mirror lock is still a menu item, but only 1 layer in, not the drill down to custom function that the mk2 is. still lot's more to learn, i spent the ferry ride to new london reviewing the manual, spent about 1 1/2 hrs on it last night, so i still have some more to learn. you can really customize both the quick menus and a lot more with the dials, so down the line i see being able to go back and forth among 3 different custom setups and changing base stuff on the fly much easier and quicker. the 6 shots per second rate is a real step up for motorsports, i think even dr jim would be pleased, he could hold multiple title belts in the cf card lion king events, 8,16 and the real heavyweight division, the 32gb cards.
one thing i just learned, lightroom 4 does not support the mk3, but they have 4.1 out as a release candidate, i guess that's more retail ready than a beta, so i just downloaded it for the mk3 raw support. those of you who use LR4 will be auto notified when the update is released, i found out about it when i did a quick google search about mk3 raw support.
i will have to go to sleep soon, so within the next couple of days look for some sample images with some commentary.

 

not often i get to post the very first photo from a body, unboxed the body, slapped on the 24-105, put in a charged battery, and thanks canon for finally selling me an upgrade without making me repurchase the spare battery, the mk2 battery is the same, so now i have 3 good ones, a nice state indeed. imported as a dng from the card with no processing other than conversion, uploaded to phanfare as a 60% quality jpeg, with the only post process being sharpen for screen selected in the lightroom uploader plugin. not too shabby on quality or color. david wright at bat during last nights mets/rockies game. and since when did the plate umps start throwing knuckleballs to the pitcher, that's a knuckler grip.





and as an aside, i thought the posting oddities were fixed, this is the third attempt at posting this, apparently it's gone back to wiping out the post when you hit the post button if the inserted photos are not all the way over to the left margin, the first attempt i tried to just add it as a modification of the above post

 

Gary - is your unit one of the camera's affected by this light leak issue? ; Mine is and that is causing me some concern about the camera. ; I have a few more days to test it out for that specific situation and I will decide in a few days if I will return it or not.


Canon states they will start "inspecting" units in May, but not sure what that actually means. ; I am also concerned that if they open it up to fix it, they will compromise something else (seals, etc).


Not sure what impact this will have on resale value down the road.

 

no, i have a 0 in the six slot, so it appears i am not an effected unit, so below is not the best of shots, but i feel this might just be a great camera. this is one of a whole series shot with the hammer down, at 6 frames per second i gave a dr jim run at a 32gb card, didn't overheat the sensor or overrun the buffer, or the card write speed, now i know this is a crap shot, (gives a gallic shoulder shrug, muttering nest'ce pas? mon ami, what can you do. i should have used a larger aperture, should have known i was out of position for cars wadding up in turn 1, i've only been in these grandstands 50 times in the last 20 years or so. but notice the right side nerf bar being bent in by the other small block drilling him in the side at about 80 mph. and the right front tire off the ground from impact, i think this auto focus system might turn out to be great stuff, esp if used with large aperture lenses. the 50 1.2 and i have a date with the haunted mansion caretaker at pixelmania.





and i guess the forums have been undergoing modding again, this is the fourth attempt since 1300 to make this post, first 2 tries i got the white blank page, next 2 the post dissapeared into a parse error message

 

congrats on the new camera Gary

 

no, i believe it's standard somewhere down in the deep drill custom function 3 menu

 

rumor has canon working on a wireless madden x/o diagrammer into the lcd

 

so here's a crash series, i really am happy with this af system, once i get some more experience i think this'll be a real knockout camera. ai servo, 61 point af, 6 frames per seconc, the shot above was actually the end shot of this sequence