Every three years the number of cowboy hats in rocky triples as Rocky hosts ‘Beef Week’ with the final social outing being the ‘Beef Ball’. A fellow photographer Jo O’Keffe was going, and allowed me to photograph her and her friend before the Ball, with the added bonus of allowing me try out my new Canon 5D Mark III camera.
So here are some photo at the Criterion Hotel, as tried the 5D Mark III at some high ISO’s.
So my two cents on the new Canon 5D Mark III
First I have to say that I was never a fan of the 5D Mark II, as an expensive camera it always felt cheap (mine squeaked), its low light ability was OK, but not great, and it could not focus to save itself. At low apertures (like f1.4) I would have to take 10 shots of everything, and hope to hell one of them was in focus (sometimes all 10 were wrong). F 1.2 was a pipe dream to get in focus. I ended up getting the older 5D Mark 1 as a back up camera, and came to love it more.The mark 1 felt more solid and skin tones somehow seemed better. Before Canon I used an old Pentax K100D, which despite being older and $3000 cheaper, was in many ways a much better camera.
There is a lot of hype over the 5 Mark III, and I have not used it enough for an in depth view, but some first look comments
- It ‘feels’ more solid and expensive, something close to my 5 year old Pentax (but still not as good).
- It focuses, Yay. I am not certain this a great plus, as it is really something that the 5D Mark II should have done. But I can now shoot at F1.2 and reliably get 1 in 3 photos in focus (my running kids make a challenging subject at these apertures).
- They say it focuses great in dark situations, I have not found this, it still hunts and you are going to need a flash assistance to focus in dark areas. The black focus points hopefully will get fixed in later firmware releases – it really sucks.
- Its said you can shoot it at ISO 6400 to 12800 and still get usable shots. I do not know if mine is a dud but I have not found this, I would not use it at 6400 ISO. Not really certain I would use it above ISO 3200, I don’t think in the ‘real world’ it is much better than the 5D Mark 2. Maybe a stop better – but not as great as the hype I have read. Still I might be using it wrong or expecting too much. Some of the photos above were shot at ISO 5000, and needed some serious noise reduction to make them useable at small print sizes.
- I can dream, but I wish Canon could introduce some of the standard features my 5 year old $600 Pentax camera has, like ‘anti shake’ in camera, or a button that automatically sets your speed in manual mode.
All in all I am very happy with it, but am wondering if it is just so great because its predecessor was so bad. It is definitely worth the upgrade of the Mark II. I am looking forward at using at the wedding this weekend, and try it out with some f1.2 apertures.
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