Cameras SLR : Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III - Digital SLR Cameras
Executive Summary about : Cameras SLR By Philip Ryan
The 1Ds Mark III marks another high-end success for Canon, though you’ll need a lot of spare cash if you want to own this ground-breaking camera.
cameras slr
Canon’s 1Ds series of cameras exists in a class of its own. With pixel counts well above anything else offered in a 35mm-format digital SLR, an attention to detail that addresses the needs of high-end professionals, and a price tag that’s thousands of dollars more than the nearest competition, it continues to push the limits of digital photography. The 1Ds Mark III, the latest in the series, brings the megapixel count to a whopping 21.1 and is every bit a precision instrument.
This camera is a dream machine for the serious/professional photographer.
- 21MP full-frame CMOS
- 14bit Colour (16,000+ tones vs 4096 with most cameras)
- Dual DiGiC III
- Large 100% coverage viewfinder
- Exceptionally low noise, even at high ISO
- Highly Responsive
- Ergonomic
- Supports CF and SD
- Great build quality
- Water and Dust resistant
- AF Micro adjustment, customises AF to up to 20 lenses
- Vertical grip
- Intuitive button layout and menu designs
Design
Canon’s 1Ds series body design, with its long, relatively straight grip, seems somewhat blocky compared with the sculpted designs that Nikon and some other manufacturers use. Both cameras have longer vertical grips. Speaking of which, as in previous models,
Canon duplicates the buttons and dials around the shutter button on the vertical grip, though they omit the exposure compensation and ISO buttons. To Canon’s credit, in my field tests I found that the vertical grip’s shutter on the 1Ds Mark III was less prone to accidental pressing than the one on the Nikon D3.
Menu and Info buttons move above the screen, while the playback button drops to below it. The Select button from the Mark II N is now obsolete, thanks to the Mark III’s Set button, which is mounted in the middle of the large scroll wheel, much like the scroll wheels found on the EOS 40D and 5D. While the Mark II had three two-button combinations of the buttons to the left of the pentaprism, Canon eliminated two of those combos by including the aforementioned dedicated ISO button and putting both AF and Drive under the same button.
The small scroll wheel near the shutter controls one while the large back scroll wheel adjusts the other. You might also notice that there’s no clearly marked white balance button. The FUNC button handles that, but it would’ve been nice for Canon to mark it. They also moved the white balance shift to the menu only, so the Mark II’s WB +/- button is replaced by the AF-On button, which triggers the autofocus and can come in handy if you don’t like the standard half-press of the shutter button to activate focus. If you don’t enjoy the screen that comes with the camera, Canon also offers a choice of 15 optional focusing screens to which you can switch.
Features
The feature everyone will mention first about the 1Ds Mark III is its 21.1-megapixel Canon CMOS sensor. I wouldn’t be surprised if that is followed by a small discussion of the camera’s 14-bit per channel analog to digital conversion, which theoretically allows for 16,384 levels of brightness compared to 4,096 levels with the 12-bit Mark II when shooting RAW.
You can’t dial down to 12 bit on the Canon, so if you shoot RAW, expect files in excess of 30MB each. Outdoor photographers will appreciate the 1Ds Mark III’s dust reduction system. It shakes the sensor whenever you turn the camera on or off to shake dust from the IR-cut filter in front of the sensor. If you end up with any persistent marks on the sensor you can have the camera map the sensor and plot their locations, so you can remove them automatically with the included Digital Photo Professional software.
Following the current trend, the 1Ds Mark III includes a Live View shooting mode, which lets you frame images with the big 3-inch LCD on the back of the camera instead of the optical viewfinder, should you choose to do so. Canon also warns that increased temperatures can lead to increased image noise.
Canon has increased the number of cross-type autofocus points from 7 in the Mark II to 19 in the Mark III. Cross-type AF points typically provide a higher level of sensitivity compared to standard horizontal-only points. Those 19 cross sensors are joined by 26 “assist points” for a total of 45 AF points. Careful scrutiny of Canon’s manual shows that the number of active cross-type points decreases drastically if you use a lens with a maximum aperture slower than f/2.8.
When you step down to a lens with a maximum aperture of f/4, only the centre point functions as a cross-type; the rest function as horizontal only. To determine a proper exposure, the camera uses a 63-zone TTL (through the lens) metering system. The system offers full-frame evaluative metering, centre-weighted average, and partial and spot metering. Canon calls this last option “multispot metering.”
All you have to do is press the FEL button to add another spot reading while you’re in spot AF mode to begin with. In our field tests, the 1Ds Mark III yielded remarkably accurate exposures and was rarely fooled by tricky scenes, but the 3D colour Matrix Metering found in Nikon’s D3 — with its 1,005-pixel sensor and onboard database of comparison image data — barely edges out the 1Ds Mark III’s evaluative mode when it comes to very tricky situations. If you’re really worried about highlights, though, you can activate the Mark III’s Highlight Tone Priority custom function, which makes use of the camera’s 14-bit digital conversion to extend the upper portion of the dynamic range to help preserve highlight detail. Some of the buttons, such as the aforementioned AF-On button, can be changed to perform slightly- or very-different functions.
As usual, the 1Ds Mark III is made to work with a very wide variety of Canon’s optional accessories.
Image quality
The 1Ds Mark III can capture beautiful, amazingly detailed images. One of the nicest things about the 1Ds Mark III is its low noise. Even then, the 1Ds Mark III maintains very vibrant colours, ample shadow detail, and plenty of fine detail. If you want extremely clean images you should probably stick to ISO 400 and below, but I was happy to shoot with not-very-reckless abandon even with the sensitivity range widened.
The Canon 1Ds Mark III isn’t for everyone. The bigger question is whether current 1Ds Mark II owners should step up. Ultimately, you have to ask if you’ve been disappointed in, or felt limited by, the 1Ds Mark II’s performance and image quality.
.
