1d mark iii

[gingerbeer]

i think i just bought one. i think i went crazy for a second.

[fire-eyes]

Hehe, think? Accidentally? I know what you mean, I tripped and bought one after I saw a guy at a park using one.

I jokingly asked if I could try it out, and he said yes. Once you try one of these, you're hooked... Got one a few months later.

[gingerbeer]

it was a spur of the moment thing. i really don't know what i was thinking, but now i'm getting really nervous. would i ever be able to really handle it? it seems quite daunting.

[fire-eyes]

My camera history was a series of fairly large leaps, the last one to mark III being the biggest as you'll see. I had the same question.

First off I had a sony mavica, one of the ones with a 3" rewritable CD in it. Interesting, for its time.

I then became interested in SLR, but wanted a reasonable one soley to find out if I would even like such a thing. So it was an Olympus E-300. I found that I very much liked it, and did fine with the (compared to a mavica!) additional features.

I knew I wanted to get more serious, and then I started reading about the Mark III before it came out. I was aware of what level of a camera this was, its price, and the price of lenses (especially the L's I wanted) and accessories.

Then I went to a park with my Olympus and someone was there taking pictures with the Mark III. I couldn't stop looking at it and what a beast it was. The owner noticed this and let me use it with my own card. It had the 24-70 f/2.8 L on it.

I messed with it for about ten minutes, not nearly enough time to even begin poking with any of the settings. I just used what he did. The obvious high quality of this machine in all aspects constructionwise left an impression. Well balanced, sturdy, just incredible. When that shutter goes off you know it's serious business.

I got home and looked at the images and I was just floored. That's when I knew I had to have one and would. So the next question was what lens? Naturally I was spoiled by both the camera AND the L lens but did I really want to go that route?

I decided that I did and saved up for a while and first purchased the lens (24-105 f/4 IS L). Having that thing at home just sitting there was really annoying! Then I had to fight to get the body paid for because nobody wanted to work with a guy that wanted to use an official check to pay for it. I guess they had enough buyers with big credit cards that had a high enough limit -- I did not.

After a lot of hassle I did get it and started doing the usual experimentation and so on. It did take a long time to learn it, but the truth is that the core features that you'd use every day will come quickly. There is a truly dizzying array of other options if you delve deeper, but those left alone will serve you just fine.

It's quite simply the best purchase of any type of anything that I've ever made. Not cheap, but the truly good things in life rarely are.

Looking back I should have held off on the purchase -- shortly after I got the body, rumors of a serious autofocus problem started circulating and then solidified. It turns out a large batch of the cameras really did have this error, which would crop up when in auto-servo (continuous focus adjustment -- track a moving target) in specific situations with a moving object coming straight at or almost straight at you.

In one of the continuous shooting modes (L - 3FPS or H - 9 to 11 FPS) in that situation, affected cameras would turn up with an annoyingly high number of out of focus shots. The cause of this was a minor manufacturing fault, and the fix was to send it in (for free) and have it repaired. Canon released a long list of what serial number ranges were known to be effected. Mine was in that range, but I can't say that I've actually seen the issue. As such, I never sent it in.

That being said, I don't shoot much fast action. The occasional hockey game, an air show once a year (FUN!!), that's about it. At no point have I seen a string of shots of a moving subject with so many out of focus that I was annoyed, unless I failed to get focus at the start in the first place (my fault).

My favorite feature is live view. Most of my pictures are landscapes on a tripod, and live view allows me to lift the mirror and show the live image on the display. I can then digitally zoom in 5x or 10x, lock the aperture down to what I want, and then fine-tune the focus. It's simply not possible to achieve this level of focus accuracy with the viewfinder. The viewfinder has a lever that you flip which raises a small metal curtain inside of it, this prevents incidental light from venturing through the viewfinder and throwing off measurements. This makes a major difference when the sun is behind you.

At this time it can also show a live RGB or luminocity histogram, very powerful indeed.

Autofocus operation, especially when you have selected one focus point, is jaw dropping in general. This of course depends on how fast the lens will follow instructions. It's accurate and fast, to the point that I really did not believe it was actually getting focus that fast for at least the first week -- I kept checking.

A neat feature is focus point expansion. You can have one selected and for whatever reason miss your mark, and as long as it is close to one of the edges of the point, the camera will enable the surrounding points to try to get a lock.

Another favorite feature is the dual memory cards, one CF and one SDHC. I use an 8GB of each. These can be configured in a variety of modes, such as use one then automatically use the other when full, or even write to both at the same time. As such you can simply total the size of both and have one copy of each file, or have two copies of each file, at which point a card can die and you still have not lost anything.

As you probably know, it's really the person using the equipment taking the picture. And once you have it, you aren't done, you'll need to post-process. One of the most powerful things you can do with this camera is to have the images stored in raw format and learn to deal with them from there. You take control of things such as color balance, sharpness, contrast, exposure (well mostly) away from the camera and into your hands. It sounds daunting, however, this is how you pull the best possible results from this camera.

As I write this I am actually considering moving up yet again by going into digital medium format. Until recently this has been a terrifyingly expensive option, then the Pentax 645D showed up. Still expensive but nothing like the others. Considering, but probably not going to do it. I can't see leaving the Mark III behind, and keeping it would just be too expensive if I went that route.

The Mark III will always be special to me, no matter what happens. Save up and pull that trigger, if you can't swing an L lens right away, swing one later, you won't be disappointed.

In closing, my suggestion is to rent the Mark III and a non-L lens (don't start the L spoilage quite yet). Even renting it is not cheap, but I think you'll find the hands-on experience worth the cost. And if you're like me, it will motivate you to buy the camera.

Good luck!