My Review Of The Canon’s Flagship: The EOS 1Ds Mark III

Canon was kind enough to loan me their latest top-of-the-line professional 1D model, the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III. After using it for nearly two weeks, 3 events, 12 photo shoots, and 3 lenses, and having shot some couple thousand frames, I can safely formulate an opinion on what works, what doesn’t, and is it worth it. click to read more.

My Settings

Note: When I refer to “Mark III”, I’m referring to the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III and when I mention “Mark II”, I’m referring specifically to the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II, unless otherwise stated.

Before we get into the review, I want to briefly mention how I setup the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III. For one of the shoots, I set the file type to RAW to get an idea of how the SLR would perform but switched to JPEG once I got a better feel for the camera. I’ve been primarily a RAW shooter, but recently been shooting JPEG (Large, Quality 8 ) more and more because I’m needing to do less post-production; but for weddings, I still do RAW as standard operation.

I always use back-button auto focus. On the Mark II, I have star button (*) configured to do auto focus and the shutter button for auto exposure lock only; set it by going to Custom Functions (C.Fn) > C.Fn 04 Shutter button/AE lock button > 1:AE lock/AF. On the Mark III, there is a dedicated AF-On button where the WB +/- (you can also use that button to switch to a most used AF point, which I do, very useful) use to be. People ask me all the time why I do this, the short answer is because in a number of situations I need to lock exposure (when not shooting in manual) that is different then where I’ll be focusing. It’s cumbersome if you are not used to it, but once you are, it becomes second nature and more intuitive to do it this way, but everyone is different, so YMMV.

I primarily used the Portrait Picture Styles with the default values except I set the sharpness 1 notch higher. I also use One Shot, 5 frames-per-second, and I manually select my focus point to focus on the eyes when doing portraits and photo shoots.

I’m not saying these settings are right, it is what I use and like and works for me.

Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III vs Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II Chart Comparison

SLR Cameras	Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III	Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II	Winner
Year Introduced	August 20, 2007	September 21, 2004
Cost	$7,999 MSRP (~$6650-$7000 current)	~$7,999 MSRP (discontinued)
Sensor Size	36 x 24 mm	36 x 24 mm
Viewfinder	100%, 0.76x magnification	100%, 0.70x magnification	Mark III
Max Resolution	5626 x 3744	4922 x 3328	Mark III
Megapixels	21.1	16.7	Mark III
ISO rating	100-1600 in 1/3 stops, with 50 and 3200 as options	100-1600 in 1/3 stops, with 50 and 3200 as options
Auto Focus type	45 focus point TTL CMOS sensor with 19 cross-types	45 focus point TTL CMOS sensor with 7 cross-types	Mark III
Metering	Evaluative, partial, spot, center weighted average	Evaluative, partial, spot, center weighted average
Crop Factor	1.0	1.0
Continuous Drive	5 fps for 56 JPEG or 12 RAW	4 fps for 32 JPEG or 11 RAW	Mark III
Storage Types	Compact Flash (Type I or II) with UDMA support and SD/SDHC	Compact Flash (Type I or II) and SD/SDHC	Mark III
LCD	3.0 inches	2.0 inches	Mark III
LCD Pixels	230,000	230,000	tie
Battery	Canon Lithium-Ion LP-E4 (11.1V, 2300mAh) battery	Canon Ni-MH NP-E3 (12V, 1650mAh) battery	Mark III
Weight	1385 g (3.05 lb) with battery	1565 g (3.44 lb) with battery	Mark III
Dimensions	150 x 160 x 80 mm (5.9 x 6.3 x 3.2 in)	156 x 158 x 80 mm (6.1 x 6.2 x 3.2 in)

Focus Issues and Auto focus

When someone mentions Canon’s Mark IIIs, first thing on many minds is: are there any focus issues? The 1Ds Mark III, supposedly, does not suffer from the same head-banging focus issues that it’s little brother, the 1D Mark III, did. While that seems to be the case, I admit that I had many frustrating focus issues. Even another photographer that I know who shoots with a 1Ds Mark III has attested to focus issues, but for the most part, the problem does not seem as widespread. I don’t want to spend too much covering this topic as it has already been thoroughly discussed at length, but I will touch on my experience with it.

The lens that I used on the 1Ds Mark III is my favorite workhorse lens, the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM. I also, for the most part, unless the situation warrants otherwise, shoot wide open at f/2.8. When doing portraits, I almost always select my focus point and aim for the eyes. I do, on occasion focus and recompose because, believe it or not, at times the 45 auto focus points do not offer enough coverage (because they aren’t scattered enough). BTW, the only time I do not shoot with Image Stabilization (IS) is when the switch is accidentally knocked to OFF. I’m sure a number of people can see all the things that can go wrong with how I photograph. Yes, shooting wide open means a very small depth-of-field (DOF) and can lead to a higher rates of OOF (out-of-focus) shots. Second, focus and recompose is actually a bad technique (Lloyd explains this best) when photographing at f/2.8 or faster because of how razor thin the DOF is.

After a bit of testing, turns out my focus issues are more related to lens/camera calibration than camera auto focus issues. When I used my buddy’s 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM, I had a higher number of keepers and it was also the same case when using the Canon EF 200mm f/2L IS USM and Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM. Unfortunately because of the shooting schedule and limited time with the Mark III, I did not have the opportunity to play with the micro adjustment feature, which could have solved my problem.

One of the nicest improvements of the Mark III over the Mark II is that it certainly focuses faster; I would say almost 25% faster than the previous model. The difference in focus speed is most noticeable in low light conditions, the 1Ds Mark II would take a half-second or so to acquire focus where the 1Ds Mark III would lock-on almost instantaneously. This is an important factor, especially in fast moving, low-light situations such as wedding photography, which in our case is our bread-and-butter.

One thing I’ve found frustrating is the new AF selection. On the Mark II, I can set AF selection to 45-points (all), 11-points (strategically placed), or 9-points (outer circle) which is useful depending on the situation. For portrait and studio work, I like being able to select the precise AF point to use, but when shooting fast moving objects or at a fast moving pace I change the setting to 11-points because I can select a focus point faster than having to scroll through 45-points. Just because you use 11-point selection does not mean you lose the 45-point AF, but rather the 34-points are used to assist the 11 you can select. It works great. Canon went ahead and changed that. The new Mark III is still a 45-point AF, but now your selections are limited to 19-points or 9-points (inner or outer). It’s very irritating for me because I can’t quite get a focus point on the eyes when doing some creative poses and/or angles. After two weeks of use, I’m still not liking it and would love full 45-point control again. But to the Mark III’s credit, it does have 19 cross-type AF sensors spread out versus the Mark II’s 7 cross-type AF sensors lumped together in the middle and does contribute to making the Mark III focus faster than the Mark II especially when shooting in camera portrait orientation.

White Balance

The Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III (and the newer cameras) have an improved white balance system that works noticeable better than the previous generation Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II. I find shooting in AWB tends to do quite well, but I tend to do custom white balance as much as I can because it dramatically reduces my post processing time. I find there is less of a color cast with the Mark III’s AWB versus the Mark II’s AWB, although neither camera can nail fluorescent or incandescent situations perfectly, but the Mark III has does look slightly better.

One complaint I have about Canon in general is that they can do a much better job implementing custom white balance. On the Nikon bodies, you can set a button dedicated to custom white balance and the Nikon D700 takes it a step further with a dedicated WB button! With my 1Ds Mark II, I have to:

1. Set the camera’s WB to AWB
2. Take a shot of the Lastolite EzyBalance, filling as much of the frame as possible
3. Press Menu
4. Select Custom WB from the first menu icon
5. Scroll and find the image of the Lastolite EzyBalance and select it to register it
6. Set camera WB to the customer white balance icon

The 1Ds Mark III is a bit of an improvement but the steps are about the same:

1. Set the camera’s WB to AWB
2. Press Menu
3. Select Custom WB regist. from the first menu icon
4. Scroll down to Record and register image (or Register image on card if you already taken a picture of it, I like Record and register image because it stores in the camera memory rather on CF card, but it’s sometimes useful to have the white balance reference image on the CF card because you might to use it for LightRoom2 reference.)
5. Take a picture of the Lastolite EzyBalance making sure to fill up as much of the frame as possible
6. Set camera WB to the custom white balance icon.

With the 1Ds Mark III, you can record and save up to 5 custom white balance reference images over the Mark II’s 1. Another gripe I have Canon’s white balance system is that when I do a custom white balance, I need to remember to reset my camera’s WB to AWB. The camera should assume that if I’m doing a custom white balance, it needs to automatically set the camera’s WB to AWB. And after doing a custom white balance, I still need to select it! What a waste of time with so many steps! If I’m doing a custom white balance, chances are I want it selected for this specific shoot or shot!

Improved Features

The Mark III offers a number of improvements over the previous generation Mark II, some noticeable, others a bit more subtle. We can all agree that the new 3-inch LCD is an improvement over the 2-inch LCD, but it’s unfortunate that Canon did not implement the new 922,000-pixel high-resolution screen earlier but rather waited until the 50D and 5D Mark II to do so. The larger screen is nice, but I do have to say that things appear sharper on my Mark II than on the Mark III because while the screen size changed, the screen resolution did not (230,000 pixels).

A subtle, but certainly big advantage is the recording of different file types to different medias first seen on the 1D Mark IIn. This is a great feature because you can have Large JPEGs recorded to the CF card and RAW recorded to the SD/SDHC card as a backup. This is a great because if you blew out your highlights in the JPEG, you can retrieve the RAW version of the file and fix it and not have to process hundreds of RAW if the JPEGs out of camera are perfect. You can also still do RAW on one card and RAW on another or RAW+JPEG on both.

Dedicated ISO button, there isn’t much to say about this except: finally. On the Mark II, you have to hold 2 buttons and use the Quick Control Dial (QCD) to select ISO. On the Mark III, you press the dedicated ISO button and spin the dial. Also love the inclusion of the jog dial joystick first seen on the Canon EOS 30D. I used it to primarily select my focus point which frees up the jog dial to do exposure compensation.

Larger viewfinder is always a plus. It’s still 100% frame coverage, but the magnification has been increased from 0.7x (Mark II) to 0.76x (Mark III) and it’s certainly noticeable. If you’ve never seen through a 1Ds viewfinder, you’ll be in for a big surprise of how clear and beautiful it is compared to the 5D and the other prosumer and consumer bodies.

The increase in resolution from 16.7 MP to 21.1 MP is certainly nice, but for most usage, not noticeable unless you are doing some major cropping. I’m a fan of more megapixel, not for the sake of more megapixel, but because I do find that sometimes I have to crop pretty liberally and the additional MP is helpful in retaining quality. Despite the increase in resolution, noise is still very well controlled, being about half a stop better than the Mark II.

Dual Digic III is also very nice. The Mark III is able to move larger files than the Mark II (single Digic II) in less time. I never noticed any delay in processing which affected my ability to continue shooting whereas on the Mark II, sometimes I have to wait a bit to either let it clear the buffer so I can review the image. The 1 additional frame-per-second (5 FPS vs 4 FPS), while seemingly not much, is a welcomed addition. The increase in buffer is always nice, 56 JPEG vs 32 JPEG, although there is only an increase in 1 more RAW frame, 12 vs 11.

With batteries installed, the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III is 180 grams lighter than the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II, which my forearm is thankful for after a long day photographing. This weight reduction is primarily achieved through a smaller and lighter battery. Speaking of which, the new lithium-ion battery is a major improvement! I’ve been able to shoot over 2,300 frames before the battery died versus the ~1,000 from the Ni-MH battery in the the Mark II. With the Mark III, I can confidently pack 1 spare and know I may not even need it whereas the Mark II, I’m generally carrying at least a couple because Ni-MH batteries are funny and sometimes, fully charged, can lose an entire charge for whatever reason and I’m stuck with a useless paper-weight.

The new menu layout makes it easier to find and set settings. I like the inclusion of My Menu settings where you can set and register your most frequently used menu settings such as Custom White Balance, Live View, Highlight tone priority, Record func+media/folder sel., and so on. I also like the inclusion of the picture styles menu, which I use quite a bit depending on the situation.

Highlight Tone Priority (HTP) is a nice new feature that helps prevent blown highlights. It’s especially useful when you are shooting only JPEG where you have a much narrower room for margin versus RAW. I used it on a couple of my last shoots and definitely can say it works well. Keep in mind when using HTP, you are limited to ISO 200-1600.

Conclusion

The Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III is a great camera. It’s very responsive and very fast. I used it for multiple photo shoots, multiple events, and even a baseball game and it performed flawlessly other than for the calibration issues with my Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM. The larger screen is a welcome addition, but at times limiting because the quality is actually degraded due to no increase in resolution. The increase in resolution is welcomed especially since there is no degrade in noise level. As much as I like it, I don’t think it’s worth the upgrade from my Mark II. Why?

• I didn’t find I really use Live View
• Highlight Tone Priority (HTP) is nice and useful, but shooting in RAW negates most of the need for HTP
• Being able to record JPEG to one card and RAW is nice, but at the very least I can do backup (RAW on both cards, JPEG on both cards, or RAW + JPEG on both cards)
• The 3 inch screen is nice, but the quality is lacking especially compared to the newer cameras like the 5D Mark II, Nikon D3, and Nikon D3x to name a few.
• Digic III processor speed is nice, but I don’t shoot sports and rarely hit the buffer limit. Now if it had Digic IV…
• No significant increase in ISO capability. I don’t expect the 1Ds Mark III to be able to do ISO 25,600 like the Nikon D3 or the 5D Mark II, but it should at least be able to match up with the D3x’s top ISO of 6400.

Needless to say, I’m waiting to see what the (currently non-existant) Canon EOS 1Ds Mark IV has in store. For kicks, how does the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III compare to Nikon’s new mega pixel king, the Nikon D3x? Let’s do a quick chart comparison:

SLR Cameras	Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III	Nikon D3x	Winner
Year Introduced	August 20, 2007	December 01, 2008
Cost	$7,999 MSRP (~$6650-$7000 current)	~$7,999 MSRP
Sensor Size	36 x 24 mm	35.9 x 24 mm
Viewfinder	100%, 0.76x magnification	100%, 0.70x magnification	Mark III
Max Resolution	5626 x 3744	6048 x 4032	D3x
Megapixels	21.1	24.5	D3x
ISO rating	100-1600 in 1/3 stops, with 50 and 3200 as options	100-1600 in 1/3 stops, with 50, 3200 and 6400 as options	D3x
Auto Focus type	45 focus point TTL CMOS sensor with 19 cross-types	51 focus point Multi-CAM 3500FX with 15 cross-types	D3x
Metering	Evaluative, partial, spot, center weighted average	3D Color Matrix Metering II, spot, center
Crop Factor	1.0	1.0
Continuous Drive	5 fps for 56 JPEG or 12 RAW	5 (7 at DX) fps for 130 JPEG	D3x
Storage Types	Compact Flash (Type I or II) with UDMA support and SD/SDHC	2x Compact Flash (Type I or II) with UDMA support
LCD	3.0 inches	3.0 inches
LCD Pixels	230,000	920,000	D3x (by big margin)
Battery	Canon Lithium-Ion LP-E4 (11.1V, 2300mAh) battery	Nikon EN-EL4a/EL4 (11.1V, 1900mAh) battery
Weight	1385 g (3.05 lb) with battery	1220 g (2.11 lb) with battery	D3x
Dimensions	150 x 160 x 80 mm (5.9 x 6.3 x 3.2 in)	160 x 157 x 88 mm (6.3 x 6.2 x 3.4 in)

To be frank, the new Nikon D3x kicks some major ass! I’ve seen the images from it and it’s phenomenal. As you can see the new D3x benefits from newer technology getting the amazing vibrant new LCD (from the D3), a better ISO range, more mega pixels, a larger buffer, the same 51-point auto focus of the D3, and more. If the new Mark III had specs like this, it would be very much worth the upgrade from the Mark II. One other great thing about the D3x is that it uses the same exact battery as the D3, D300, D700, D2x, D2xs, and even D2h! That makes having spare batteries a breeze, especially if you use a D3x and a D700! Amazing. In all honesty, given the choice between the 1Ds Mark III and the D3x, I would easily choose the D3x. I’m still committed to Canon at this point as I have a number of their L lenses that there is no Nikon equivalent for (Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L USM, Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM, Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM, and Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L USM, to just name a few) and I have some patience to see what Canon has in store.

You can also read other people’s reviews of the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III:

• Phil Holland (phfx.com)
• Simon Joison (dpreview.com)
• The Digital Picture
• Outback Photo
• William L. Castleman (wlcastleman.com)
• Michael Reichmann (lumious-landscape.com)

Gallery Pics

Here are pictures of the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III and comparison shots with the Canon EOS 1D Mark II (same exact body as the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II):