Dan Nikon
Senior Member
LOL!!
Sounds like an "Infommerical".
Sounds like an "Infommerical".
...So now that Focusing issues have been clearly identified and
resolved by Canon, and now that a brand new & flamboyant EIZO CG241W
has been dropped-shipped by my best friend for me to test drive and
calibrate (that's the kind of friend everyone really wants), I have
just decided that it is the perfect time for a new camera.
Enter our brand new 1D MKIII (well, two, because the other is on its
way to my best friend's "château" ;-)
Mine had arrived just a few days back to DELL's warehouse, and came
to me with a high 54+ serial number. Called Canon on the spot, here
in the U.S. (transferred to east-coast support center), and after
reviewing cam's records/serials and papers, they felt pretty
confident that my unit was clear, "purified" from factory and highly
unlikely to experience any issue, whatsoever, other than pure joy...
;-)
BTW, for those of you living here in North America : if you have
been waiting for this cam, I can tell you that NOW is the time.
Price is $4,059 + applicabble taxes, and any focusing garbage seems
now history, from a production point-of-view.
Well, after all the things said and done, here I am: a
sweet-and-beautiful 1D MKIII (with Canon's BEST zoom ever made, EF
70-200 f/4L) plus the wonderful EIZO CG241W. So we went out and gave
the cam a quick run, and then intensively worked out the monitor,
which ultimately proved to be an excellent resource for my
ACR/Lightroom Calibration pseudo-profiles.
Some quick snap-shots for your evaluation, with ZERO post-processing
in Photoshop, other than minimal steps for resizing:
http://www.pbase.com/feharmat/eos_1d_mark_iii
Please, notice that the following STATIC close-up was shot in
AI-SERVO (!), hand-held, with IS, at the same time I was chasing my
older son around, under 80+ degrees Florida sun (cam was warm):
http://www.pbase.com/feharmat/image/88159670/original
I know that folks have had issues with AI-SERVO even in static mode,
because of unpredictable jittering of AF subsystem unable to resolve
focus consistently. However, from my initial observations this cam's
AF "continuous" mode is simply BETTER than my already excellent (and
sold) 1D MKII-N. Pretty surprising, and this is with f/4 optics. I
wonder how it would do on faster glass. I will dive deeper into
moving objects, UFOs and dogs/cats/kids, etc., but this is already an
excellent sign (no jittering, no miss, no doubt on target selection
and focus resolution in continuous mode).
As for Lightroom calibration, I leveraged the presence (or the
omnipresence) of the CG241W, which seems BIG on my desktop, sitting
right next to my VP930b and VP191B monitors. The EIZO has an
incredible brightness stability and distribution profile accross
its ENTIRE frame. GONE are the CRTs with this bad-boy, and you get
from factory the precise measurements, corner-to-corner, top-bottom,
left-right of your unit. How sweet!
After some monitor calibration and Gamma-curve woes (which turned out
to be a joke to resolve), I was able to arrive to four presets with
four different TRCs, which individually loaded on LR presets via
text-editor, as they can not be loaded via LR's P.O.S. user
interface. Mind you that these TRCs are FAIRLY different than 1D
MKII/N, though. The 1D MKIII distribution of stuff on its raw files
is certainly different, and the net effect on global contrast in
certainly different. The shadows on the 1D MKIII are OPEN, certainly
WIDER and less condensed than the 1D MKII/N, which means that you
need to PROPERLY handle bottom-end tonality and adjust your TRCs
accordingly.
However, with the help of a nice, clean GMB target and IMATEST, I was
able to obtain readings of DeltaCxab deviation down to 4.11 @ 102%
Saturation, from the 1D3, with basically NO EFFORT other than
correctly exposing the target and waiting from the 40+ minutes crunch
on my PC. Best saturation-corrected baseline I was able to pull from
my 1D2 was 4.48 also at 102% Saturation (for your reference)
Moreover, I have noticed that gone are some magenta non-linear color
casts that I used to get when calibrating my older 1D2N with ACR,
which were certainly correctable, but under a "subjective" criteria,
though. With the 1D3, though, the response came clean and mostly
right from the calibration process.
Later on with more observations on the camera operation, and specific
differences that I have found with respect to my older (and
venerable) 1D2-N.
Stay tuned!
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