jshetley
wrote:
How does the 1ds3 do for sports in your opinion? Does the 5 fps give
you enough to work with? Did the buffer hold up well - or fill up
too fast? And lastly - how about the AF issue? Your shots look
really good - so it looks like this camera has no focus problems in
burst mode - is that correct?
There are no focus issues with the 1Ds3. No camera will give 100%, because the photographer generally cannot hold the spot on the target 100% of the time. Focus is fast and accurate.
I was using the 400mm DO lens, and the 100-400mm Canon "L" zoom.
Marilyn was using the 28-300mm "L" zoom.
We used Sandisk Extreme-III cards or faster (20-40MB/sec), earlier versions are too slow for these new cameras. It does help having faster cards for clearing camera buffers, plus much faster off-loading files from the cards to laptop. Also the 1Ds3 and 1D3 have much faster off-loading using the camera/USB cord. This method used to be very slow.
Remember NEVER format flash-memory cards using a COMPUTER.
Only FORMAT flash-memory cards IN your CAMERA.
16GB Extreme CF card for slot 1 and 4GB extreme-IV SD card in slot 2.
Set the Camera to "separate" recording mode and set the cards for the RAW to be sent to the CF card and the Large JPEG files to the SD. Since the RAW files are approx 4x the JPEG, these card sizes fill at the approx same time (about 560 shots); when filled, we removed both, and replaced both slots with fresh cards.
Obviously the bursts are shorter for the 1Ds3, but I'm not one for holding the shutter-button down, hoping for the best shot; for me I'd rather attempt for best timing, where the first shot is usually the best, followed by perhaps 2 or 3 others in short bursts only.
There is a definite, positive difference with the 1D3 for action sports shots.
The time for the 1Ds3/1D3 cameras to obtain focus is the same, extremely fast.
The 1D3 is far superior for action shots as 8-10 fps gives much better/tighter timing for whatever burst levels desired; simply put 100 milliseconds between shots is better than 200ms. However, if one can carry only one camera for all purposes, then the 1Ds3 is acceptable.
If however, one is going to shoot in low ambient lighting, like in gymnasiums, the 1D3 having excellent ISO3200 is a huge plus.
Canon has engineered two very different cameras for different assignments.
For lower frame rate, reasonably high ISO performance, and huge image resolution then the 1Ds3 is amazing to say the least.
If one needs very High ISO performance and frame-rate, with 10MP resolution, then the 1D3 is the best there is.
jw