5D3 Track and Field

[TomFL]

I brought my 5D3 / 70-200 Mk II to my nephew's track and field championship last weekend. A few photos from the event are shown below. A couple observations:

• I was testing the focus system relative to my old 7D and came away pretty happy. The keeper rate was well over 50%, with most focus misses being foreground objects etc. that were easy to understand what went wrong. It is noted that track and field isn't the most demanding sport for advanced focus systems. My overall impression is that 5D3 > 7D.

• I was using center point with 4 point expansion, AI Servo, Focus Mode 1 (General Purpose).

• I was not happy with the short burst rate capability with raw files. About 2 to 3 seconds. I quickly discovered that I had to change to JPEG to get continuous shooting. For $3500 I was hoping for more after coming from the 7D which has a longer burst rate.

• The downside of long burst rates is having to go through 900+ pictures and parse them. LR4 on my laptop made this a bit agonizing. Would have been better off deleting images on camera first.

• As mentioned in the DPR camera review, the JPEG processing on the 5D3 tends to lose detail. Hopefully will be fixed in a firmware update, but not a huge issue anyway.

Most of these pictures are cropped. The one on the curve was taken with a 2x adapter from a very long distance away.

The thrill of victory...and the agony of defeat:

The leading girl won the 100m state title, and the other had to be carried off the track after pulling her hamstring.

 

[Starkiller]

The photos below 200mm focal length are sharper. Did you use a 70-200mm f2.8 with a 2x converter?

In my opinion the noise reduction is too much. You got rid off the noise, but the skin of the runners looks weird on the high ISO photos.

 

[riknash]

I'm surprised that you found the buffer performance poorer than the 7D when shooting RAW. My understanding was that the 5DIII had a similar buffer size to the 7D and at 6 fps instead of 8fps, therefore should have been longer than the 7D when using the same CF card. Also if you used a CF UDMA 7 card it was suggested that the RAW burst goes from 13 to 18 since four frames would have been written to the card prior to the first 13 frames filling the buffer and slowing down frame speed to that of the write speed to the CF card?

I brought my 5D3 / 70-200 Mk II to my nephew's track and field championship last weekend. A few photos from the event are shown below. A couple observations:

...snip...

• I was not happy with the short burst rate capability with raw files. About 2 to 3 seconds. I quickly discovered that I had to change to JPEG to get continuous shooting. For $3500 I was hoping for more after coming from the 7D which has a longer burst rate.

• The downside of long burst rates is having to go through 900+ pictures and parse them. LR4 on my laptop made this a bit agonizing. Would have been better off deleting images on camera first.

 

[jhal]

50% + keeper rate is low. Based on the "advanced" 5D MKIII AF you should be in 85%+ region.

I brought my 5D3 / 70-200 Mk II to my nephew's track and field championship last weekend. A few photos from the event are shown below. A couple observations:

• I was testing the focus system relative to my old 7D and came away pretty happy. The keeper rate was well over 50%, with most focus misses being foreground objects etc. that were easy to understand what went wrong. It is noted that track and field isn't the most demanding sport for advanced focus systems. My overall impression is that 5D3 > 7D.

• I was using center point with 4 point expansion, AI Servo, Focus Mode 1 (General Purpose).

 

[John Mason]

or turn off jpeg and shoot raw - helps the burst rate a lot

Also use fast CF cards

I haven't tried it yet, but I would not be surprised if the overhead in creating a JPEG gives JPEG's not as good a duration burst rate compared to Raws. I know in my case shooting my grandkid's soccer games, just turning off JPEG and only writing Raws with a 600x CF card did the trick.

I got about 90 percent keepers but I only used one focus point.
--
John Mason - Lafayette, IN

http://www.fototime.com/inv/407B931C53A9D9D

 

[69chevy]

Wow, so you know his criteria for a "keeper" and his ability to use his brand new camera..

The camera does not decide the keeper rate, the photographer does. He was happy with 50%.

Nice shots. I like the forth the best. The look on the face of the guy in the blue is priceless.

I won NC state 2a in the 400m years ago. The look on my face in the yearbook coverage was even worse than his. lol

 

[TomFL]

The photos below 200mm focal length are sharper. Did you use a 70-200mm f2.8 with a 2x converter?

In my opinion the noise reduction is too much. You got rid off the noise, but the skin of the runners looks weird on the high ISO photos.

The closer in photos do not use the 2x converter. I agree that a couple of the photos look a little "plasticified". I attribute some of this to the high ISO processing for JPEGs in camera of the 5D3, it is being over aggressive. Some is a softening due to the 2x converter and imperfect focus. The only other PP was a +20 noise reduction I do in LR by default.

I found the same thing when I accidentally left the camera in JPEG mode and took some pictures of some birds the next day, I lost a lot of fine texture in the feathers on the chest. Switched back to RAW and this resolved the problem.

 

[TomFL]

I'm surprised that you found the buffer performance poorer than the 7D when shooting RAW. My understanding was that the 5DIII had a similar buffer size to the 7D and at 6 fps instead of 8fps, therefore should have been longer than the 7D when using the same CF card. Also if you used a CF UDMA 7 card it was suggested that the RAW burst goes from 13 to 18 since four frames would have been written to the card prior to the first 13 frames filling the buffer and slowing down frame speed to that of the write speed to the CF card?

You are correct. 7D has 24 frames and 5D has a 17 frame buffer, so time wise it is about the same.

I have a fast 8 GB card, and slower 32 GB card, I just happened to have the 32 GB card in the camera that day so when buffer was full it slowed down drastically.

Still wish RAW buffer was longer though...

 

[TomFL]

50% + keeper rate is low. Based on the "advanced" 5D MKIII AF you should be in 85%+ region.

It depends on how you define "keeper". I define it as getting a photo in sharp focus of the subject I want. Non-keepers include things like intervening objects in the focus path, too much camera movement as I pan, etc. which the camera focus system cannot necessarily be blamed for.

The number of photos I got back which I thought WTF? was very low. It was on focus or "near" focus on something reasonable 90% of the time I would say. I would show examples but I already purged them all.

I found the WTF factor on the 7D to be higher.

 

[TomFL]

or turn off jpeg and shoot raw - helps the burst rate a lot

Also use fast CF cards

I haven't tried it yet, but I would not be surprised if the overhead in creating a JPEG gives JPEG's not as good a duration burst rate compared to Raws. I know in my case shooting my grandkid's soccer games, just turning off JPEG and only writing Raws with a 600x CF card did the trick.

Timing for the 5D3:

JPEG Large/Fine - 6 fps until card full

RAW - 6 fps for 17 frames, 2.7 fps after buffer full (with fast CF card)

RAW+JPEG Fine - 6 fps for 7 frames, 2.0 fps after buffer full

 

[Blue II]

Nice shots.

Did you write to both the CF card and SD card. If so, did you write different files to each? If so, then that slows the burst rate a lot because each picture has to be processed twice.

• I was not happy with the short burst rate capability with raw files. About 2 to 3 seconds. I quickly discovered that I had to change to JPEG to get continuous shooting. For $3500 I was hoping for more after coming from the 7D which has a longer burst rate.

--
Steve

 

[TomFL]

Nice shots. I like the forth the best. The look on the face of the guy in the blue is priceless.

I won NC state 2a in the 400m years ago. The look on my face in the yearbook coverage was even worse than his. lol

Ha. According to my analysis, your speed is proportional to how goofy you look running.

 

[John Mason]

I always shoot raw

Though I hear the jpeg engine on the 5d3 makes the Canon pretty good for ooc pics.

Nice to know I can shoot 6fps endlessly in jpeg mode.
--
John Mason - Lafayette, IN

http://www.fototime.com/inv/407B931C53A9D9D

 

[snapper1967]

Hopefully a firmware update can fix this problem.

--
Just enjoy what you do.

 

[Starkiller]

The closer in photos do not use the 2x converter. I agree that a couple of the photos look a little "plasticified". I attribute some of this to the high ISO processing for JPEGs in camera of the 5D3, it is being over aggressive. Some is a softening due to the 2x converter and imperfect focus. The only other PP was a +20 noise reduction I do in LR by default.

A 2x TC costs you about 400 lines (MTF) or 20 % IQ and two full f-stops. You lose about one stop of dynamic range for every full ISO stop. That's a loss of two stops with a 2x TC, if you keep the exposure time you get without a TC. Plus you need noise reduction on high ISO files.

This is an uncropped photo of a mascot run, when mascot was quite near (about 20m):





Here the mascots were at the staring lines, about 110m away from the camera. The crop has about 2,7 MP.









The crop is still quite good, probably better than the results you get from an uncropped image with a 2x TC.

 

[Yaamon]

When I first got my 5D III I used to to photo my niece track and field day with the 70-200 f2.8 is ii lens and found there was quite a bit of out of focus photos compared to the 5D II using center focus point with assist.

I also used just the center focus points and center focus point with surround area.

I then adjusted the tracking sensitivity and acceleration and deceleration by one adjustment with much higher focus.

I have no issues now.

 

[jhal]

In sports terms "Keeper rate" is how many images you have in focus on continus burst with AI servo.

I hope you agree. if you get 90% then you are fine

as for 69chevy; what does he know? He only joined the forums in March 2012 and I dont see a web site either...

50% + keeper rate is low. Based on the "advanced" 5D MKIII AF you should be in 85%+ region.

It depends on how you define "keeper". I define it as getting a photo in sharp focus of the subject I want. Non-keepers include things like intervening objects in the focus path, too much camera movement as I pan, etc. which the camera focus system cannot necessarily be blamed for.

The number of photos I got back which I thought WTF? was very low. It was on focus or "near" focus on something reasonable 90% of the time I would say. I would show examples but I already purged them all.

I found the WTF factor on the 7D to be higher.

 

[69chevy]

I guess time on a website is a measure of knowledge??

I will tell my next class that they shouldn't bother listening to me. I haven't been on DPreview long enough....

This is where I come to read about gear, not advertise my business.

 

[jhal]

then you should know what the "keep rate" in sports is and that the camera has a lot to do with it..

I guess time on a website is a measure of knowledge??

I will tell my next class that they shouldn't bother listening to me. I haven't been on DPreview long enough....

This is where I come to read about gear, not advertise my business.

 

[69chevy]

Fair enough.

I was under the impression that an uncle shooting his nephew's track meet would consider "keepers" to be photograph he keeps. As in ones where he likes the composition, lighting, mood, etc...

I missed the part where he said he was a "sports shooter".