Yesterday during the Falcons game against the Bucs I had the opportunity to try out Canon's flagship sports camera the eos-1D Mark III. Yeah it's a mouthful to say so most photographers just call it the Mark 3.
The camera was released in the summer of 2007 and ever since has been nothing but trouble for most of it's owners. There have been many reports of Mark 3's shortcoming when it comes to autofocus. It has issues following the action which it's predecessors never exhibited.
As you'll remember I also had a chance to shoot with Nikon's equivalent the other weekend and found it to be a great camera. So when my friend Chucky, who is the regional rep for Canon USA, offered me the chance to test out the Mark 3 for the third quarter I jumped. I wanted to be able to see firsthand what all the criticism was about.
I was able to fire off 277 images during third quarter and got mixed reviews of the Mark 3. First off it feels better in my hand than the Nikon D3. It can fire off 10 megapixel files at a rate of 10 frames per second and they look beautiful. But the AF is a little lacking in certain situations.
When subjects were running straight at me the camera averaged about 40% in focus which is unacceptable of a $4,500 camera. If the subjects were moving more laterally it did well at picking it up initially and staying on it as in the picture above.
I will say that one of the things I admired of the Nikon was it's ability to create clean images in low light situations. So for comparison sake I cranked up the ISO on the Mark 3 to 2000 and found it to have similar results. Unfortunately I don't think the images would hold up with the Nikon at higher ISOs.
It would be nice to shoot this entire week with the camera to really get a feel for it and get it dialed in to more of my preferences. If I were in a position to buy a camera at this point I'd have to say I would probably wait until the Mark IV.
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