Canon EOS-1D Mark III - 1.3 crop - discuss

dinners

dinners

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I've been using a 40D for a few years now and have resisted various upgrades despite coming very close to the 5DII and more recently the 7D.

Landscapes are my real passion but I now have the bug for bird photography.

7D v 5DII has been done to death and I know it's very much 'horses for courses' when it comes to the relative strengths of both however I think it's fair to say that being two very different beasts - I'm now unlikely to swayed by one or the other.

My mind is wandering towards sourcing a used 1D Mark III as I feel it might just give me what I'm looking for.

10.1 MP - I'm happy with that. I'm under A3 or Web - No massive crops.
1.3 crop - jack of all trades I'm thinking or master of none ?
1.9 pixel density - (5DII 2.4 / 7D 5.4) nice and low - good for noise ?
Metering - looks good
10 fps - ahead of the other two
Movies - Not after this.
LCD - 230,000 I'm used to this.
Size - Not a problem

I'm just thinking out loud here but I'd love to hear your views.

Is 1.3 crop or indeed this model the right way to be thinking ?

Love to discuss :thumbs:
 
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1D series are pro spec high speed sports and action cameras.

I think the 7D is actually a better choice for birding (and wonderful partner to a 5D2) mainly because of the reach advantage. Plus it's way cheaper, and birding is really about lenses, so a bit more cash left to invest there.

I'd love to do a bit more birding and if I ever got around to it I'd be dreaming of a 7D with a 300L 2.8 and a couple of extenders. Pretty damn good mix of value, performance, versatility and weight :thumbs:
 
Nothing wrong with the mk3 for birding and landscapes, but the 7d also makes a great birding camera, whatever you go for your going to need some long lenses.
 
the 1.3 crop will lose you a little length on your lenses, i find myself reaching for the 120-300 instead of the 70-200 these days because of this.

otherwise the mk3 is a phenominal camera, mainly for sports/moving subjects the AF tracking is so customisable it will actually melt your brain lol

noise isnt too bad.. ISO1600 examples - http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=238288
 
I've had my 1d3 for about 2 years now, coming from a 40D and noticed quite a difference in the AF speed and quality. I have been out with my mate and got shots of BIF's he hasn't even managed to gain AF on with his 40D.
Remember though that you will only be able to use EF fitting lenses on it as crop body lenses will vignette. This is more expense if you have a nice crop of EF-S lenses.
 
HoppyUK said:
Plus it's way cheaper, and birding is really about lenses, so a bit more cash left to invest there.
Click to expand...

Nonsense, you can pick up 2nd hand 1DIIIs for £1200 these days! Not sure how much the 7Ds are, but the 1DIII will last a lot longer, and it'll still be knocking out images of excellent quality when the 1DV comes out :)

The 7D will be 'old' once the 8D comes out.. the 1 series doesn't really suffer from that. Plenty of pro sports togs still using the 1DII!
 
In our house we have,
5D mk 1
1DMk2
50D
(plus some 10/20d - but we'll discount them for a moment)

I reckon image quality is in the order as the cameras are listed above.
Build quality 1D, 5D closely followed by 50D
Handling 50D, 5D 1D (although the 1D3 is probably on a par with the 5D in terms of buttons and screens)

I havent really had the 5D long enough to compare against the 1D in detail but I think indoors/portraits the 5D beats the 1D, outdoors in normal light (read reasonable Iso) then there's very little in it between all 3.
AF - as always 1D gets every shot, 5D too early to tell, 50D - seems fast enough to get most shots (not tried motor racing yet).

Given your choice of subject matter I would go for the 1D, IQ is very good (even on a Mk2 and we all know how old that is :) ), weatherproofing - again the 1D wins and if I was doing a lot of landscapes I'd always carry my 1D even if I thought I was going to use the 5D just in case the weather got mucky.
Birding - again the 1D should win in the AF stakes, the 5D and the better 'sealed' 7D just arent quite as good as the 1D IMHO.
Battery life - 1D, massive onboard built in grip and battery, so no nasty extras to buy.
Onboard flash - not a problem in your case
Tripod mounted in windy weather - the sheer weight of the 1D will help here too, so landscapes via a tripod will benefit from this.
Much as I love my 5D I still think if I had to have just one camera I'd stick with a 1D series body as it does everything really very well, it may not scale the heights of particular things that the 5D or the 7D do but they dont have the all round ability of a 1D or the longevity of the 1D.

As an aside and marginally off topic, but when we use say a 300mm lens on a FF, 1.3 or 1.6 we get exactly the same image/magnification (or lack of) on the film plane, so when people write that 'crops' are better because of more reach I am somewhat sceptical, all you get surely is less of the whole image on the sensor on a crop format (hence the name).
Surely you can get exactly the same actual printable image by 'cropping' the results from a FF/1.3 image to match the image from a 1.6 jobby- you may not get as many pixels in the result (depending on where you start from of course), so I dont see (no pun) how a crop sensor will actually be of any significant benefit unless you have more Mp in the final image via the crop sensor.
A 5Dmk2 with 21Mp must surely give a better 'cropped' image than say a full 20D image?

Matt
 
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Dogfish_magnet said:
Get a 5D MKii for your landscapes and keep your 40D for birding
Click to expand...

Or another way of looking at it, is a 5D2 when cropped to 1.6x format, still delivers 8mp - which compares very well to a 10mp 40D. Two cameras in one ;)

AF is similar to a 40D, frame rate is slower, LCD is better. Otherwise quite similar cameras.
 
It'd be the one I'd go for if I were to switch from my D2x. Love the idea of a 1.3x crop - a real 'inbetween' size that keeps telephoto length (of sorts) yet allows wide lenses to stay wide(ish). Good MP count, good FPS, good everything, including build quality... it's probably the closest to a D2x that you can get for me, hence my initial sentence :)
 
Thanks ever so much for the comments and opinions on this.

Even though opinions differ on what would be the best upgrade for my needs - I can understand the reasoning behind all the suggestions.

I know the cost of the 1D MKIII has been mentioned further up the thread - I think £1200 (used) was given as an example so it's in the same bracket as a new 7D I guess and approx £400 less than a new 5DII

Plenty to chew over for now anyway.

Just need to get my skates on before 'Baby MKIII' arrives otherwise I'll be stuffed.
 
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Let pics do the talking. All with a 1d

575D7619.jpg


575D7669.jpg


ER5D0125.jpg


ER5D0157.jpg
 
Well if you want 7D as well

575D5852.jpg


575D5992.jpg


nearest I got to landscapes on the 7D

IMG_3490.jpg


and this ones a heavy Crop

IMG_3623.jpg


Thought you was loking at Full frame vs 1.3 not 1.6.
 
Ooops sorry cleaned up the photobucket account. My 7D shots of the red kites are in limbo land. If I can find them will put them up.
 
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