EOS 1DX Mark III arrived this morning

[wq9nsc]

I spent a few minutes setting up the preferences to match my 1DX and 1DX II bodies and then took a few test photos and as expected the 1DX III is working beautifully.

Initial impression, the shutter may be slightly louder than the Mark II but that may be from the further increase in shutter speed.  I am hoping to shoot a little soccer practice later today but for those curious about ISO, this is a quick set of photos of ISO 800; 51,200; 102,400; 204,800; 409,600; and its maximum expanded ISO of 819,200.  These were shot as RAW images, cropped to about 30% of sensor area,  and run through DPP with it standard settings so I didn't do any special noise processing and the system is capable of better with some tweaking but I am confident that the 1DX Mark III will produce very nice sports photos at 51,200 especially when most of the sensor is used for the print.

The 1DX Mark III has a new menu tab with network settings on that tab.  I enabled its internal WiFi which was easy to set up using WPS with my router and seems to work fine.

Rodger

[wq9nsc]

And on a humorous note I tried to register my new DSLR body as the insert pamphlet in the box suggests however the Canon USA site won't accept a 1DX III body yet, the II is the newest model in that series and trying to just add the remaining "I" to the closest choice results in a product not found error.

Rodger

[RobertTheFat]

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@wq9nsc wrote:

And on a humorous note I tried to register my new DSLR body as the insert pamphlet in the box suggests however the Canon USA site won't accept a 1DX III body yet, the II is the newest model in that series and trying to just add the remaining "I" to the closest choice results in a product not found error.

Rodger

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What happens if you call it a Mark II but enter its actual serial number? (I'm assuming, without any hard evidence to support my assumption, that all Canon serial numbers are unique.)

EDIT: Are you a CPS member? If so, I'd just call and let them try to figure it out.

[wq9nsc]

Robert,

Good suggestion and I will probably try that tomorrow.   I am heading out shortly to shoot a soccer practice to check the setup on the new camera.  Thanks!

Rodger

[Waddizzle]

Nice shots.  

[wq9nsc]

Thanks Waddizzle but the cat model wasn't impressed until after she was paid in kitty treats 🙂  

Another site posted a "rumor" that some units wouldn't ship with the CF Express card reader due to the viral outbreak in China but mine was included.  The usual glossy Canon camera box was packed inside another black and white graphic carton that also contained the CF Express card and reader.

Rodger

[ebiggs1]

How exciting    I know you can't wait to try it on the sports field.

You know it can cost more to just put CF cards in the 1DX Mk III than most people will ever spend on a camera! 

[wq9nsc]

Ernie,

The first card was free...  But one card definitely isn't enough!  They are expensive but because I really don't plan to shoot video with it 64GB cards work fine for me and I will wait for a price break to buy some larger capacity cards. 

The 1DX III handles nicely but I need to get more time with it to fully set it up.  The eye detect focus is interesting and I believe that it works very well but I switched from it to my usual mode after a few minutes.  It is a bit distracting watching the focus points dance around locking on eyes (there are up to 191 focus points in the Mark III array).  Last night was the final home game so I didn't want to try a lot of new stuff and I will spend a lot more time with it during some soccer practice scrimmages to give it a fair trial to see if it is something that I will find useful.  The AF is very fast and sure even when letting it uses a large sector to choose focus.  I need to change the sensitivity for the optical sensor control for selecting focus points because it was far too sensitive and a slight quiver sent the cursor from edge to edge of the array; something I planned to check before the game but ran out of time because of a consulting project that was on deadline.

Overall I really like it, it is a definite step over the Mark 1 and 2 in AF performance and the files look considerably cleaner when comparing equal ISO files between the bodies. 

It wasn't the best game to give it a good test because both the JV and varsity teams were pretty flat last night, varsity in particular after a heartbreaking loss Tuesday night.  They played a much larger team from upstate who only led once in the game but that lead occurred at the final buzzer.  Photos below were taken with the 1DX Mark III, EF 300MM F2.8 wide open at 1/640 with ISO set to auto.  ISO ranged from 4,000-6,400 depending upon placement on court.  I am looking forward to outside soccer in the sunshine 🙂

Rodger

[ebiggs1]

Impressive to say the least.

[wq9nsc]

Thanks Ernie but I am definitely not using it to its full capabilities.  I only had time to dial in one lens with the micro focus before the game and because it was senior night the 70-200 2.8 and 24-70 2.8 on the 1DX II and 1DX bodies did most of the work.

I vowed when I retired that I would also give up consulting work but sometimes the projects are just too interesting and lucrative to turn down but they still take time better spent doing something I enjoy much more and I will definitely prioritize photography when soccer season starts.  My daughter has been offered a short research internship at Los Alamos this summer so maybe while she is gone I can do some non-sports photography which will keep my mind off having my high school sophomore over 1,000 miles away 🙂

Rodger