My thoughts upgrading from a 7D to a 5D3

[OreoCookie]

Tell me about it. A flashlight is part of my kit with a 5D MKII; it's just not that good at focusing when the light starts going down.

Then a new camera may indeed do the trick. The new focus system has increased the portion of keepers significantly. Plus, in my case, the D7000 handles noise a lot, lot better than the D80 does: I shot a wedding last weekend and used ISO 1,600 without hesitation. With the D80, I would have been very reluctant. I try not to be the guy who recommends people a new camera when they should »learn to use the camera they own properly«, but progress really does make things easier.

And I remember a colleague of mine who owns (owned?) a 5D Mark I with some very nice lenses (35 mm f/1.4, 85 mm f/1.2 among others), and it was extremely hard to get the camera to focus properly with the primes when it dawn/early evening. The small dof makes matters worse, of course, since it requires the AF to operate more accurately anyway. In an apples to oranges comparison, it seemed that my venerable D80 had less trouble (with a different lens, of course). That's why I was, well, surprised when Canon had decided not to upgrade its AF system when the Mark II came around. I'm glad they did it with the Mark III, I'm sure it'll be that much easier to choose the focal plane as a photographer with the Mark III (especially when the dof is so small that focussing & recompose leads to a visible shift in focal plane).

 

[joemod]

Av Mode (Normal shooting):
- 41 Cross-points only - I find that's plenty of choice and doesn't take as much time to move the point around from middle to side
- Single point AF manual selection with joystick
- One shot AF
- Single shot drive

C1 Mode (Shooting GF in low light with the 35L):
- 41 Cross-points only
- AF Point Expansion (5 points) manual selection hoping that one will get lock on her face and this will use the non cross points as well if necessary
- AI Focus (in case she moves)
- Single shot drive
- I also set the minimum auto ISO shutter to 1/60th

C2 Mode (Shooting moving subjects)
- 41 Cross-points only
- Zone AF - this gives me the best chance to get an AF point on target - this will also use the non cross points if necessary
- AI Servo
- Multi-shot drive
- I also set the minimum auto ISO shutter to 1/125th in this mode

Pardon for hijacking,
Can you explain how it is possible to have 41 points enabled and Single point AF at the same time? What I understood, is that at the same time you have enabled both single point and 41 point AF. Is this possible in 7D? Also is the auto ISO shutter available in 7D?

Thanks in advance

 

[fcortese]

Pardon for hijacking,
Can you explain how it is possible to have 41 points enabled and Single point AF at the same time? What I understood, is that at the same time you have enabled both single point and 41 point AF. Is this possible in 7D? Also is the auto ISO shutter available in 7D?

Thanks in advance

Those are two different setting that you can customize. Go to AF menu tab 3 "selectable AF point" and you can choose all 61, only the 41 cross-types, 15 or 9 points. Then you go to the back of your camera and hit the AF selection button (the one furtherest to the right on the upper right of the back of the camera) and while looking through the VF his the M-Fn button repeatedly until you get the AF set up you want-spot AF, single point AF, etc. If you activate the "joystick" (multi controller) you can move that around. Once you get to a spot you want to always use as a start point you can memorize that by pressing the AF selection button then the top LCD light button until you hear a beep. Then anytime you press the joystick straight in it will automatically return to the memorized spot even after you've moved that in the prior picture. Hope that helps. We're talking about the 5D3. I never had the 7D.

 

[VI™]

Then a new camera may indeed do the trick. The new focus system has increased the portion of keepers significantly. Plus, in my case, the D7000 handles noise a lot, lot better than the D80 does: I shot a wedding last weekend and used ISO 1,600 without hesitation. With the D80, I would have been very reluctant. I try not to be the guy who recommends people a new camera when they should »learn to use the camera they own properly«, but progress really does make things easier.

And I remember a colleague of mine who owns (owned?) a 5D Mark I with some very nice lenses (35 mm f/1.4, 85 mm f/1.2 among others), and it was extremely hard to get the camera to focus properly with the primes when it dawn/early evening. The small dof makes matters worse, of course, since it requires the AF to operate more accurately anyway. In an apples to oranges comparison, it seemed that my venerable D80 had less trouble (with a different lens, of course). That's why I was, well, surprised when Canon had decided not to upgrade its AF system when the Mark II came around. I'm glad they did it with the Mark III, I'm sure it'll be that much easier to choose the focal plane as a photographer with the Mark III (especially when the dof is so small that focussing & recompose leads to a visible shift in focal plane).

A lot of my shoots run into dusk and after the sun is down when I'm shooting outside. At that point, its's flash light or bust because you can't really use modeling lamps when you're running off a battery unless you're setup, know what you want, and get it in the first few frames.

 

[VirtualRain]

Pardon for hijacking,
Can you explain how it is possible to have 41 points enabled and Single point AF at the same time? What I understood, is that at the same time you have enabled both single point and 41 point AF. Is this possible in 7D? Also is the auto ISO shutter available in 7D?

Thanks in advance

Those are two different setting that you can customize. Go to AF menu tab 3 "selectable AF point" and you can choose all 61, only the 41 cross-types, 15 or 9 points. Then you go to the back of your camera and hit the AF selection button (the one furtherest to the right on the upper right of the back of the camera) and while looking through the VF his the M-Fn button repeatedly until you get the AF set up you want-spot AF, single point AF, etc. If you activate the "joystick" (multi controller) you can move that around. Once you get to a spot you want to always use as a start point you can memorize that by pressing the AF selection button then the top LCD light button until you hear a beep. Then anytime you press the joystick straight in it will automatically return to the memorized spot even after you've moved that in the prior picture. Hope that helps. We're talking about the 5D3. I never had the 7D.

Yeah, that's right... put simply... you can first setup how many AF points you can choose from... and then, as usual, you can choose how many AF points you want to use to try and obtain focus on any given shot.

On the 7D, you can't setup how many AF points you can choose from... that is fixed at all 19 points. Of course, like the 5D3 you then have a number of different ways to choose which of those points you use for any given shot.

The 7D also does not have any ability to setup the minimum shutter speed for auto ISO. This is a nice feature when you primarily shoot in Av. Although it's easy enough to replicate (albeit not as convenient) on the 7D by shooting in Manual.