1DsMkIII my first impressions

Just had a few days with my new camera after a year of using a 5D. Now my post capture workflow has changed dramatically - apart from a few exposure and white balance tweaks in ACR there is usually very little for me to do in photoshop, and at last - no more interpolation of files to get them to the right size. I feel very streamlined and efficient now

Here is a 100% crop of an image straight from RAW, no tweaking/sharpening apart from the crop and changing it to a jpeg in PS.


And here is the parent picture, again as shot.


The image details: 1DsMkII, EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro @f/8, 1/80s, iso 100. Tripod and cable release.

Hi Christina...can you yet make any observations about high ISO performance? Also are you finding the 14bit files to be the cat's meow? I love them on the Mk3...great tonal range, especially in prints, and VERY noticable in enlargements.

The cutout in itself is a pleasure to look at. Of course you have such a great lens. It's pleasant surprise to see the nice bokeh in the background. So you have really isolated the plant yet the tree has it's milieu by which to place it in context.

What is so special with the cutout is that you have taken this one step further and shown us the start of life on this planet, the wonderful leaf. It's showcased beautifully, natural micro-flaws and all, collecting sunlight for doing one simple thing, storing that energy in simple bonds of that miracle element, carbon in carbon dioxide to water the juice of life!

Because of this, I'm especially impressed. We hardly ever see anyone give a special place to the leaf. The soft petals behind are like a poem of light pink dresses celebrating spring.

Thanks!

Asher

You know, did not read your post fully...that 100% crop looks excellent!

Thanks for your comments Asher, you always make me feel like an artist

Shane, I'm a coward when it comes to high iso's, I'm welded to my tripod and getting up early before it gets breezy, I have to think long and hard before moving up to iso 200

The thing I've noticed most about the images coming out of the camera is the control of the highlights and shadows and the smoothness of transitions, everything feels calm and serene

Christina,

You should at least give iso 200or 400 a try. what do you have to lose? At 200 I doubt you will see much difference from 100.

Bernard Wolf said:

You should at least give iso 200or 400 a try. what do you have to lose?

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The problem with higher than native ISOs is the gradual loss of dynamic range capability. For some subjects it's not that much of an issue, but for others it is.

Bart

Thanks for the encouragement Bernard.
What sort of subjects are you thinking of Bart - high contrast ones?

Christina Bollen said:

What sort of subjects are you thinking of Bart - high contrast ones?

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Yes, high contrast where both highlights and shadows need to display some detail. For each doubling of ISO, one loses at least one stop of dynamic range. The most difficult scenes are those with some highlights that need to show detail, and lots of shadows. The shadows get visibly noisier and lacking of detail as ISO goes up.

Having said that, I do recognize that sometimes one needs to compromise and the size and quality of the 1Ds3 files allows significant postprocessing before it becomes noticeable.

Bart

Hi Bart,

So your saying that challenging weeding shots for example best be taken at the "native" ISO. but where is the recorded on the menu?

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

So your saying that challenging weeding shots for example best be taken at the "native" ISO.

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Yes, but only if light allows an acceptable shutterspeed of course ...

but where is the recorded on the menu?

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For the 1Ds3, it's hidden under the ISO 100 setting ;-) .

Bart

Bart, I know you've done much more research in this area but in general I find ISO200 produces smaller files, hence better compression, hence less noise. Is this not the case or is this possibly just a result of slightly different metering and exposure resulting in less dynamic data and then hence less noise ?

I'm completely underwhelmed by these images. They seems soft to me. Certainly I'd be disappointed with them from a 7k camera.

Christina Bollen said:

Just had a few days with my new camera after a year of using a 5D. Now my post capture workflow has changed dramatically - apart from a few exposure and white balance tweaks in ACR there is usually very little for me to do in photoshop, and at last - no more interpolation of files to get them to the right size. I feel very streamlined and efficient now

Here is a 100% crop of an image straight from RAW, no tweaking/sharpening apart from the crop and changing it to a jpeg in PS.

And here is the parent picture, again as shot.

The image details: 1DsMkII, EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro @f/8, 1/80s, iso 100. Tripod and cable release.

Click to expand...

Jane Auburn said:

I'm completely underwhelmed by these images. They seems soft to me. Certainly I'd be disappointed with them from a 7k camera.

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Jane,

What do you mean by soft? These are snaps, jpgs shown on a monitor. What really is the shortcoming here?

Asher

Jane Auburn said:

I'm completely underwhelmed by these images. They seems soft to me. Certainly I'd be disappointed with them from a 7k camera.

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Even images from expensive cameras need sharpening and tonemapping. Otherwise the image may look a bit dull, especially under low contrast lighting.

Here is a quick (I haven't spent meaningful time on the PP) before/after example of the 100% zoom crop:


Same low contrast lighting, but with sharpening and tonemapping applied to the already compressed JPEG. What probably struck Christina is the difference in image data quality compared to her prior 5D files. There is much more that can be done before the image breaks down, partly due to the higher 14-bit Raw accuracy which helps smooth gradients.

Also, but the same would apply to a 5D Mark II shot, the 21 MPixels mean that we are looking at a fragment of a 58.5 x 39 inch (148.6 x 99 cm) image (@ 96 PPI screen resolution).

Bart

Bart,

What tone mapping do you speak of? Not the result, the procedure!

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

Bart,

What tone mapping do you speak of? Not the result, the procedure!

Asher

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Hi Asher,

Could be anything, from a simple S-curve, to Large radius with low amount USM, to dodging and burning, with or without masks for certain luminosity ranges. One can also convert to 32 bit/channel image and apply adaptive HDR tonemapping as built-in in Photoshop. The possibilities are endless. It depends on the image.

In the above example I just did a large (50px) radius USM after Smart sharpening. Takes a few seconds to do, can make a world of difference.

Cheers,
Bart

Bart_van_der_Wolf said:

Yes, high contrast where both highlights and shadows need to display some detail. For each doubling of ISO, one loses at least one stop of dynamic range. The most difficult scenes are those with some highlights that need to show detail, and lots of shadows. The shadows get visibly noisier and lacking of detail as ISO goes up.

Having said that, I do recognize that sometimes one needs to compromise and the size and quality of the 1Ds3 files allows significant postprocessing before it becomes noticeable.

Bart

Click to expand...

Bart

I'm not sure this is true. If you go back to our conversation about the bit depth and well capacity you will only lose 'atleast one stop' of dynamic range when you go beyond the 'unity gain' point - say 400iso for the 14bit 1Ds3. Of course, given the noise floor, that may not be the case even then?

However, the 1Ds3 does seem a bit noisier on a per pixel basis than the 5D at high iso, but in print looks great. I've a couple from mine at around 8000 which are perfectly printable for the purpose they were shot.

Mike

Mike Shimwell said:

Bart

I'm not sure this is true. If you go back to our conversation about the bit depth and well capacity you will only lose 'atleast one stop' of dynamic range when you go beyond the 'unity gain' point - say 400iso for the 14bit 1Ds3. Of course, given the noise floor, that may not be the case even then?

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Hi Mike,

You are correct. I should have been more clear in that the loss of Dynamic Range (DR) starts out gradually after native sensitivity, but after reaching a certain higher ISO point the losses accelerate. From my measurements, the DR of the 1Ds3 goes from 11.37 stops at ISO 100, to 11.26 stops at ISO 200, and 10.96 stops at ISO 400. At ISO 800 it already drops by 2/3rd of a stop to 10.36 stops. ISO 1600 dives by 0.79 stops to 9.57 stops. I assume other 1Ds3s are similar.

However, the 1Ds3 does seem a bit noisier on a per pixel basis than the 5D at high iso, but in print looks great. I've a couple from mine at around 8000 which are perfectly printable for the purpose they were shot.

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Yes that's right, but it does depend a bit on the output size. The interesting thing is that while the per pixel noise may be higher, the per unit area noise is quite good. If one compares the 1Ds3 image after properly downsampling to the pixel dimensions of the 5D, the noise per identical unit area of the 1Ds3 becomes very good in comparison. The key however is that the dynamic range should also be there, and I think it is (although I haven't studied the 5D in depth).

So for modest output sizes one can tolerate some noise, but for large output sizes it may become objectionable. Lack of dynamic range will also be noticeable at smaller output sizes, so one should be careful to not lose it without a good reason (e.g. shutterspeed restrictions to avoid subject movement or camera shake). I usually draw the line at ISO 800, but try to stay at 400 if possible. These higher ISO scenarios are usually also the situations with contrasty lighting where the dynamic range is indispensable.

Cheers,
Bart

Jane Auburn said:

I'm completely underwhelmed by these images. They seems soft to me. Certainly I'd be disappointed with them from a 7k camera.

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Hi Jane, maybe you're not used to inspecting your images at 100% before using any post capture processing? Those were images converted straight from RAW without any modifications/corrections/sharpening - naturally that's a bit soft, drab and not especially contrasty! They go on to look great once properly processed