Canon 5D mk III

Well I bought one. And off I went in the mist and humidity this morning to test drive it. I have not quite finished reading the very comprehensive manual and now I will slow down. Why? Because Lightroom 4 does not recognize the files from the 5D mk III and I have had instead to install Canon’s DPP software, which I have never liked. Then I had to batch convert all my files to TIF so I could use them with software with which I am familiar. Pretty disappointing but I guess Adobe will do an update eventually. On the Lightroom Forum someone thinks I am unreasonable to expect LR4 to import these files so soon after it has been released . Well call me old-fashioned but I do expect compatibility across products and no I don’t have any tolerance when it is the consumer who suffers. The moment LR4 will import and convert to DNG the Canon files I will uninstall DPP.

So these images have been through the mill to get into LR4, CS4 and Helicon Focus.

Here is number one:

Dew drop on mushroom

 

This is the full frame from which the crop is taken:

Dew Drop Full Frame

This was shot at ISO 200 off a tripod, of course.

Here is the second image:

White bracket fungus

Also shot at ISO 200. Stacked in Helicon Focus.

Now what about ISO 25,600? Other than some cropping, conversion and resizing there is no additional post-processing here.

ISO 25,600

See that horrible noise? Nope. Nor do I. I think I would classify this as useable 🙂

And a shot in the mist at ISO 3,200:

Grave near Sai Kung

Now I did post-process this because the mist was almost giving me a white out when I first arrived but all in all it was pretty decent. A nice clean image. Pumping up the ISO gave me a shutter speed of 1/400s at F8 using the 24-105mm lens.

Testing ability to render detail on a large scale:

Moss on the Rock

I noticed the lightness of the 5D mk III compared with my 1D mk IV and I did not buy an additional battery grip so I saved some weight there too. It is relatively compact and although the controls differ from my 1D they are pretty intuitive. I would suggest that any Canon user, who is used to a prosumer body will feel at home quite quickly. I had to get used to the change in buttons to operate the Live View and I wasn’t smitten with the loss of my magnify and shrink buttons in exchange for the combination of a new magnify button and the main dial.  Nothing too challenging though. If the weather and visibility improve I’d like to try this for birds in flight as it is supposed to run at up to 6 frames per second. Not too dusty. The shutter is beautifully quiet compared to the 1D and once or twice I had to check I’d actually taken a picture.

So I think the 5D mk III and I are going to spend quite a bit of time together. But only when Adobe finally updates LR4 so I can import my images directly from the card. I can’t be fagged to learn and use DPP. One workflow is enough to learn.