There are many folks, some more reasonable than others, who have faulted Canon for using the same 9-point autofocus layout in the new/real-soon-now 5D Mark II as the current/previous 5D.

This superb image set of Our New President, Our New Vice President and their Families, before and during the Chicago Victory Speech were taken with the original 5D by David Katz/Obama for America. As I write this, over 1.25 million folks have viewed some or all of these 82 images. I will wager that not one of them thought, “boy, if there were more autofocus points and they were more widely dispersed, these would have been even better.” Not one.

But there is always the next toy. The original 5D’s LCD, now nearly three years old, can makes it sometimes seem more like a film camera with histograms. It is not water tight. The frame rate is pitifully slow…

…and it has a sensor that is (still) as good as any and better than most. Despite all the nattering, in the right hands the 5D shines. The Canon EOS 5D is, still, an excellent general purpose tool. It will remain, for some time to come, a better camera than most of us are photographers.

I got sucked in…

Normally I have the good sense to steer clear of photography forums. Too often these are the hangouts of folks with firmly held opinions unencumbered by facts.

I’m more of a facts type of guy.

The 5D Mark II seems to have brought out all the usual suspects. Among the poorly reasoned arguments and tortured logic presented as facts is the persistent complaint that Canon was wrong to put a 21 MP sensor in the 5D Mark II. Except for landscape shooters and maybe some commercial types, no one needs that many pixels. In an homage to all that Nikon can serve up at the moment, the consensus seemed to be that 12 MP is, and will continue be, all that most folks need.

I currently shoot with a 21 MP 1Ds Mark III and also shot the original 12 MP 5D for most of two years. Assuming that Canon has retained the image quality of these two cameras (and early samples seem very promising) it is my experience that more pixels are better than fewer.

I hate dislike vertical 3:2 aspect ratio images. It is, more often than not, just too damn tall. I much prefer the a traditional 4:5 vertical crop.

21 MP gives you the luxury of tossing pixels out and doing so without remorse. The standard 5624 x 3736 pixel 1Ds3 capture is reduced to 4887 x 3736 when cropped to 4:5. The crop results in a 50 megabyte tiff file. The math is far less favorable to a 12 MP camera. The original 5D starts at 4372 x 2906 pixels and drops to 3310 x 2650 when cropped to 4:5. The cropped tiff weighs in at 25 MB.

Similar arithmetic applies to horizontals. Here 3:2 is tolerable but something more like 2:1 or it’s close HD cousin 16:9 look even better.

For the folks who just can’t seem to afford all the storage that larger RAWs and JPEGs produce. With one terabyte bare drives costing $160 or less, storage is the cheapest thing in my photographic ecosystem.

And if you are still unconvinced. Canon feels your pain. In addition to two reduced size JPEG sizes, the 5D Mark II has two pint sized RAW file sizes. sRAW1 is a 10 MP capture and, in an homage to the omnipresent web banner, sRAW2 weighs in at 5.2 MP.

Both of Canon’s big guns, the EOS-1D Mark III and the EOS-1Ds Mark III allow for lens by lens (up to 20 individual lenses – which seems reasonable) customized autofocus settings. While potentially useful for all lenses, it is particularly important for faster (f/2.8 and better) glass.

Canon outlines an iterative “point the camera and lens at a flat surface, click, check, adjust if necessary, click, check etc.” procedure. It should work. I never bothered because it seemed tedious and my lens kit is mostly the f/4 “light and good for travel” L-series. My fastest lens is the manual focus TS-E 45mm f/2.8.

Thanks to folks that understand optics far better than I, there is a second, less subjective and arguably less tedious way to calibrate your glass. This method relies on Moire patterns that result from viewing a specially constructed optical target using Liveview.

The step by step instructions are on Northlight-Images, a very nicely done site dedicated to all things Canon DSLR.

Another discussion and a similar target can be found here..

The Canon APS-H sensor, lately of the Canon 1D Mark III, with its 1.3x crop factor is looking more and more the orphan. If true, and the inference comes mainly comes from Canon USA’s inscrutable Chuck Westfall, it will be missed.

The APS-H sensor sits squarely between the full frame sensors found in the Canon 1Ds series as well as the Nikon D3, and the 1.6x crop, APS-C sensor that is found in just about every other DSLR on the planet.¹ While there isn’t quite the telephoto bump of the APS-C sensor, the 1.3x crop is kinder to wide angles.

Canon has held the 1D Mark III sensor to 10 megapixel. Physics being what it seems to be, the larger photo sites beat smaller. The combination of just a bit bigger sensor along with some welcomed restraint by Canon’s pixel packing engineers, results in image quality that is as good as a very small group of DSLR’s.

As compromises go, it’s a good one.

¹ There is a smaller yet standard for DSLR’s. The Four Thirds System format isn’t as popular as the APS-C but the small size of the sensor, along with some nice engineering, result in some very interesting products

I was fortunate, back in late May, to receive one of the very first Canon EOS 1D Mark III’s. (Come on Canon, do something about your naming scheme…) It arrived, thanks to the fine folks at Badger Graphics, one week prior to a three week photo trip to Iceland. I bought it specifically for the Iceland trip and with the intention of selling it sometime after I returned.

Six months later I still own and use it. It is hard to imagine not owning and using it. I would only trade it for the full-frame goodness of the EOS 1Ds Mark III. (Really, Canon, huddle up and come up with a better name for the pro line…)

The 1D3 has had a fair amount of bad press, along with the usual forum centered righteous indignation, in regards to it’s occasionally sub-par AI Servo focus. Rob Galbraith was the first to quantify this and by throughly documenting the exact conditions under which the focus problem occurs, helped to convince Canon that the problem was real.

With the problem identified, Canon has begun a program to repair a defective part. They have also recently posted a firmware fix that seems to take square aim at the problem.

Any day now, Galbraith will post his evaluation of the mechanical fix by Canon along with the firmware upgrades and pass judgement on what may yet be called the Canon EOS 1D Mark III Blue Dot. As I type this, I have no idea what his testing will show.

But here is what I do know. I have never seen the problem. Several thousand frames shot in all sorts of conditions and it just isn’t there. I haven’t seen the problem because likely I haven’t shot in the specific conditions where the problem occurs. The full explanation is here. Remember, the problem is specific to what Canon calls AI Servo focus. I use AI Servo focus less than one-half the time with the 1D3 and basically never with my 5D. Follows is the executive summary:

It means that when the light is especially bright and the temperature is warm, the camera’s autofocus performance drops like a stone. Yes, you read that correctly. On sunny, warm, beautiful days – the sort of conditions in which autofocus usually thrives – the EOS-1D Mark III’s ability to make in-focus pictures of still or moving subjects is greatly reduced.     

But it is 2007 and the world is full of opinions and opinions, thanks to the constant din of the web, turn into facts. A specific defect in an otherwise very capable camera has turned into a wholesale focus defect in a sub-par steaming pile of a camera.

What Galbriath has to say about the fixes Canon has in place will be interesting. Just as interesting, especially if the specific autofocus issues are fixed, will be the response by the indignant forum trolls.