I wanted to better understand why this banding came about as it’s not a particularly nice artefact to have on images… is it even on the real image or is it just something you see on the LCD?  I noticed it at ISO 6400 which – while high – is supposed to be comfortably inside the usable range of the 5D Mark III.

Examples

Below are two examples of 100% crops from 3 images.

• The top image in each case is the preview JPEG extracted from the CR2 (RAW) file – this is the image that is displayed on the LCD of the camera.
•  The middle image is the output of a conversion with Canon’s DPP using the settings in the camera (default Portrait picture style in this case) but with Noise Reduction set to OFF
• The bottom image is the output of a conversion with DPP, but with default Noise Reduction (10/20 for both luminance and colour for this setting from the camera)

5D Mark III, ISO6400, 1/40s at f/1.4

And the second is the bottom section of a sky shot at dusk:

5D Mark III, ISO6400, 1/40s at f/1.4

Discussion

In the top images (the extracted JPEG), you can clearly see the banding as horizontal streaks of colour – mostly red (note that I haven’t changed these images in any way from the output – you can see the colour streaks more clearly on the LCD as the contrast is different to a PC monitor).  In the second image, there is a lot more colour noise in the image.  What you can tell if you compare the images on top of each other is that all of the banding in the top image is present in the middle image too – there’s just a lot more noise to mask it.  The third image with the default noise reductions settings in DPP doesn’t show much noise, but doesn’t keep much pixel level detail either.  I’d say the noise reduction is probably a bit heavy here.

Comparing the file sizes gives you an idea of how much detail is in the images:

Test1: LCD Preview: 2.96MB, DPP (NR OFF): 13.2 and DPP (with NR): 7.68

Test 2: LCD Preview: 3.29MB, DPP (NR OFF): 14.7MB and DPP (with NR): 7.50MB

Note that all images are the same maximum resolution of the sensor – 5760×3840 pixels.

I think what happens is that the LCD preview is both heavily and quickly compressed.  This means you get a fairly quick preview, but the JPEG parameters will not be optimal for the rendering.  This also applies the in-camera settings for picture style, noise reduction etc. so the image is softer than the raw (no noise reduction) image.  The noise reduction works by reducing randomness in the image, but the banding artefacts are not completely random.  In order to appear as banding, some pixels must be dependant on their horizontal neighbour.

The 2 final converted images from DPP both mask the banding, as does a conversion in Lightroom (using ACR6.6 Beta from a DNG).

Conclusion

I don’t have much in the way of conclusions here, other than to say there definitely seems to be some streaking on my 5D Mark III sensor at ISO 6400.  Whether this is an issue or not, I don’t know.  It could be that it’s there in the 5D2, 7D, 1D Mark IV, Nikon D3s etc and it’s just an artefact of general sensor design and read electronics and no-one worries about it.  It may also be that my 5D Mark III is faulty.  I plan on doing some further testing with the 5D Mark II, 7D and 1D Mark IV and Nikon D7000 to see how they behave under similar conditions to see if there is any evidence of an issue here.  It’s worth noting that this is very unlikely to affect real-world images.

As I said in the title, this was a very unscientific test.  It involved 20 minutes or so wandering around with the 100-400L on the 5Dmk3, then a swap to the 1Dmk4 and about the same length of time trying to shoot similar targets.  I’ll go through the images first with a bit of discussion about how I was taking the shot (conditions etc), and at the end I’ll talk through some conclusions based on processing the images.

5D Mark III

So, the 5D Mark III.  Processing wise, all shots are RAW, converted to DNG with the latest ACR Beta (6.6) which is the only ACR to support the 5D Mark III at the moment – then processed in Lightroom.  On the camera, I used a combination of normal single AF point and spot AF depending on the situation.  The lens had IS switched on all the time.

5D Mark III (ISO400, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/80s)

First shot was a relatively distant squirrel running up a tree.  This ended up 1.25 stops underexposed because of the backlight, so it’s been pushed quite hard in Lightroom and still looks good.  The image files from the 5D Mark III continue the trend of standing up to more intense post-processing than previous cameras.

5D Mark III (ISO800, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/160s)

It felt good shooting with the 5D Mark III.  The AF speed was very good – locking on exactly where I wanted without any issue.  I had the AF in the “Versatile multi purpose” case as I was planning on shooting more-or-less static subjects (like birds on the ground or squirrels).

5D Mark III (ISO800, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/250s)

The light levels were quite a bit lower generally at the start of my testing, mainly because I was under more shelter.  This led to shutter speeds between about 1/80s and 1/250s for most of the shots.  I’m pleased with how sharp they came out considering the shutter speed on some of them.

5D Mark III (ISO800, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/200s)

This little robin was sat on a log on the ground and I could get pretty close (the MFD of the 100-400L is 1.8m so I couldn’t go any closer than that, but I think I got pretty near to that).

5D Mark III (ISO800, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/200s)

There were lots of blue tits around too – most of them high in tall trees so a bit out of the range of my 400mm lens, but I managed to get this one:

5D Mark III (ISO800, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/2500s)

All in all, the 5D Mark III was a joy to use.  It felt like it got every shot in focus from quickly reviewing some of them on the LCD.  The subject lock was very quick and positive and it just gave a reassuring feeling.  However, it’s worth reading to the end as something surprised me when I looked at the images…

1D Mark IV

I did the same kind of thing with the 1D Mark IV after swapping the lens – just a quiet wander around Upton Country Park to hunt out some birds and wildlife that might stay still long enough for me to shoot!

Swapping over to the 1D Mark IV, it felt obviously heavier but in a way a little more balanced.  The 100-400L is quite a heavy lens, so the heavy body does match it quite well.  It was great to have the vertical grip back again – I find I naturally choose to shoot vertically with the 1D Mark IV (as you can see from the selection of pictures, compared to the 5D Mark III).

This first shot is not quite sharp at the face end as I was chasing the squirrel across the ground with the lens (you can see motion blur on the static objects like the tree trunk) and in a not quite appropriate focusing mode!  But I liked the action and for the purposes of this discussion on the AF performance, it did lock where it needed to (the squirrel was about 10m away from me for this shot):

1D Mark IV (ISO800, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/400s)

Initial thoughts when actually shooting with the 1D Mark IV was that the delay from pressing the shutter button to the shot actually being taken felt longer than the 5D Mark III.  This was quite surprising, and it may be due to the fact that the shutter speed is so fast on the 1D4 (10fps) that the initial delay could feel longer than it actually is.  But it was an initially noticeable difference (after 5 minutes of shooting I’d forgotten about it and it felt natural again).

The other thing I noticed was that the AF could often miss the subject I was aiming for and start to hunt.  I’ll put this down to not having quite the right AF setup in the camera, but it does go to show that the new 5D Mark III (and 1D-X) AF menu structure – with AF “cases” easily setting up the system as you want for certain situations – is massively better than 10′s of interacting custom functions hidden away in various menus on the 1D Mark IV!  I liken the AF Cases on the 5D Mark III to Picture Styles for AF – each “case” sets a number of parameters up with a single button press.

Here’s another blue tit shot – this one higher in a tree against blue sky.  The metering did a good job as this was in aperture priority with no exposure compensation:

1D Mark IV (ISO800, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/4000s)

The bird flew to almost directly above my head – so I got another shot.  Both of these were through fairly dense branches, using the centre focus point, and the camera got what I was after.

1D Mark IV (ISO800, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/4000s)

This, again, was a shot with some dense background and complexity in the image, and the AF system got the bird nicely.  This is a heavy crop of a pretty distant bird (10+m).

1D Mark IV (ISO800, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/640s)

Finally, a squirrel with the 1D Mark IV.  Nicely lit, nicely detailed, nicely in focus.  No problems.

1D Mark IV (ISO800, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/1000s)

Discussion

Now, this is where it gets a bit more interesting.

When I left the park, my gut feeling was that the 5D Mark III AF performance was snappier, locked to subjects better and almost all the shots were in focus from a quick review of the LCD.  The 1D Mark IV felt like a bit of a let down – AF missing the subject early on and hunting, and from quick reviewing on the LCD several of the shots were obviously out of focus.

So I got home, downloaded the images on the to the computer, then went through in Lightroom and marked them on acceptable AF (not composition or anything like that – just whether the AF hit the spot acceptably at pixel level).  I was surprised by the results.

I had 74 images (once I had thrown away a couple of accidental misfires) – by chance I had 37 from the 5D Mark III and 37 from the 1D Mark IV.  After I had rejected the shots which were not acceptably in focus, I had the following:

• 5D Mark III – 18 of 37 remaining (49% in focus)
• 1D Mark IV – 21 of 37 remaining (57% in focus)

So… it goes to show that gut feelings can be wrong.  I really thought the 5D Mark III had nailed most of the shots, and the 1D Mark IV had messed up, but it turns out the end results were the other way round.

Why?

It turns out that when the 1D Mark IV missed focus, it tends to miss big style.  So you can see immediately on the LCD that you’ve missed the shot.  The 5D Mark III tends to get much closer to the mark and it can appear that it’s in focus until you really get down to pixel level.

When I was reading comparisons of the 1D Mark IV and the Nikon D3s  (before I got the 1D Mark IV), I saw several times that people had said the same about the 1D Mark IV – in bursts it could tend to have several shots wildly out of focus whereas the D3s were all more-or-less OK.

Depending on what you want to do with the image, slightly out of focus may mean you can still use the image without any issues, so it may just be that the 5D Mark III has a more real-world useful AF system.

Conclusion

This really was an unscientific test without.  I didn’t take identical shots with both cameras, the lighting was different, the subjects were both different and difficult.  It’s important not to draw too many conclusions from this test, but I think I can say that in this small test, if the AF misses then the 5D Mark III tends to get closer to the mark than the 1D Mark IV.

I will say, however, that both cameras performed very well considering the shooting situation today.  I’d be delighted with either of them – it’s just worth noting that the although the 5D Mark III isn’t a 1-series camera, it does have AF performance at least on a par and quite likely somewhat better than the 1D Mark IV.

When I finally get FoCal working with the 5D Mark III I’ll be doing some detailed quantitative analysis on the AF systems of both cameras.  There are new tests I want to add to FoCal which will quantify the AF tracking and low-light performance of the cameras, so  hopefully I’ll be able to say for definite whats good and what’s not so good with the AF systems.

First off, I want to say a few things about this “review”.  It’s not a review.  It’s just my impression of the camera after a couple of days of using it.  I had a really busy weekend so I didn’t specifically take the camera out to get test shots, I just tried to take shots of normal life over the couple of days.  The test shots are not great, but they at least show that the Mark III can take photographs!

I’m also writing this as the owner of a 400D, 5D Mark II, 7D, 1D Mark IV, Nikon D7000 and Sony NEX5, so I have a fair amount of experience with different cameras.  I use Canon kit because I have an investment in that, but I honestly believe that Nikon and Canon are at the top of their games.

Finally, if you want specs, camera shots, how-to-use guides etc, then Google is your friend.  I’m only going to talk about the things I’ve played with and got a bit of an opinion on.

Anyway, that over with…

The Camera

It’s black.  It’s slightly heavier than the 5D Mark II (and it actually feels a bit heavier too), it’s solid.  Button layout wise it’s much more like the 7D.  The power switch is under the mode dial and LiveView/Video is operated with the same selector switch as the 7D.

A nice feature is that the locking mode dial is now a standard feature.  There have been a  number of times I’ve knocked the dial on the 5D Mark II and 7D, and it’s not funny!  You now have to press the button in the middle of the dial to move it:

And, of course, there are 2 card slots – one CF card and one SD card, much like the 1D series cameras.  I haven’t played with the settings (and have only used the camera with a CF card so far), but I believe you can do the same sort of things as the 1 series – duplicate the images to both cards, use the SD card as an extension for more memory, record RAW to CF and JPEG to SD and other combinations.

Autofocus

Canon seem to have a reputation for being less consistent at focusing than Nikon.  The 1D Mark III didn’t help with all it’s problem, and the general comparisons over time between the Nikon D3s and the 1D Mark IV have shown that there are subtle differences, with the D3s generally being better in real world situations.

The 5D Mark II had a simple AF system based on (but I believe improved from) the original 5D.  It was 9 point, with cross-type centre point and 6 hidden assistance points which helped with tracking.  I use fast primes (35mm f/1.4 and 85mm f/1.2), and I have never really found even the outer focus points on the 5D Mark II particularly bad.  If it’s a critical shot, I take a few in succession, but generally they work well.

So how does the 5D Mark III compare?  Well… over the weekend, I shot almost entirely at f/1.4 and f/1.2 to give the AF a workout.  And on static shots, I didn’t have a single miss from the camera.  Not one.  I missed a few times, or I got the shutter speed wrong and ended up with a blurry mess, but even down at ISO 25600 and f/1.4 at 1/250s the AF would get it right.  Again and again.  And again.

Notice that I say static shots.  When things moved around, I had less success but it’s important to note that (a) I was shooting kids and dogs which are wildly unpredictable, and (b) I was using the “Versatile multi purpose” case setting on the camera.  I have no doubt that with a little more time the AF performance of this camera will be the best I’ve ever used.

The AF system on the 5D Mark III is based on the system from the 1D-X, and has 61 points.  The key difference between the 5D Mark III and 1D-X is that with the 1D-X, the AF is also linked to the 100k+ pixel metering sensor so for tracking modes, colour and metering information helps in the tracking algorithm.  There’s also significantly more processing grunt in the 1D-X, so my gut feeling is that it will be both faster and more reliable in any instances where the AF may begin to reach it’s limits.

But the AF sensor and general algorithms are the same, so the performance should be pretty similar.  As such, you end up with the same sort of settings on the camera for adjusting the AF system.

I’ve got a 1D Mark IV, and the AF settings are spread all over the Custom Functions menu.  Some settings affect the operation of others, and you have to pretty much learn the AF section of the manual to get the best out of the camera.  With the 5D Mark III, the AF settings are grouped into a few sections, and the settings are applied to AF “Cases” (kind of like Picture Styles, but for AF).  There are 6 pre-defined cases which you can quickly choose between:

• Versatile multi purpose
• Continue to track subjects, ignore possible obstacles
• Instantly focus on subjects suddenly entering AF points
• For subjects that accelerate or decelerate quickly
• For erratic subjects moving quickly in any direction
• For subjects that change speed and move erratically

So, as I said above – I think by selecting the best case for the situation, the AF performance of the camera will catch those situations it’s missed in the “general” case during my quick testing.  I’ll report back when I have some more experience with it.

AF Microadjustment

For FoCal development, I need to be able to change the AF microadjustment.  The 5D Mark III has the most advanced AF Microadjustment settings of any camera to date (it’s the same as the 1D-X, but that’s not released yet).

A couple of big differences are that (a) you can set the AF microadjustment value at both ends of a zoom lens and it will calculate the best value depending on the zoom position of your lens (including inbetween values).  In fact, if you only store a value at one end, it will still adjust across the zoom range to try and give the best microadjustment value.  And (b) for lenses which report serial numbers, you can specify settings on a per-lens basis.  So if you’ve got 3 copies of a Canon 100 f/2.8L IS Macro lens, you can store 3 different values and the camera will pick the appropriate one for the lens:

The screen above shows the serial number setting for the lens – actually, in the case of the 35 f/1.4L, the “*” means it cannot read the serial number and it will apply the setting to all copies of the 35 f/1.4L, but for newer lenses which supply their serial number to the camera, you can enter the serial number (or it will be populated automatically) to differentiate lenses.

In Camera Image Editing

For the first time (that I know of) in a Canon camera, you can also process images in the camera.  The RAW processing engine can be used to convert RAW shots to JPEG, to downsize RAW from full size to smaller and other options as well.  The only time I can really think of using this is to clear up space on a card, but it’s a powerful feature nonetheless and it may turn out to be more useful than I anticipated.

The menu layout is quite different too – the tabs across the top are more general, and each one has a number of sub-pages (indicated by the squares on the left under the tabs – in this case, there are 4 sub pages to the shooting options and you’re currently seeing page 1):

You can also rate images in camera.  This can be pretty useful when you want to quickly edit back at base.  You can set a number of stars (from unrated through to 5) and this will be stored in the image metadata.  When you import images into Lightroom (and others) or DPP, you can quickly see the ratings:

High ISO

High ISO.  The 5D Mark II was no slouch in this regard.  I regularly used shots at ISO 6400, and at a push I could make something of a shot at 12800 or if very careful 25600.  The shot below is from the 5D Mark III at ISO 25600.  Content is nothing special, but it shows that at web sizes you can’t even really see the noise.  The reason I converted to B&W is because it was lit with a sodium vapour streetlamp and it looked very orange.

Here is a 100% crop of the drain (Lr4 through beta DNG converter, no sharpening, no NR).

And here’s a handheld shot of the sky (ISO25600, f/1.4, 1/5s):

In Camera HDR

Yes.  HDR.  Any point to it?  Probably not for your average 5D Mark III user, but ever since having the NEX5 I have used the HDR mode on that quite a bit to just boost shadow detail and bring down highlights in genuinely high dynamic range instances (e.g. sunsets).  Out of the camera (NEX5), they can look a little flat – and the result is obviously a JPEG as it’s been processed – but you get more editing ability when you bring them into Lightroom and I guess this will be the same for the 5D Mark III.  The shots below are straight-out-of-camera from the 5D Mark III (handheld):

Sample Images

There are more and more sample images across the web now from the 5D Mark III.  I didn’t have much time to setup shots, and a lot of the ones I took over the weekend are of family events (it’s been Mothers Day in the UK this weekend) and I don’t really want to share them in a mini review, so the selected below is just a few to show that the camera does at least work.  They’ve been processed in Lightroom, but as Lr 4.0 doesn’t yet support the 5D Mark III, I’ve used the beta DNG converter (containing ACR6.6 beta) to convert to DNGs which can then be imported into Lightroom.

This was a quick Live View capture.  Exposure has been boosted a little.  The Live View shooting functions haven’t really changed, but it did seem a little snappier to run it’s contrast detect AF routine:

Quick lean down and shoot – AF worked perfectly (ISO100, f/1.4 at 1/1600s):

Lighting was a bit lower for these (ISO1600, f/1.4 at 1/250s), but AF and IQ still work very nicely:

My daughter, looking delighted that yet another camera was being pointed at her! (ISO400, f/1.4 at 1/250s)

A bit of Mothers Day preparation (ISO100, f/1.4 at 1/100s, Av mode with around 1-2EV of exposure compensation):

We made a cheesecake which needed some fresh lemon juice in the with cheese (ISO400, f/1.4 at 1/60s):

And my mother visited with a small rat that was pretending to be a dog (actually, she was surprisingly cute!)  This shot has been dragged up from 2 stops underexposed and cropped a bit to chop out a leg on the left (ISO400 f/1.4 and 1/2000s):

A stop off on a nice wander around Upton Heath (ISO100, f/1.4 at 1/1600s):

And “Poppet” in the kitchen – me lying on the floor, rubbish background but spot on focusing! (ISO400, 85mm at f/1.2, 1/50s):

Summary

I summed the 5D Mark III up this morning something like this:

Take all the bits that you didn’t like about the 5D Mark II and correct them.  Take all the bits you did like and make them better.  Then you’ve got the 5D Mark III.

Oh… and charge a fortune too!

Ladybirds (technically Coccinellids) seem to like direct sunlight, so when the sun is out you often find them on leaves of bushes facing the sun.  It can often take a few seconds for your eyes to see them – despite the seemingly huge contrast between their bright red and the green of the leaves, they seem to blend in very well!

Judging by the grouping on leaves, it appears to be breeding season at the moment, so they are lots around.  The ladybird larvae are small, spiky and black with orange markings, so be sure to keep an eye out for them over the coming months.

Ladybirds are quite easy to manipulate – if you get a blade of grass or small twig and put it onto the leaf they are sitting on, they seem both inquisitive and quite happy to wander on to it.  You can then hold the leaf/twig in a position to get the best light.

It’s probably worth mentioning here that all of the pictures on this page are with the camera handheld and with natural light, so I was generally trying to move to a position that was a compromise between a pleasant background and minimising the specular highlights on the shell which can be quite distracting.  This turns out to be pretty difficult to do without a diffuser, but with the diffuser you lose enough light to start making handheld natural light macro significantly more difficult.

Once the ladybird is crawling on the leaf/grass/twig, you can choose how you want the light to hit, for instance this shot is with strong back-lighting to create a silhouette:

You can also look at different parts of the insect:

It turns out they do seem to like walking on skin too – if you hold a twig with a ladybird on and they walk down to where you’re holding it, they don’t hesitate to walk straight onto your fingers and start crawling all over your hands!

Takeoff!

I wanted to try and capture the moment the ladybirds take off.  They appear to take off only when the surface they are on orients them upright (feet downwards), and they also tend to take off at end-points like fingertips or the end of a twig, although this is not always the case.  Before flying, they open their wing case (elytra) so you can look out for this to start taking a sequence of shots.  They don’t always fly after partially opening their elytra, but it’s worth being ready as it’s generally advertising their imminent departure skywards:

This little one had a bit of trouble opening both sides initially and tried a few times, eventually opening the right side and flying away:

Just before launch, they look pretty impressive: their elytra open like gulls wings and their surprisingly large wingspan showing in this shot:

From the back with the elytra parted, their beetle interior is plainly visible:

Then with a push off, they launch:

Technical Info

All of these shots were taken with a Canon 1D Mark IV and Canon 100mm f/2.8L IS Macro lens.

Focusing was automatic – the 1D Mark IV is one of the 2 currently available Canon cameras (the other being the 7D) which has a special macro AF focusing mode which samples the AF sensor at a faster rate than normal with certain macro lenses and close subjects, so all these shots are taken in AF mode.  Whereas I used to focus manually then rock fractionally back and forth to slightly adjust the focus before taking a shot, the macro AF mode lets me get shots in AI Servo AF mode with a very high success rate.

Where I wasn’t trying to capture a take-off, I tend to use a single focus point (usually the centre one if I’m planning on cropping the shot, otherwise any of the 45 points).  For the takeoff shots, I generally used the “ring of fire” mode of the 1D Mark IV (named because all the outer focus points are illuminated in the viewfinder).  This is the mode where the camera tracks the subject across any focus points, starting from the centre focus point.

All shots were taken in natural light.  Whilst a lot of my other macro work is flash illuminated, the 1D Mark IV has such good high ISO capabilities that natural light and handheld is a real option.  When running in 10fps mode to try and capture ladybird take-off, no speedlight will recycle fast enough anyway so until I get better at predicting the perfect moment to take he shot, flash is not really an option.

Post processing was done in Lightroom 4 (which has just been released) – mainly a bit of level tweaking and cropping, and cloning out of the odd dust spot or speck of dirt which detracted from the image.

However, I was never happy using the 7D above about ISO400 when cropping close to 1:1, which was always a bit limiting. The 1D Mark IV on the other hand is stunningly good, producing croppable decent quality images up to ISO3200, even 6400 if careful about the content! I hardly ever use a tripod for macro so this high ISO capability gives me the opportunity to capture things in lower light than I’ve been used to – meaning I can now start to use natural light much more without having to resort to diffused flash to light subjects.

Anyway… here are some examples of shots I’ve taken over the last week or so – all with the 1DmkIV, and quite a few at around ISO1600-3200. See if you can spot the high ISO ones

This shot is from the bridge at Holton Heath station.  It’s a long exposure (8s) shot with the Gorrilapod clamped around the edge of the bridge:

I love the textures in this shot – the lighting on the stones under the huge cables, the bright lines of the tracks and the triangular edges of the wooden slats (I think to discourage you walking on that bit). All lit by a few sodium vapour lights:

Back at Holton Heath station, tonight it was raining. A lot. I was really drawn to really defined shadow of the bike on the platform, and I tried a few ideas to capture it but with the rain so hard it was quite difficult to spend any time (I was keeping an eye on my 2 yo too!). I quite like this shot, but I’m not 100% happy with it:

Classic viewpoint, everything leads to the left where you can just see the lights of the approaching train. It would have been much nicer if the train wasn’t *quite* so far to the edge, but there was a lot of junk in the shot and any other crop didn’t really work for me:

I love how different things can look in B&W. This is just a rickety old bridge, lit with glaring fluorescent tubes. Manual exposure was required for most of the shots tonight as the camera hasn’t really got a clue what I was after in any automatic mode. Here, I wanted the lights to lead through the picture, but enough detail to remain in the steps and bridge for it to be obvious what and where it is:

The shelters in Holton Heath station are typical UK station vandal proof steel sheets with holes cut in. Not much to look at, but I liked the repeating pattern and in B&W it’s a bit abstract, especially with the hint of something behind lit with the light coming through the holes:

Here, I wanted simple and clean. Pure texture – tactile kerbing, shiny wet tarmac and a painted line. I like this one!

A high contrast B&W shot of my friend (Graham Fry) Bronica. A lovely looking lump of camera!

And some old tracks, not used for years and now embedded in the ground around the water at Ocean Village in Southampton:

There will be a dedicated website when the software is released at http://www.fo-cal.co.uk (and still at http://www.lenscal.co.uk or http://www.reikan.co.uk/focal) but for now those links point to this page.

Thank you to everyone who has donated or expressed an interest in this software – it’s taken a lot more effort than I anticipated.  I’ve had a lot of early mornings and late nights working on this!

A new version of the AutoFocus MicroAdjust Calibrator software for the 5Dmk2 and 7D is now available.

Changes

The main changes in the software are:

- Removed QR code target.  Replaced with specific but simpler one.  Validation removed for now (angle/position etc)
- Completely changed image analysis algorithm (new implementation is a bit slow, but will be optimised if successful)
- Corrected a bug which showed the wrong final image occasionally
- verifies centre focus point active for all cameras
- verifies correct focus mode for 7D
- Fixed a crash caused by clicking on the "Searching for Cameras..." entry on the camera form.
- clear previous test information when a new test starts
- Other minor UI changes and bug fixes

Note that there is a NEW TARGET with this version.  There is no target validation, so you could continue to use the old target, but during extensive testing I found some issues with performing AF microadjust tests with the old target.

Although I wanted this to be a smooth update procedure, I believe you will have to to uninstall the old version before installing the new version.  This will lose the settings you previously entered.  You will need to enter a new registration key:

Things to Note

During my extensive testing, I’ve noticed a few things that are worth sharing.  Where possible, updates will take care of any issues.

• An EV of 5 is about as low as you can go without the AF performance of the camera being impaired.  I would suggest running at an EV of at least 10 (1/125s at f/2.8, ISO100) to get reliable results.
• My 7D seems less reliable during AF than the 5Dmk2, but with this new algorithm/image analysis code it behaves much better.

Feedback

As before, I would love to hear your feedback on the software.  Hopefully it will be more reliable and more accurate due to the changes.

You can contact me on Twitter (@reikanphoto), or by comments on this blog, or email (the email address is in the document, which is included in the zip file below).

Disclaimer (I have to put one in!)

This software has been developed and extensively tested with a single 5Dmk2 and briefly with a 1Dsmk3 which have suffered no ill effects during development.  The software uses the Canon EDSDK (EOS Software Development Kit) as supplied by Canon (with a few modifications) and does not do anything “clever” internally with the camera.  There is certainly no firmware change etc.  However, as a standard disclaimer: In no event will Reikan Technology and Reikan Photography be liable for any lost revenue, profit, or data or for special, indirect, consequential, incidental or punitive damages however caused and regardless of the theory of liability arising out of the use of or inability to use this software, even if Reikan Technology or Reikan Photography have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Download

Thanks so much to everyone who’s helped in the development of this software.  The beta versions have now been removed from the website as they are not really representative of the final version performance any more (0.7.5 had a bug which affected some people and didn’t allow them to run the software – that’s been fixed now).

Please see http://www.fo-cal.co.uk for the latest version of this software.

Thank You!

Thank you to all the people who’ve downloaded the software so far and have given me feedback.  I’ve tried to reply to everyone but I’ve had a lot of emails and comments so apologies if I haven’t got back to you.

Donations

I’m working on this software in my spare time, and the feedback I’m getting is really encouraging me to continue the development and testing.  If you’ve tried out the software successfully and want to show appreciation or acknowledge the potential for future versions, you can donate with the button below.  I’ve had a few times when I’ve thought of stopping working on this, but the kind donations I’ve received have boosted me.  Thank you very much

A great big thank you if you have donated anything

Yes, I know this isn't the right screen, but it's the best I could find!!

I tried a whole series of things to get my camera working again:

• removing the main battery and replacing, including leaving the camera on with no battery in to drain any internal charge
• removing both the main battery and the backup (Lithium) cell and replacing
• trying all my lenses
• trying without lenses
• powering up holding loads of different combinations of buttons
• and lots of other things!

All of these ended up with the same results.  When you power up the camera, the top LCD shows a flash of valid values, then just says “Err 70″, and the first thing you see on the back screen is the “Err 70″ screen.

At this point, I tried to contact Canon, but as expected they were useless.  I tried both Canon directly, and some of their service agents, and I was always met with the same response of the camera will have to be sent in.  I dug out my Canon CPS pack and filled out the form ready, but I wasn’t finished trying yet.  As my camera was out of warranty, I knew it was going to cost to “repair” it and I was going to try my best to get it done myself.

The only information generally available on the internet is the official Canon notes on how to recover from an Err 70 (see here for the original – it’s for the 600D but I couldn’t find the same information for the 7D, and it applies to all EOS cameras):

I’d already tried all this, and hadn’t managed to get it to work.

After a bit more playing around, I found out that in the C1/C2/C3 mode, the camera seemed to work as normal.  I could take pictures, change settings etc.  However, you’re restricted in these modes to not being able to use some of the menu options of the camera – including things like “Clear Camera Settings”.  But, it started to give me an idea of what was going wrong.

The answer came when a guy called Dennis posted some information on the POTN forum post about my software, as a few other people had been having the same Err 70 problem…

A Solution

What I’m posting below is a method which gets the camera working again in most situations.  It may need some steps done in a different order, or to be repeated etc, but playing with this set of operations gets it up and running again:

• First, put the camera in one of the C1/C2/C3 modes
• Adjust as many of the settings back to default as possible (custom functions, image mode etc).  I’m not sure this step is necessary, but it’s worth a try.
• Power the camera off
• Remove the lens, switch to CA mode and power the camera up again
• You should see a menu rather than “Err 70″  It will be a cut-down menu as you’re in CA mode without a lens, but it’s there nevertheless.  If you can get to “Clear Camera Settings” then do this.
• For me, I then just switched to Av mode and it all worked, and has been fine since

What happened?

It turns out with the Canon SDK that you can tell the camera to do pretty much anything – whether it’s legal or not.  For instance, you can tell it to choose an image quality mode that it doesn’t support (for example a legacy mode that was supported by cameras like the 10D but is not recognised by the 7D).

If this happens, the camera will happily accept the setting and store it in it’s internal memory.  When you try to take a picture, it applies the settings from it’s internal memory, which (most likely) causes an internal exception and throws the Error 70.

If the information is written directly to non-volatile storage (i.e. storage that persists even if you remove power), then you have a problem.  Taking the battery out will NOT solve the Error 70, as it’s remembered.

So why does the C1/C2/C3 mode work?  Well (and this is hypothesis) – the C1/C2/C3 modes allow you to register the current state of the camera so you can quickly restore a bunch of settings.  For instance, you could set C1 up with settings for fast moving telephoto work, and C2 up for closer, slow moving lower light work and quickly switch between them.  The fact that the C1/C2/C3 modes store the camera settings is critical here – it implies that they duplicate the parameter structures from the “main” settings memory.

My guess is that when you corrupt the “main” settings parameters, this applies to all modes except the C1/C2/C3 modes – so you lose Auto, P, Av, Tv, M etc.  And by powering off the camera in C1/C2/C3 mode and powering up again in CA mode, you seem to restore the main parameter memory – maybe with a copy from the last settings (i.e. the valid C1/C2/C3 settings).

What would Canon do?

If you send your camera to Canon, what happens?

Well, this annoys me immensely.  They switch you camera and see “Err 70″.  They take your camera apart, pull out the WHOLE of the main board (which contains the non-volatile storage chip, along with the one or two Digic processors, SDRAM, power supply etc…) and put another one in.  Then they send you a bill for a few hundred pounds.

Why?

Because it’s easy.  It takes them half an hour to do this, whereas trying to diagnose the cause of the “Err 70″ message could potentially take longer.  And as you’re paying for it, why do they want to take longer than they need?

I’ve been developing embedded software for the last 20 years, and in almost ALL cases I add features to reset the storage memory in case of corruption or problems like this.  Hopefully you never use it, but when you need it, it’s the most useful thing ever!  Feel free to ask Canon why they don’t do this…