Canon 5D Mark III Review

I took this photo with Canon 5D MK III during blue hour. The tree was lit by the lights of the hotel situated nearby what resulted in a bit surreal look.

For more than a year I was using Canon 5D Mark II but very recently I switched to its successor - 5D Mark III. Was it worth the switch? Read my short review below.

Just after starting up 5D MK III you notice one thing - it is much more professional than its predecessor. From menu layout to AF system and weather sealing. Everything is more complex and looking much more professional than in Mark II. And complex doesn't mean worse or more difficult - extra options are welcome as they are creating some very nice opportunities.

The size and weight of the camera is very close to that of 5D MK II. Most of the buttons are in the same places but there are still some nice ergonomics and layout improvements and additions, like:

• ON/OFF switch is now situated in the same place where mode dial is. At first I wasn't sure if it's good but after longer use I really prefer it to the older way. It's much more difficult to switch it on/off accidentally, eg. in a photo bag. What's more now this switch is bi-state instead of tri-state from 5D Mark III.
• Mode you're shooting in is now locked. If you want to turn mode dial you first need to press small button at the top of it. Again it helps in preventing accidental changing of the mode.
• Slightly bigger LCD screen (3.2 inch vs 3.0 in Mark II) this is great as it makes reviewing photos easier
• Depth-of-field preview button is now on the right of the lens what makes it more easier to access. It's also slightly larger.
• Rate button which allows you to rate your photos in a camera. It's a really great feature because then these marks will show, eg. in Lightroom what makes rejecting and picking best photos much easier and effective

New Auto Focus System

There was much talk about new auto-focusing system in 5D Mark III and I can only confirm what you probably know already - it's really superb. 61 AF points give a lot of opportunities and given the fact that many of them are cross type and double-cross type (41 and 5 respectively) you no longer need to stick to the center AF point because other are usable and accurate as well.

Also continuous AF is finally usable! It's fast and have a lot of options for different types of movement. In my tests it performed very well even with fast moving subjects.

The only issue with AF is that the points could be wider spreaded in a frame because they are still gathered quite close to the center.

For me quite important change is increasing number of frames to 7 in auto-bracketing mode. It's a significant improvement over just 3 frames available in 5D MK II. Combined with very fast burst mode (6 frames per second) it makes for a great HDR camera.

Moving subjects were a big problem for AF from 5D MK II. In 5D MK III this is no longer an issue. This beautiful tiger was walking quite fast in my direction but the image still is very sharp and correctly focused.

HDR

There is also a HDR mode but frankly speaking I don't like it. I much prefer to have better control over the creative process and this of 5D MK gives almost no options. Also it isn't as sophisticated as eg. Photomatix and it can't be given computing power of regular PC vs computing power of DSLR. However, this mode can be quite useful to check how your HDR might look, if you exposed the shadows and highlights correctly etc.

Image Quality and low-light performance

But what about image quality? It's almost the same as in 5D MK II, dynamic range is also very close to that and it's about 11 EV. Compared to some Nikons (eg. D800 with 14 EV of dynamic range) this value isn't impressive. So that's rather disappointing.

I did notice some improvements in case of low light shooting. For me the maximum usable ISO on 5D MK II was 6400. On 5D Mark III both 12800 and 25600 (which are now native ISO) are fully usable. There is some noise of course but it's very easy to get rid of it with Lightroom or any other noise reduction tool.

Other changes

But there are plenty of other improvements. Below are a few I especially like:

• Virtual horizon which makes levelling the photos much easier.
• Videos with up to 60 FPS (although 60 FPS isn't available in Full HD)
• Ability to develop RAWs inside camera
• ISO expandable to 102.400!
• Multi-exposure mode - you shoot a few photos and they are combined into one. Although one can do that in Photoshop of course, having such option in camera is great

Summary

Pros:

• a lot of great additions and improvements
• fantastic AF performance
• fast burst mode (6 FPS)
• auto-bracketing up to 7 frames 
• great low-light performance

Cons:

• dynamic range could be better
• AF points could be spaced a bit wider 

So summing up it's a really great camera. If it had dynamic range of Nikon D800 it would be ideal. It isn't but I believe it's still worth a switch because it's packed with a lot of useful features that make taking photos much easier and that also help in achieving better results.

Review: Photoshop CC Shake Reduction tool

There was a lot of talk about shake reduction technology in Photoshop prior to release of Adobe Photoshop CC. As it was just released a few days ago and I'm its lucky user I would like to share a few words with you about this interesting technology.

Before we start, take a look at the photo above. Before shows the photo as I took it (+ some minor cropping and contrast tweaking in Lightroom). You can notice a bit of blurriness especially in the wings, legs and abdomen. The After shows the image after applying Shake Reduction filter to it. The image is crisp and almost razor sharp (compare leaf or the wings).

Now back to the filter itself :)

First of all, this isn't the first ever implementation of shake reduction technology although you might think so thanks to Adobe marketing campaign. The algorithms dealing with reducing blurriness (especially caused by camera movement) have existed for a few years now and some companies have introduced their products much earlier than Adobe did, eg. Topaz have their InFocus plugin which I quite like (especially to remove some very minor blurring).

However, I must say that Photoshop Shake Reduction is quite impressive and probably I will use it more frequently than any other shake reduction filter. It's fast, very easy to use and in my tests it generally performed rather good. But the most important for me is that unlike many other methods I tried it doesn't introduce many artifacts (and blur reduction is very prone to introduce artifacts in general).

I mentioned that the filter is easy to use. Really - you simply choose part of your image by drawing rectangular selection and based on your selection algorithm will try to guess blur characteristics and based on them will try to "unshake" the image (formally it will do deconvolution). If one selection doesn't work, try selecting another.

For the above image it worked fantastic. But will it work equally well for other images? Well, the best answer I can give is - it depends. From my tests it seems that the filter performs best when:

• blur isn't big (just a bit of hand shaked caused blur or small out-of-focus issues),
• there is enough contrast and texture in the photo - photos without them perform much worse.

Summing up I find the Shake Reduction filter quite impressive. Although it isn't ideal, it's one of the best implementations of blur reduction I've seen so far. And given how much interest and research goes into blur reduction these days I think that the technology will improve in next few years.

Canon 24 f/1.4 L USM II Review

Canon 5D MK II | 1/160 s | f/1.4 | ISO 200

For a few months now I'm a lucky owner of a Canon 24 f/1.4 L II lens. It's the fastest prime lens I own and use it for many of my landscape shots and almost for all night landscape shots (including both HDRs and astrophotos).

First some technical specs:

Apertures	f/1.4 - f/22
Field of view	84 degree
Minimum focusing distance	25 cm
Filter thread	77 mm
Dimensions	9.35 cm × 8.69 cm
Weight	650 g
Number of aperture blades	8
Auto-focus	YES
USM	YES
Image-stabilization	NO
Price	~ 1800 USD

The build quality is typical for L-series lens and it means it's excellent. The lens looks and feels very firm, solid and durable (in fact I think this lens looks more solid than most of the other L-lenses). The only downside is that it's pretty heavy (650 g) and quite large. It also uses 77 mm filter thread.

Sharpness is fantastic across whole frame. It might be a bit soft at f/1.4 (but still sharper than most of the lenses wide-open) but stop it down to just a f/2.8 or f/3.5 to get razor sharp images. However, please note that f/1.4 is still completely usable and I use it with success to capture many night photos.

Chromatic aberration is hard to notice even at f/1.4. There is also no noticeable issues with distortion. Also flares are rather small. Please note that I can compare results here to Canon 24-105 at 24 mm.

One more thing to note is that this lens produces very nice bokeh.

The greatest drawback is large vignetting at f/1.4 (vignetting is really strong!). However, together with very shallow depth of field produced by this aperture it creates interesting effect so it may not be a downside for everyone.

Another is that this lens is quite expensive (it costs about 1800$).

Summing up this short review, Canon 24 f/1.4 II is a truly wonderful lens which I would recommend to anyone serious about landscape photography as well as for anyone shooting in low-light situations (astrophotographers, wedding photographers, etc.).

Pros:
- excellent image quality (great sharpness, low chromatic aberration, low distortion)
- great build quality
- fast and accurate auto-focus
- beautiful bokeh
- very fast aperture

Cons:
- heavy vignetting at f/1.4
- quite expensive
- heavy

Below are a few more sample photos taken with this lens on 5D MK II:

Canon 5D MK II | 1/125 s | f/1.4 | ISO 200

Canon 5D MK II | 1/320 s | f/7.1 | ISO 100

Canon 5D MK II | 1/500 s | f/7.1 | ISO 100

Canon 5D MK II | 30 s | f/1.4 | ISO 100