I had a chance to do some informal testing of my new 1Ds III over the past couple of days. Before I got the camera, I had been busy doing my research to determine the sharpest lenses in each range I wanted in anticipation of receiving my 1Ds III sometime this month and, surprise!, the dealer called Friday and said it was in (I am in Edmonton, Alberta and Vistek got me the camera a lot sooner than I thought it might be as I see many of us in N. America are still waiting...).
First, I went out with all my lenses and shot frames of each lens at every focal major focal length and aperture, all raw. I wanted to determine the optimum lens setting for each lens with this camera as I had been reading that the 1Ds III is unforgiving of lenses. The first time I did this, I came back and was shocked at the poor quality of some of the images- they seemed really soft and wouldn't sharpen up. In the case of the 16-35 II, 16mm and f/2.8 was really as bad up to f/5.6, the 50mm 1.4 was horrible from 1.4- 2.8 and even the 70-200 was not as sharp as I thought it should be so I knew something was amiss. All images were shot on a Gitzo 1298 tripod, with a cable release so I thought this strange.
After going through them in Lightroom, I decided to redo my little test. This time, I was much more careful about my tripod placement (cleared the snow off the ground this time!), but was especially careful where I placed the focus points. I put the lens on manual focus to get a consistent focus point for each shot. Then in turn, went thru all my lenses: 16-35L II, 35L, 45 TSE, 50 f/1.4, 24-105 f/4, 70-200 f/4 IS, 100 macro.
Back in my studio, checked through LT again- this time- WOW! What an improvement! The images have such incredible detail and even at 16mm and f/2.8 - the softest setting on my version of the lens, the print I made at 17 X22 @240 ppi is stunning in the detail and tack sharp after sharpening in LR. I must day that the images at first glance don't look that impressive and a bit soft. But once you zoom in, say at 2:1 you can really see how much there is there. Until about 2 years ago I was shooting MF and I thought I would never see a digital SLR approach MF for resolution, depth and contrast. But this camera does deliver and I can safely retire the 6X7 for my big print needs.
What I have learned is three things with this camera: one is that you have to have the very best lenses (even after my second test the 50mm 1.4 is still bad from 1.4- 2.8 so it must be that this lenses weak point becomes very apparent at 21 MP because it looked fine with my XTi). Second, be extra careful, more than with any other camera, about where you put the focus points. Even when one or two of the focus points are on infinity and the rest are on an object much closer, you are not going to get a perfectly focused image at f/2.8 with that depth of field. Second is that sharpening is important with these images. I found that setting of amount 133 ands radius 0.5, detail of 40 worked well for a typical landscape shot with lots of detail.
I would be interested to know what other owners of this camera have found with their experience so far and what you do for sharpening these images.
