FPS drops in AIservo 5dmkiii Help

I am having a weird issue with my 5dmkIII. It is newer to me. I am loving all the focus modes it has as I am coming from a 50

I was at my daughters soccer game and when I have the camera in AI Servo mode and fast Frame Per Second shooting. It shoots super slow. More like 3 FPS vs the 6FPS it says it will. This is in bright sunlight so that is not the issue. Shutter is at 1/1000 of a second.

I am using my 70-200 f2.8 IS with a 1.4 Tele on it. I have tested with the 1.4 on and off, no difference.

When I put camera in AI focus mode, boom it goes to full speed and shoots quick. AI server slows way down.

I have gone through settings. Using 2nd focus setting.
I have it in soccer mode focus ( forget the actual number, but picture of soccer player)

Can somebody assist with me on getting full speed when shooting?

What ISO levels? Also what are your focusing priorities set to? Perhaps you have high NR turned on and at higher ISOs, this will slow down processing, and if you have the 1st or 2nd priority to focus, it may be having an effect perhaps? Just a couple of guesses, but this is probably a result of some other setting or series of conditions.

....from my experience, your set up should work just perfect - great camera for just about anything

the 5d mark iii is not the fastest body; however, it is fast enough - ( your gear is goooooood stuff )

something goofy is going on; but the good news is that it can be corrected


i use the same set up; at times with a canon 1.4 or canon 2 x extender

if there is plenty of day light and you understand the game that you are shooting, ( which is an advantage; you know what to anticipate - you know where to be ) your results should be solid

so: i shoot in manual mode, Al servo mode, SINGLE POINT FOCUS AT CENTER ( i choose the target ), raw, and usually high speed continuous at 6fps

anticipating and timing is where my strength is

you can always try resetting your camera to the factory default; this does no harm and fixes problems that are hidden


......there are a lot of guys much smarter then on I this forum and perhaps they will share some more thoughts

good look; i hope this helps a little

You are referring to Case 4, subjects accelerate or decelerate quickly.
Check pg 94 and 95 of your manual. Setting menu AF2: AI Servo priority. Try setting something else there.
Also, Are you using one manually selected focus point?

I second what Chunky says. The camera might be looking for focus. Several factors could be at play, but I think Chunky points out the most likely issue - you need to be in the best AF selection point mode for your situation. Of the modes below, I like to use AF Point Expansion and AF Point Surround - the 3rd and 4th checked options below:

bphillips330 wrote in post #18186026
I am having a weird issue with my 5dmkIII. It is newer to me. I am loving all the focus modes it has as I am coming from a 50

I was at my daughters soccer game and when I have the camera in AI Servo mode and fast Frame Per Second shooting. It shoots super slow. More like 3 FPS vs the 6FPS it says it will. This is in bright sunlight so that is not the issue. Shutter is at 1/1000 of a second.

I am using my 70-200 f2.8 IS with a 1.4 Tele on it. I have tested with the 1.4 on and off, no difference.

When I put camera in AI focus mode, boom it goes to full speed and shoots quick. AI server slows way down.

I have gone through settings. Using 2nd focus setting.
I have it in soccer mode focus ( forget the actual number, but picture of soccer player)

Can somebody assist with me on getting full speed when shooting?

I could be wrong but I believe in fast shooting servo mode the SD card slows down the frame rate,unlike just using the CF card.

I took my camera with me while walking the dogs this evening and I had just so happened to have read this thread before heading out. I noticed my camera doing the exact same things as the OP suggested.

I had both 1st image and 2nd image priority set to Focus. I could get it to stop shooting slow by adjusting 2nd image priority to the middle setting. Moving it back I could duplicate the issue again so that was definitely it. It seems that if both image priority settings are set to focus, or at least if 2nd image priority is set to focus, and the camera doesn't think whatever is in the AF point is in focus, it delays the shutter. At least that's my theory.

Likely your answer is already posted above.

If not you could try this as well. Switch the lens to manual focus, and see if the speed goes back up.

This will help to see of the bottle neck is related to focus priority etc.

5 things affect that burst speed...

1) SD card is a slower bus speed than the CF, in fact it is quite slow, using the SD slot and you will quickly fill up the internal buffer and affect FPS later, but for the first set of burst shots, no impacts will be seen as you are filling the internal buffer before it gets backed up behind the scenes trying to empty that buffer to the card.

2) Focus priority settings

3) High ISO NR for high ISO shots

4) Slower shutter speeds

5) Drive mode set by the photographer (high speed, low speed burst, etc)

Try removing the tele and shoot with same settings.

Oops my bad, just re-read your post.
I see you already tried that.

I would definitely try different case settings
I found case 5 worked well for me when I had the mkiii and 70-200. 2.8
But I have a 2 x tele.

PNPhotography wrote in post #18228597
I could be wrong but I believe in fast shooting servo mode the SD card slows down the frame rate,unlike just using the CF card.

FWIW: I just got a 1D Mk IV, and was having similar FPS problems using the same SD card from my 1D Mk III (which had no trouble). I switched to a fast CF card, and now it will process 39 RAW files at 10fps before the buffer fills.

So nice.

$36 for a 32GB Lexar Professional 1066x was totally worth it. Now I just have the camera move the files to the SD card in one big copy, and don't need to worry about a card reader or cable. Then I just format the CF card without removing it.https://photography-on-the.net …hp?t=1470852&go​to=newpost