Official: Canon 1D Mk IV

I had a 1D4 to shoot along with my 7D for a theater dance event and the 1D4 results were magnificent! With all the posts on disappointing low light performance I was skeptical. The 1D4 was fabulous! I loved shooting it along with my 7D. I was so impressed I just bought the 1D4 !! I will post some of the results a little later. I am happy to report though that the low light AI servo performance of both cameras was outstanding. Setting both cameras custom functions correctly for the conditions is key. More about my experience a little later.

butterfly2937 wrote in post #12421331
I had a 1D4 to shoot along with my 7D for a theater dance event and the 1D4 results were magnificent! With all the posts on disappointing low light performance I was skeptical. The 1D4 was fabulous! I loved shooting it along with my 7D. I was so impressed I just bought the 1D4 !! I will post some of the results a little later. I am happy to report though that the low light AI servo performance of both cameras was outstanding. Setting both cameras custom functions correctly for the conditions is key. More about my experience a little later.

Again, low light means different things to different folks. What were your settings for low light again?

Mine is 1/20th at ISO 3200 at f2.8, shooting low contrast subjects (no bright lights or reflected light glints, etc). The 7D will do better in this regard. I have tested the 1D3 next to the 1D4, and the 1D3 will focus on the same conditions a full stop or lower yet over the 1D4. The 1D3, in my opinion, is the current king of low light AF, beating out the 5D2 and 7D.

When the 1D4 hits this situation, there are NO SETTINGS to make it work well, trust me, except more light.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #12421373
Again, low light means different things to different folks. What were your settings for low light again?

Mine is 1/20th at ISO 3200 at f2.8, shooting low contrast subjects (no bright lights or reflected light glints, etc). The 7D will do better in this regard. I have tested the 1D3 next to the 1D4, and the 1D3 will focus on the same conditions a full stop or lower yet over the 1D4. The 1D3, in my opinion, is the current king of low light AF, beating out the 5D2 and 7D.

When the 1D4 hits this situation, there are NO SETTINGS to make it work well, trust me, except more light.

What are you shooting in that kind of light situation? Thats some low light.. I'm trying to think what that could be?

TeamSpeed wrote in post #12421373
Again, low light means different things to different folks. What were your settings for low light again?

Mine is 1/20th at ISO 3200 at f2.8, shooting low contrast subjects (no bright lights or reflected light glints, etc). The 7D will do better in this regard. I have tested the 1D3 next to the 1D4, and the 1D3 will focus on the same conditions a full stop or lower yet over the 1D4. The 1D3, in my opinion, is the current king of low light AF, beating out the 5D2 and 7D.

When the 1D4 hits this situation, there are NO SETTINGS to make it work well, trust me, except more light.

I took some very wide angle shots to show the lighting conditions.I am shooting without flash in AI servo tracking very fast dancers under rapidly changing stage lighting.If the lighting was any worse it would not produce a quality image in which case it is not important to me. I care about the real world performance of the camera. If the lighting was any worse it would have been impossible. I had the best images out of all the photographers. I suspect the lens you use may have some baring as well more about that later.

GrizzlyMan wrote in post #12421618
What are you shooting in that kind of light situation? Thats some low light.. I'm trying to think what that could be?

That is EV1 to EV0, ambient light from a lamp with kids playing, etc. Also, you will encounter this in some reception halls for weddings, etc.

butterfly2937 wrote in post #12421723
I took some very wide angle shots to show the lighting conditions.I am shooting without flash in AI servo tracking very fast dancers under rapidly changing stage lighting.If the lighting was any worse it would not produce a quality image in which case it is not important to me. I care about the real world performance of the camera. If the lighting was any worse it would have been impossible. I had the best images out of all the photographers. I suspect the lens you use may have some baring as well more about that later.

Same lens on the 1D3 yields a 1 stop to 2 stop lower lighting where the 1D3 will AF in AI servo. I have run multiple lenses through the 1D4. It was much worse before Canon worked on it, but it still has issues from time to time.

I am happy you don't shoot in the same kind of situations I do, I don't have stage lighting or anything that intense lighting the subjects when I shoot them. I do alot of worship services too, and the lighting on the congregation is very low as well, so that lighting can be concentrated on stage. Same issues there.

For example, the 1D3 had no real hassle focusing on this nice grandparent couple, the 1D4 just racheted back and forth. This is right about the point where the 1D4 gives up the ghost.

One interesting thing that I have found is that using AF Live or AF Smiley Face in Live View, regardless of focus mode (or focal point selection) will yield an auto focus that is reasonably quick, and works in near darkness even on thing with NO contrast. I tried it on a solid color pillow, and it worked unbelievably well. It is a bit annoying to have to use the camera like that, but if you need af in low light, and you need it to work in all but the darkest situations, then it's a pretty safe bet. I don't know if other people have found this, but I now use it as needed, and it hasn't let me down yet.

@Capture Love that shot !

All this low light stuff has my head hurting. How about some high light stuff

Methodical wrote in post #12434948
All this low light stuff has my head hurting. How about some high light stuff

Nice and at iso 800 and 700mm..

butterfly2937 wrote in post #12421331
I had a 1D4 to shoot along with my 7D for a theater dance event and the 1D4 results were magnificent! With all the posts on disappointing low light performance I was skeptical. The 1D4 was fabulous! I loved shooting it along with my 7D. I was so impressed I just bought the 1D4 !! I will post some of the results a little later. I am happy to report though that the low light AI servo performance of both cameras was outstanding. Setting both cameras custom functions correctly for the conditions is key. More about my experience a little later.

excellent, congrats on the new camera, looking forward to more of your comments!

Kyles wrote in post #12435046
excellent, congrats on the new camera, looking forward to more of your comments!

Well if anyone is interested in seeing the photos there are several thousand of them I think around 12000 photos over 3 days. I will be working on uploading them to my flickr page. The link below will take you there. The file names that start with BG are the 1D4 and the ones that start _MG are the 7D. The Flick link is in my sig.

12000 in three days??? Man your shutters must rake up the miles quickly.

dion-g wrote in post #12435938
12000 in three days??? Man your shutters must rake up the miles quickly.

That was just this event and this was for a book project. Also I was testing the 1D4 to make sure it would give me consistent bursts of photos in the worse possible lighting conditions. Both cameras hit rate was above what I expected. The stage lighting and the performance moved and changed quickly. It was very challenging.

I found using the selected point with expansion in a circle around the point worked best. On the 1D4 I did tie metering to the active AF point as well. That is a spendid feature!