Spot metering set to AF point, for Canon 1DMarkIII

[iris_van_den_broek]

<p>I am mostly shooting gymnastics and recently bought a 1DMarkIII<br /> I am yet figuring out how to handle it, but I read an article which gave some very useful tips using the 1DMarkIII in AI Servo mode. One of them was to set C.fn. 1.7 to 1: This links the Spot Meter to the Active AF Point.</p>

<p>I was wondering how useful that actually is in a gym? What I usually do is set my camera to M and just dial in my maximum lense opening (mostly 2.8) and find a good shutterspeed to go with that.<br /> So my camera is set to the same setting most of the competition: I don't think that spotmetering thing does anything for me then, does it? Or do you recommend linking the AF point to the spotmeter and just set my camera to Aperture-priority?</p>

<p>Another question is about the C.Fn III-8 set to 2. This gives 6 additional AF points surrounding the center single point when in AI Servo and Single Point AF. <br /> What exactly does that do? I usually use the center point for focussing while tracking the gymnast, but will these 6 surrounding points help me then or will the camera switch to them when he thinks it's necessary?<br /> I don't want to lose control of what focuspoint I'm working with.<br /> Thanks for sharing any experience</p>

<p>Iris (The Netherlands)</p>

[bjscharp]

I would never use spot-metering for sporting pictures. Your exposure will vary wildly depending on clothes, skin colour, whatever your camera is pointing at.

 

It is my experience that for most sporting events (especially indoors), full-manual is fine.

 

Maybe make some slight changes as the day progresses and lighting might change (light through windows for instance), but all your pictures will generally be lit by the same light, so exposure should be the same.

 

Same goes for white balance. I generally set a custom WB from a gray card, but even one of the presets (fluorescent comes to mind for most gyms/swimming pools) will give more consistent results than auto WB, preventing different colours shot-to-shot.

[ajpn]

<p>Pretty much exactly as B.J. said.</p>

<p>Full manual and SHOOT RAW. The white balance isn't necessarily going to be correct if you use a florescent setting, but it will be closer. You will use more memory shooting RAW, but you may save images that you would have otherwise have lost.</p>

<p>Cf III 8 is for assitance if a subject is difficult to track. You can use this or not. Experiment and see what works for you. If you are tracking one person amongst three I would skip it.</p>

<p>The one function I would suggest using Cf III 2. Set the tracking down at least a notch. This way if one of your cheerleaders briefly moves in front of the one you are tracking it won't jump to the one interferring as quickly.</p>

[ajpn]

<p>One other recommendation I might make. And some will think this is wrong because the general consensus is that you should underexpose with digital. That isn't true anymore.</p>

<p>Try this. 'Especially' if you are shooting at high ISOs.</p>

<p>Overexpose your image by 1/2 to a full stop. When you open your image in Adobe Camera Raw (or whatever image editing program you're using) reduce the exposure by the corresponding amount you overexposed it. This will reduce a lot of the moise you may incur by using higher ISO settings.</p>

<p>Don't believe it? Try it. The cameras we are using today (the 1DIII in particular) are not nearly as likely to lose highlight detail as the ones we were using 3 years ago.</p>

[bjscharp]

@Anthony: What you say might be true (haven't tested it), but overexposing by a full stop will lose you the advantage gained by using a high ISO in the first place. If that shutter speed is fast enough for your purposes, just use a lower ISO setting.

[iris_van_den_broek]

<p>Well, I actually WISH I'd have the option of OVERexposing, but most of the times I am just lucky if I can get a decent shutterspeed by pushing the ISO to it's maximum.</p>

<p>So although you're theorie might work Anthony, I just don't have the opportunity to do so.</p>

<p>I find it hard to tell whether a picture looks unsharp (when zoomed in at 100%) because of the noise, or because it's not sharp. Cause when I crop a photo to a smaller size and sharpen a little is does look sharp. </p>

<p>My biggest problem is with the faces. When you set your camera for the center AF-point it will in my case always focus somewhere around the stomach/hip-area of the gymnast. So never on the face......and if you work with like f2.0 then, you have such a small depth of field that faces are easily "lost" </p>

<p>Sometimes they are sharp all of a sudden though, and I see a lot of photos on the internet from others where the faces are sharp. But then again: when I crop my photo to 400 by 600 px and sharpen ,they also look perfect. But when you look at the fullsized original you can tell it's not a 100% focussed</p>

 

[iris_van_den_broek]

<p>Gymnastics meet: qualifications for the Dutch team for European Championships<br>

<img src="http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/4118/wyomi.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="600" /><br>

2.<br /><img src="http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/6635/joy.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="600" /><br>

3.<br /><img src="http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/4205/turnster.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="600" /><br>

4.<br /><img src="http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/5589/fieke1.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="600" /><br>

5.<br /><img src="http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/6461/joy3.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="600" /><a href="http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/6461/joy3.jpg"></a></p>

[iris_van_den_broek]

<p>hmm I did't mean to post these pics here but in the "What did you shoot" topic</p>

[ajpn]

<p>Nice shots Iris.</p>

<p>You definitely need to use a AF point located off center. And if you use Cf III 10 you can switch between the active AF point and the registered AF point, which makes it conventient to switch between vertical and horitontal shooting.</p>

[iris_van_den_broek]

<p>I think I don't understand exactly what you're saying. Are you saying I should NOT use the Center point?<br>

I've always read that sports-shooters use the center AF-point with the surrounding 6 points active.<br>

I will look at Cfn 10-III, but I dont understand what the difference is between a registered and an active focuspoint.</p>

[ajpn]

<p>If you're going to compose a shot vertical and the eyes are going to be inn the upper part of the frame you want to you the AF point closest to the area where the eyes are; not the center AF.</p>