Canon 1Ds Mark III Imatest Results

Canon 1Ds Mark III Imatest Results

We routinely use Norman Koren's excellent "Imatest" analysis program for quantitative, thoroughly objective analysis of digicam test images. I highly recommend it to our technically-oriented readers, as it's far and away the best, most comprehensive analysis program I've found to date.

My comments below are just brief observations of what we see in the Imatest results. A full discussion of all the data Imatest produces is really beyond the scope of this review: Visit the Imatest web site for a full discussion of what the program measures, how it performs its computations, and how to interpret its output.

Here's some of the results produced by Imatest for the Canon 1Ds Mark III:

The Canon 1Ds Mark III showed excellent color accuracy overall. Hue accuracy was exceptional, with only small shifts relative to mathematically correct colors Average saturation was 104% (oversaturated by only 4%, mostly in the deep blues and reds, with just a little in some greens). Average "delta-C" color error was only 4.37 after correction for saturation, which is very low, and one of the best scores of the group (the 1Ds Mark IIIwas bested only by the 5D Mark II). All in all, an excellent color response for an SLR. Mouse over the links below the illustration above to compare results with competing models.

Using the Adobe RGB color space (which provides a much wider gamut, or range of colors that can be expressed), the Canon 1Ds Mark III delivers more highly saturated color, with an average saturation of 113.2% and average saturation-corrected hue error of 6.74 "delta-C" units. These are fairly good results, but not as good as sRGB. (We very commonly see some over-saturation in SLRs when shooting in the Adobe RGB space.) Again, mouse over the links below the illustration above to compare results with competing models.

This image shows how the Canon 1Ds Mark III actually rendered the colors of the MacBeth chart, compared to a numerically ideal treatment. In each color swatch, the outer perimeter shows the color as actually captured by the camera, the inner square shows the numerically ideal color, after correcting for the luminance of the photographed chart (as determined by a second-order curve fit to the values of the gray swatches), and the small rectangle inside the inner square shows the numerically ideal color, without any luminance correction. This image shows the 1Ds Mark III's very good hue accuracy, as well as a gamma curve that results in an overexposure of some colors, notably cyans, reds, blues and some greens. (We've seen this in a wide range of cameras, increasing the "punch" of images by brightening saturated colors a little, while actually keeping both the hue and saturation level very close to technically accurate values.)

There's a lot in this particular graph, a lot more than we have room to go into here. (This set of plots has also changed a little in the more recent versions of Imatest. Some of the plots that were shown here previously are now shown in other Imatest output. Since we largely focus on the Noise Spectrum plot, we'll only show the graphic above, which includes that plot.)

In comparing these graphs with those from competing cameras, I've found that the Noise Spectrum graph at lower right is the most important. Cameras that manage to shift their noise spectrum to higher frequencies have much finer-grained noise structures, making their noise less visually objectionable. In the graph above, this would show up as a noise spectrum curve that remained higher on the right side, representing higher noise frequencies. The champion at this was (and still is) the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II, which produced remarkably fine-grained image noise, even at very high ISOs.

Here, we see the results at ISO 50, which is as a low extension of the normal ISO range for the 1Ds Mark III. The luminance curve isn't as flat as you might expect, and the color channels exhibit higher noise values, especially at lower frequencies. Still, overall noise levels are so low that the chroma noise was not noticeable except with extreme pixel peeping.

Here are the results at the 1Ds Mark III's base ISO of 100. The luminance curve is flatter than at ISO 50 and so here the 1Ds Mark III does a better job of keeping plenty of the noise energy at high frequencies. The RGB channels are however much higher than the luminance, especially the blue channel. Still, the Canon 1Ds Mark III noise levels are very low at low ISO (as you can see in the lower left graph, which shows noise levels vs target brightness), with a frequency spectrum that has more energy on the higher frequency (right-hand) side of the curve than do most cameras. Enabling the 1Ds Mark III's High ISONoise Reduction would likely reduce the chrominance noise, even at low ISOs (the default is Off however, which explains the higher chrominance noise we're used to seeing).

Above is the same set of noise data at ISO 1,600, the 1Ds Mark III's normal maximum range. Here, the luminance channel of the Noise Spectrum graph has a shift toward the left-hand, lower-frequency side than at ISO 100, coarsening the "grain" of the image noise patterns, but is still relatively flat for such a high ISO. The color channels follow the luminance much more closely, except at the very low end of the frequency spectrum, no doubt due to the default noise reduction taking place. At this ISO, we see the red-channel noise becoming dominant at the lowest spatial frequencies, manifesting in the images (in combination with the blue channel noise) as red- to purple-colored splotchiness. Overall noise is still pretty low, however.

Above is the same set of noise data at ISO 3,200, the high extension of the 1Ds Mark III's range. Here, the luminance channel of the Noise Spectrum graph has a more dramatic shift toward the left-hand, lower-frequency side than at ISO 100, coarsening the "grain" of the image noise patterns further. Again, the color channels follow the luminance much more closely, except at the very low end of the frequency spectrum, no doubt due to the default noise reduction taking place.

This chart compares the Canon 1Ds Mark III's luminance noise performance over a range of ISOs against that of other current, 20+ megapixel full frame cameras, using default settings. While we continue to show noise plots of this sort because readers ask for them, we each time point out that the noise magnitude is only a small part of the story, the grain pattern being much more important. In the case of the Canon 1Ds Mark III, the magnitude of the image noise starts out about the same as the competition at ISO 50, then remains competitive at all ISOs except when compared to the 5D Mark II, where it's slightly higher above ISO 400. Keep in mind these are at default settings, so the shape and positions of the curves will be influenced by your settings. For example, the 5D Mark II has 4 levels of high ISOnoise reduction versus the 1Ds Mark III's simple On/Off setting, so the default for the 5D Mark II applies a higher amount of noise reduction than the Mark III's default of Off. Also keep in mind this graph plots luminance noise, which explains why the Sony A900 seems to perform very similarly, even though it has higher chrominance noise.

A key parameter in a digital camera is its Dynamic Range, the range of brightness that can be faithfully recorded. At the upper end of the tonal scale, dynamic range is dictated by the point at which the RGB data "saturates" at values of 255, 255, 255. At the lower end of the tonal scale, dynamic range is determined by the point at which there ceases to be any useful difference between adjacent tonal steps. Note the use of the qualifier "useful" in there: While it's tempting to evaluate dynamic range as the maximum number of tonal steps that can be discerned at all, that measure of dynamic range has very little relevance to real-world photography. What we care about as photographers is how much detail we can pull out of the shadows before image noise becomes too objectionable. This, of course, is a very subjective matter, and will vary with the application and even the subject matter in question. (Noise will be much more visible in subjects with large areas of flat tints and subtle shading than it would in subjects with strong, highly contrasting surface texture.)

What makes most sense then, is to specify useful dynamic range in terms of the point at which image noise reaches some agreed-upon threshold. To this end, Imatest computes a number of different dynamic range measurements, based on a variety of image noise thresholds. The noise thresholds are specified in terms of f-stops of equivalent luminance variation in the final image file, and dynamic range is computed for noise thresholds of 1.0 (low image quality), 0.5 (medium image quality), 0.25 (medium-high image quality) and 0.1 (high image quality). For most photographers and most applications, the noise thresholds of 0.5 and 0.25 f-stops are probably the most relevant to the production of acceptable-quality finished images, but many noise-sensitive shooters will insist on the 0.1 f-stop limit for their most critical work.

The image below shows the test results from Imatest for an in-camera JPEG file from the Canon 1Ds Mark III with a nominally-exposed density step target (Stouffer 4110), and the 1Ds Mark III's default settings.

These are very good results for in-camera JPEGs, near the top of the results from other recent SLRs we've tested. The tone curve shows excellent gradation in highlights, but the shadow end trails off a bit more abruptly.

The tone curve looks very good with Highlight Tone Priority enabled, but because of the additional noise at ISO 200 (see the lower left plot) the Imatest score is only slightly higher than with it disabled. Still, this is a testament of the low levels of noise at ISO200. (We normally see the Imatest score drop as ISO increases.)

With a little manual tweaking, our standard RAW converter (Adobe Camera Raw, version 4.5) was able to extract a bit more dynamic range (over 1/2 f-stop) than any of the in-camera JPEGs, with a score of 8.84 f-stops at the highest quality level. These are excellent results, as the Canon 1Ds Mark III's dynamic range score really benefits from ACR's default noise reduction. (Do note, though, that the level of manipulation done to achieve the results above will result in severe color artifacts on color images: This level of dynamic range is really only achievable on monochrome images.)

Dynamic Range, the bottom line:

The net result was that the 1Ds Mark III JPEGs came in at the top of most other DSLR models we've tested recently, and results from ACR processed RAW files were even better, only surpassed by a handful of others the highest quality level. An excellent performance.

To get some perspective, here's a summary of the Canon 1Ds Mark III's dynamic range performance, and how it compares to other digital SLRs that we also have Imatest dynamic range data for. (Results are arranged in order of decreasing dynamic range at the "High" quality level.):

The results shown in the table are interesting. One of the first things that struck me when I initially looked at test data for a wide range of d-SLRs, was that here again, purely analytical measurements don't necessarily correlate all that well with actual photographic experience. There's no question that the Fuji S3 Pro deserves its place atop the list, as its unique "SR" technology does indeed deliver a very obvious improvement in tonal range in the highlight portion of the tonal scale. I was surprised to see the analytical results place the Olympus E-300 as highly as they did, given that our sense of that camera's images was that they were in fact noisier than those of many other d-SLRs that we looked at. In the other direction, I was quite surprised to see the Nikon D2x place as low on the listings as it did, given that we found that camera's shadow detail to be little short of amazing.

One thing that's going on here though, is that we tested each camera at its lowest (base) ISO setting, which should produce best-case noise levels. This is in fact what many photographers will be most interested in, but it does perhaps place some of the Nikons (like the D40) at a disadvantage, as their lowest ISO setting is 200, as compared to the ISO 100 settings available on most other models.

With the preceding as caveats, what we can say about the Canon 1Ds Mark III's dynamic range is that it's quite good, but perhaps two-thirds of a stop or so below the current best of the field. This roughly matches what we felt we were seeing in its images - It does a very good job, particularly with highlights, but plugs the very darkest shadows somewhat. - But keep in mind that we're splitting hairs, and talking about very deep shadows indeed.

The chart above shows consolidated results from spatial frequency response measurements in both the horizontal and vertical axes. The "MTF 50" numbers tend to correlate best with visual perceptions of sharpness, so those are what I focus on here. The uncorrected resolution figures are 2,639 line widths per picture height in the horizontal direction (corresponding to the vertically-oriented edge), and 2,541 lines along the vertical axis (corresponding to the horizontally-oriented edge), for a combined average of 2,590 LW/PH. Correcting to a "standardized" sharpening with a one-pixel radius increased only vertical resolution, resulting in an average of 2,785 LW/PH, a little lower than you'd expect for a 21-megapixel camera.

To see what's going on, refer to the plots below, which show the actual edge profiles for both horizontal and vertical edges, in both their original and corrected forms. Here, you can see that there is fairly conservative in-camera sharpening applied in one direction (almost ideal bumps at the top ends, but no noticeable bumps at the bottom ends of the black edge profile curves), while in the other, a more aggressive approach is taken. Imatest reports that the horizontal direction (vertical edge) is actually "oversharpened" by 0.861% while the vertical direction (horizontal edge) is "undersharpened" by 11.2%. Professionals and serious amateurs prefer this to oversharpening, and the 1Ds Mark III's images respond fairly well to the use of strong/tight sharpening post-exposure in Photoshop or some other image editor, although the over/undershoot shown in the profiles below does limit the sharpening that you can apply. (As usual, you should be able to extract a good bit more fine detail if you begin with a RAW file, rather than a JPEG.)

The over/undershoot in the profiles and the extent of its lateral spread underscores the minor exception we take to Imatest's definition of "optimal" sharpening: Imatest appears to be focusing (no pun intended) on the slope of the curve and the amount (height) of the overshoot, without considering its lateral extent. The 1Ds Mark III isn't bad in this regard, but the lateral extent of its sharpening artifacts does somewhat limit what you can do with sharpening in post-processing.