Can a ten+ years old 10 Mp APS-H, hi speed camera hold the candle to her present day offspring ? To find out I decided to spend a day at the italian chapter of Euro Truck Trial Championship 2017.

Most people will have, at best, a rough idea what truck trial actually is; well, in a nutshell, it’s all about heavly modified trucks going up and down insanely steep slopes and doing tricky stuff for the sake of it.

Heat, dust, harsh light, dense, black, smelly soot. It’s 10 am and the scenario is, at least for me, the human part of the combo, already challenging. I know the trusty 1D is 100% at ease in such environment. She used to be my main workhorse in many african trips (now is the back up of my 1Ds III).  That’s what she was made for. Attached,  my old 70-200 2.8 IS. Fast, sharp, precise, despite his age and his service status….Just click to enlarge these pics to get an idea how sharp iti still is.

The setup

Time to start; I set the ISO to 320 and the aperture to f/8; stabilizer on, focus to 3m and beyond and AI servo. The subjects are not difficult to shoot at all. They are not moving fast (sometimes they are barely moving) and are so huge that it is really difficult to miss them; which is good. It means more time to focus on ideas and composition.

Pros 1: file size

One of the best things about this camera is that at 10mp, even shooting raw, the file size is absolutely reasonable. A 32 gb flashcard can store thousands of shots.

Pros 2: balance and fuel economy

Yes, it is a hell of a heavy brick but, again, coupled with the bulky white zoom she feels perfectly balanced. The rear screen is wide enough but surley far from today’s standards when it comes to resolution. Again, this turns into a strong point. By using it less and less as a review tool, the battery will improve its already great performance. You just have to worry about  the pictures.

Dynamic range

The EOS 1D III dynamic range is not bad either; with just a minor twick in post, I managed to open the shadows to a more than decent level, especially given the really harsh light conditions of a summer day noon.

Fine details

Well, nothing to complain when it comes to sharpness and details: despite its realtively poor pixel count, this camera with  good lens will perform brilliantly !

Colors

I fiddled a bit with color grading in post; I used Phase One to process the raw files; the color rendition though is preatty accurate in the first place.