Sometime it is back to basics.

having spent hundreds of hours confusing myself with the variety of the custom functions for BIFs as advised by the myriad of advisors and getting some VERY good and some awful results on my MKIII I cracked it and reset all customs to original.:(

Guess what 290 shots of BIFs 210 keepers, I am flabergasted or senile but I will stay with the default settings until I run into trouble again.:confused:

What a great but confusing camera or what an old bloody stupid photographer, maybe I should take up knitting.:)

I think that cameras are becoming a bit like F1 race cars or bikes--very adjustable high performance pieces of equipment which are easy to screw up with seemingly small changes and adjustments....

Chris I think with anything so complex you need to change one setting at a time !!! Just a matter or tweaking !!!

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Chris I think with anything so complex you need to change one setting at a time !!! Just a matter or tweaking !!!
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Thanks Alfred you are spot on. I had taken the massive amount of advice (I would put it on my laptop and take that with me) whilst forgetting that dementia:) and a largesse of information do not work well together.:confused:

I will now not mix and match but carefully try one or two things together and RECORD the results.

I had forgotten how fantastic this camera was out of the box before this Antipodean Einstein got stuck into the photographic permutations thus completely confusing an aging mind with its attendant whittling away of its short term memory.:)

Thanks again.

Chris -

Thanks so much for writing what I've been feeling for quite some time!! Choices are great but too many are ridiculous, and personally I waded into that same pond as you! Following the advice from probably the same myriad of "experts", I was making myself crazy with the choices. Resetting everything back to default has been invaluable since what I thought might have been those pesky AF errors now appear to clearly be "operator error." But I'm still thinking that I may chuck it all and go back to the xxD series cameras where I started because they've consistently delivered excellent results for me...

Chris I am having a ball going "back to basics" with this camera as I am with my 5D MKII.

I now use the 5D MKII with a 300 F4L IS + 1.4 con and it is fantastic for BIFs with amazing focus speed and accuracy and limited only by the 3.9fps.

The 1D MKIII has the 400 F5.6 + 1.4 con and at F8 it still focuses very fast and the IQ is great and I am starting off with default settings and making small changes and if they don't suit "clear all custom settings"

I intend to concentrate on my technique now and when I get that right I may again fiddle with settings.