No Training Wheels

Out on the web doing some research on the Canon EOS-1D Mark III for a future review here, I came across this excellent blog post written by a guy who'd acquired one in 2017 and was doing a sort of 10th anniversary retrospective review on it.

I did find one observation of his to be interesting, though:

"Bulk aside, the most peculiar aspect of shooting with it was the lack of auto ISO. I typically shoot aperture priority, with auto ISO enabled, and use exposure compensation to bias the exposure whichever way I need it to go.

On the 1D Mark III, ISO can only be automated by a system called Safety Shift, which works about the same but doesn’t allow you to specify a minimum shutter speed or a range or anything like that. Makes me appreciate how far we’ve come with technology, and how skilled photographers had to be before all the contemporary conveniences."

This betrays a little bit of a misunderstanding regarding the nature of the pro bodies from Canon and Nikon.

It's not that Canon lacked the technology for auto ISO in 2007 when the 1D Mark III came out. After all, my 40D of the same vintage has auto ISO, as does my old 20D which I've handed down to my roommate.

On the other hand, none of my pro bodies (Canon 1Ds Mk II, 1D Mk III, and 1D Mk IV, as well as Nikon D1X, D2X, and D3) have an auto setting for ISO sensitivity. In much the same way, they don't have the range of presets like "sports", "landscape", et cetera, or the fully automated mode represented by a green rectangle on the mode dial of a Canon or "AUTO" on a Nikon's dial.

The target market for these cameras was assumed to be working pros who wouldn't need or use those settings, and so they're just left off.

Scooterin' Santa snapped with an EOS-1D Mark III