In a previous post, I started describing the focusing problems of Canon's new flagship camera, the EOS 1D Mark III.

After shooting some tests at a youth soccer game and struggling through the Seahawks' road win at San Francisco, I acted against my best instincts and brought the cameras to Pittsburgh with me last weekend.

Needless to say, the cameras underperformed. And as mediocre as I can be some days, having cameras that don't function properly is just bad news.

Take for example this is a portion of a contact sheet from the game (note — all images are shot with a single autofocus point in the middle of the viewfinder):

From a contact sheet glance, the images appear sharp. And when reviewing them on the LCD screen on the back of the camera, they look sharp, too.

But upon closer inspection, there are all kinds of problems.

This is the full, uncropped version of frame at far left of the bottom row of the contact sheet. It's shot at 1/1250 sec., so movement wouldn't be a factor. Looks pretty sharp, right?

(Canon EOS 1D Mark III, EF 400mm/f2.8 lens, ISO 200, 1/1250th sec., f2.8)

A closer look reveals the ball appearing VERY sharp and the player's face appearing in focus:

(Canon EOS 1D Mark III, EF 400mm/f2.8 lens, ISO 200, 1/1250th sec., f2.8)

An even closer look at the face shows a weird blurriness that I can't account for. It's like the sensor is vibrating or something. The Mark II had a similar problem before a firmware upgrade solved it. But his face is simply not sharp enough, even at this enlargement:

(Canon EOS 1D Mark III, EF 400mm/f2.8 lens, ISO 200, 1/1250th sec., f2.8)

Of that entire series, only one frame was as sharp as an image on a Mark IIN. I thought the best composition is in the last frame (bottom row, far right) where the running back has separated from the players in the background. Not only is he centered between them, but he is also further ahead of them, giving the viewer the sense of a good run and a long gain. But this frame, in which the camera has had at least eight frames to track focus, is neither sharp nor soft in the traditional sense. It's just "fuzzy". If you look closely, the football seems to be the sharpest part of the frame, which makes no sense at all:

(Canon EOS 1D Mark III, EF 400mm/f2.8 lens, ISO 200, 1/1250th sec., f2.8)

And a tighter crop:

(Canon EOS 1D Mark III, EF 400mm/f2.8 lens, ISO 200, 1/1250th sec., f2.8)

Here's the all-important face:

(Canon EOS 1D Mark III, EF 400mm/f2.8 lens, ISO 200, 1/1250th sec., f2.8)

More weirdness: the ball appears to be sharp, and is the sharpest part of the frame, but looking at it closer again reveals that strange fuzziness to the image:

(Canon EOS 1D Mark III, EF 400mm/f2.8 lens, ISO 200, 1/1250th sec., f2.8)

The bottom line is that when the camera does not perform correctly, it makes finding the great moments of a game even harder. Instead of choosing frames by judging light, composition and moment, I'm choosing them solely by the accuracy of the focus.

I will say this — when the camera does focus correctly, the images are unbelievably nice. We used this photo of Mack Strong in the newspaper last week after injury forced his retirement:

(Canon EOS 1D Mark III, EF 400mm/f2.8 lens, ISO 200, 1/1250th sec., f3.5)

Editing the Pittsburgh game was tough because of this. I'll keep testing the cameras and hope that Canon finds a solution.