Ramlings-RG is your friend

Well i had planned to have a few days near the NC coast shooting Snow Geese, Tundra Swans and Bears before the birds migrate in the next couple of weeks but my wife has kindly passed on her cold and now i have sat here for a couple of days sweating and sneezing and have a nose like a piece of raw steak, So i have had plenty of time to read up and play with the flashguns as i said in my last post and luckily for me Rob Galbraith has done his review on the Canon 1D MK4 AF system, Its not the review that i look forward to but the upraw from the Canon fanboys who see RG as the devil when in fact he is a Canon users best friend-Why? Well who was it that made Canon sit up and look at the MK3 AF system, It was only after his extensive tests that he proved that the MK3 AF system was troubled, Without his written word Canon would have buried their heads and kept stumm and the MK4 system would have been as troubled as the MK3, Most of the people who complain that RG doesn't say that Canon are the best have never used/owned a MK3 or MK4 and are purely fanboys, I see people on forums saying that they will only ever use one brand-always have and always will-how sad is that, Its a camera-a tool and you use the right one for the job,What happens if the company folds like Minolta, Do you stop shooting?There are those who have never seen a problem with the MK3 and refuse that there was ever a problem-well Canon didnt have 2 recalls and various firmware upgrades for nothing, Now you have to read between the lines with the RG MK4 review, Firstly even though he caused Canon (not Canon users) a hard time Canon sat up and listened, they worked along side him with the MK3 so they must take him seriously and even after his last MK3 review where he said it still wasn't up to scratch they supplied him with the MK4 for testing-so if he says something good or bad Canon listen, Now as a sports shooter he is shooting wide open i.e F2.8 and this is the biggest test for any AF system, I don't shoot at F2.8 or extremely rarely, His test shows that the MK4 struggles with red-ok so that's something that Canon can tweek, He also says that the MK4 is worlds apart from the MK3-Fantatsic, So Canon have worked hard and made huge improvements, What the Canon fanboys don't like is that he says that the MK4 lags behind the Nikon D3s in consistency but excels in many of his tests over the D3s, They seemed to have only read the first part, This was something i first noticed when i changed over to Nikon, The MK3 AF system is very fast to acquire the target but then got confused and the Nikon D3 that i use is slower to grab the target (but still not slow) but once it locks on thats it-sharp shot time after time, RG said in the MK3 test that the AF was fast but got confused and would front or back focus thinking too much how it thought the subject would react, The MK4 sounds similar but much better, There will never be a perfect AF system and both Canon and Nikon have strengths and weaknesses, For the MK4 to excel in places over the D3s shows just how far Canon have come and at the end of the day its sounds like a great system, I am sure Canon will take RGs findings and will be working on those results, The Olympics are starting and this info along with what the Canon shooters will find there will give Canon lots of valuable info,I personally don't understand all this fanboy stuff, most people who complain or wont hear anything bad about their kit have never used anything else, I am lucky to say that i have extensive knowledge of both Canon and Nikon systems and can see both sides of the story, I though RGs review was well written and informative, He shot with 5 different cameras-some supplied by Canon and am sure he had Canon techs working with him as he did with the MK3, He has hundreds of test shots for download for people to analyse his findings and make their own conclusions and he shoots more images per year than many people do in a lifetime-i think he is as good a guy to test any AF system, He does mention the Nikon system and says that its not perfect and that he will come to that in the future,We can then hear the Nikon fanboys bemoaning him, He puts it on the line and if people don't like that then don't read it, You must also realise that he tests kit in his own everyday shooting situations which are probably different to yours and mine, i know as much as anybody else that when you switch systems there are certain childish people who for some reason take it personally as if you are having a go at their system-its not good enough or whatever, I have had people have a pop at me about it-so did Andy Rouse and RG, Well the thing is some people need kit that works for them, Most people have too much money tied up in lenses etc to make the swap but if they could would they?, I know people who shoot both systems and if i could afford to i would as well as both have strong points and weak points, We all have 1 thing in common-photography-why be small minded and have this them against us business
Any way back to the lem sip and hot water bottle and continue to enjoy the battles on Dpreview

Dave