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Question for you - can I hit the AF/MF button to disengage the AF feature, and then re-enable it, all during the same "take"? Meaning if I'm tracking a moving subject and know it's going to be in one spot for a while, and I want 0 chance of the camera trying to refocus on another target entering the frame, can I do that? Let's use lions walking around in a zoo for example.  Or could I just use your aforementioned "manual" autofocus then?

Thanks for your help.  I might even sell the 5d3 if this works out - I find myself rarely going about ISO 1600 and certainly could use more reach.  The problem is ML raw has made the video so gorgeous it'd be so hard to not have that as an option.  Plus winter's approaching (along with Halloween night; one of my favorite nights to shoot video) and I know I'll need the low light.  Sigh.  What to do.

I don't have a button on my lens, but on the bottom left of the touchscreen, the Servo AF button is available all the time while recording, so you can turn it on or off. If recording a longer session, you can turn it off when using manual autofocus and it won't automatically focus, and when you're done, you turn it back on, and continues servo autofocusing.

As for the ISO: it is an APS-C:) A videographer guy using 7D asked me to make a 100-12800 ISO noise test and he told that it's about 1 stop better than the 7D. It also has slightly better dynamic range. 70D also has ALL-I and IPB modes, if interested.

How do you guys record your kids' sports?  Disclaimer - my wife is not only camera illiterate, she doesn't want to know (yeah, worse case).  I'm hoping the 70d would be super simple for her to use.

If I read correctly, you're interested in autofocus capabilities. I own this camera for ~2 weeks now, and I played a little with it. I use it with a 17-55 IS USM.

You can either use Servo AF (full automatic) in video mode (either with face tracking or simply a certain point), or you can turn it off and use focus by hand.

When using Servo AF, it zooms slower, more gradient, but accurate, no hunting. This is good for overall usage, and can track anything moving at "normal" speed. This cannot track very fast movements like full zoomed on a kid's face who's running around. But for wide, it's working perfectly. I read in a Canon paper that the engineers slowed down the focus change to have movie look, because it can perform much faster (see next option).

The other option is to turn Servo AF off and use manual autofocus. It means that the camera focuses to the place where the focus box is when you push the AF-ON button. This is very fast, almost instantly, no hunting. Not as fast as the conventional PDAF AF, but almost at fast, always < 1sec, usually ~0.5 secs. This is good when you're moving the camera and when you stand on a new object, push the button, and it gets focus. Also, in this mode, the focusing noise of the lens is only heard when you push the button.

My lens has an audible noise, mainly in Servo AF where the camera is always focusing. in AF-ON mode, its better because much infrequent. According to the reviews, STM lenses have no audible noise and they focus smoothly.

So, if you like to record games, not fully zoomed on faces, I think you'll be satisfied with the Servo AF with an STM lens. 55-250 STM is now available, try one because it has the coverage I think you need.

The sensitivity of the sensor is a bit better, but it doesn't matter for outdoor sports. Compared to the 5d3, you don't have Tv and Av modes on this camera, only AUTO and MANUAL. In AUTO, you cannot set ISO, in MANUAL, you need to set everything manually (but there is auto ISO). So, in MANUAL, you set the aperture to the desired, you set the shutter speed to 50 and you set auto ISO, it'll work fine.

I see, it's a pity.

But, we'll see. Those cameras are DIGIC 4 based, but DIGIC 5, and especially DIGIC 5+ are much stronger while need to write the same amount of data.

HW of course. DIGIC is not an i7 you know

no kidding? i don't know what it's capable of, but they solved lots of algorithms, I don't see a reason not being able to implement it. if they can read and manipulate the stream and having basic mathematical and bitwise operations and some spare memory space to use, the only thing that'd prevent the implementation is the processing speed.

but if you're sure, i believe you as i'm not familiar with digic 5 development.

Better let yourself think just a little, why such a brilliant idea hasn't implemented yet )

tell me why, because i only see 2 reasons that'd block this implementation: human or sw/hw resource problem.

which one?

uhh thats all? make a whole new compression format that beats all the others that already exist?!

it's not about creating a new compression format but implementing one from the existing that keeps the 14-bit color depth. e.g. lzw or one of its variant can be used that's a lossless compression and reduce the stream to half size. that would double the bandwidth used... and we're only talking about a simple compression.

raw is much better in image quality because of the 14 bit color depth, instead of the 8 bit color depth of H264 encoding.
raw needs that high data throughput because of the uncompressed stream.

no need to have 100MB/sec writing if the stream is still 14 bit color depth but compressed.

let ML guys to implement a compression that will reduce the stream bandwidth under 40MB/sec, and then, all SD card cameras will be capable of recording full hd 14 bit stream.

that's all.