Canon EOS 5D Mark III Finally Launched

2012.03.02

Today Canon released their long-anticipated EOS 5D Mark III. Following the ground-breaking 5D Mark II by 3½ years, which had a run-away success as one of the most affordable full-frame DSLRs, the Mark III is an incremental upgrade designed to boost image quality and reliability compared to its predecessor.

The Canon EOS 5D Mark III features a new ultra-low-noise 22 megapixels sensor with a normal ISO range of 100-25600, further expandable to 50-102400. This sensor is closely paired with a 61-point AF system featuring up to 5 double-cross-type points and 41 cross-type ones, depending on the lens in used. There is now a new 63-segment Evaluative metering system to improve accuracy of automatic exposure.

Many will rejoice to know that the Mark III finally has a 100% coverage viewfinder! The rear LCD has also been enlarged at 3.2" and just over 1 megapixel of resolution. There is a useful dual-axis digital-level and overlaid information on both the OVF and LCD depending on the shooting mode.

The truly fast continuous drive can shoot at 6 FPS for an incredible 16270 JPEG images when using a UDMA 7 Compact Flash card. This DSLR also supports normal Type 1 and SDXC memory cards. 18 RAW images can be captured consecutively with the UDMA 7 card. The buffering depth drops with slower cards, obviously.

Movie mode has been further improved with longer clip lengths and choice of compression levels. The 5D Mark III can split video files in 4 GB chunk to reach its maximum recording time of 30 minutes. Not only is there a mini-jack to record stereo sound but also a headset output to monitor audio as it is being recorded.

The Canon EOS 5D Mark III is scheduled to ship at the end of this month for $3499 USD. It has not been announced in Canada yet.

• Digital Camera