After researching these two cameras for a major purchase, I am now hedging on the Mark lll 1Ds. $3000 price difference buys lots of glass.
Going to wait til June to do this but from what i can tell, the Nikon D3 is a far superior camera with it's iso capability and fps. The salesman at Vistek seems to thing that Canon got left behind on this one. He said they have the technology, just decided not to introduce it.
He also says many Canon wish they could make the switch.
I wonder what Canon's answer will be to the D3 and when.
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How big a print do you need to make, and what kind of subject do you shoot? The extra resolution of the Eos-1Ds mk III will definitely permit a larger print than Nikon's D3, if you're talking about an image with lots of fine detail (i.e., "high frequency"). If it's a portrait or a graphic image that depends on color rather than fine detail, the very high quality of the D3's larger pixels will tolerate at least as much enlargement. The D3 is also in a league of its own at high ISO, another function of those big pixels.
The best analysis I have seen of the issues in play was at
www.digilloyd.com, where the site's author explained the true limiting factors for image quality with such high resolution sensors. Of course, you need perfect technique with very careful focus, solid tripod, mirror lock up and excellent glass. But diffraction rears its ugly head, and the f-stop where it starts to limit sharpness depends on pixel size. As a result, the 1Ds III starts to hit diffraction limits by f:13, sometimes even by f:8, whereas the D3 can get away with smaller apertures (and therefore greater apparent depth of field). A notional Nikon D3X due to simple physics will run into exactly the same limits, and therefore is very unlikely to significantly exceed the image quality from the Eos-1Ds III, except perhaps for high ISO noise, though even there the smaller pixel pitch will be tough to overcome.
I shoot mostly landscapes, where superfine detail (like trees in a forest) are crucial to image quality, so the Eos-1Ds III is a good fit. (That and my closet full of Canon glass). But if you're shooting people, or sports, or wildlife...then the D3 looks great.