Canon 5D Mark III official...

[Nick Rains]

I saw this camera last week and it's a lovely bit of gear as it stands. The viewfinder is bigger and brighter than the 5D2, the build is rock solid, the AF is very swift on the new 24 and 28 Mark II lenses, as well as the new 24-70. High ISO images look good, 3200 has less noise than the 5D2.

It's interesting to note that the 5D2 has not been discontinued. The two will be sold side by side for a while yet. Not sure what that's all about.

I was at the launch in Sydney today, no surprises as I saw it all last Friday, but they had the new C300 there with the new cinema zoom. $40000 lens, it's huge and itso well built, silky smooth focussing and stop ring, did I mention it's huge? No primes though.

I'll keep my order for the 1Dx in place.....

[Rhossydd]

again: who will buy it?

The same people that rushed out and bought the mkII for it's video capabilities and made a whole new genre of film making. That's probably a much bigger market than architectural photographers not successful enough to use MFDB.

The improvements in video are significant to those using the camera for professional video work and will generate a lot of upgrades.

[Rhossydd]

The two will be sold side by side for a while yet. Not sure what that's all about.

Getting shot of inventory probably. The more interesting question is will the MKii still be coming off a production line ?
I doubt the mkIII will be easy to get for a long time based on past experience.

[Josh-H]

I'll keep my order for the 1Dx in place....

Ditto.

And add a MFDB to my kit.

[Ben Rubinstein]

So the D800 has weather sealing, spot metering at all focus points, clean HDMI out, significantly more megapixels, etc and is £700/$1100 cheaper in the UK. It's certainly a great camera but for that price, why on earth would you buy it over the D800 unless you needed the fps? Film makers aren't going to pay more for less features. Canon are out of their minds.

[mac_paolo]

So the D800 has weather sealing, spot metering at all focus points, clean HDMI out, significantly more megapixels, etc and is £700/$1100 cheaper in the UK. It's certainly a great camera but for that price, why on earth would you buy it over the D800 unless you needed the fps? Film makers aren't going to pay more for less features. Canon are out of their minds.

That's a good question.

[Rhossydd]

Film makers aren't going to pay more for less features. Canon are out of their minds.

You've missed the point. mega pixels, spot metering and even weather sealing just aren't important to film makers. Clean HDMI output may attract some users, but the mkIII offers some significant improvements for mkII owners in terms of high ISO performance, lack of moire, time code provision, better codecs and frame rates and all of that in such a similar form factor they won't need to change any other parts of their filming hardware; lenses, follow focuses, rigs, monitors, leads etc.
I think it will be enough to keep the indie film makers in Canon's market. 

[LKaven]

It just hit me.  The 5D series is a "fleet model."  It's a Camry.

At Nikon (playing Subaru in this scene), I can actually picture someone behind the scenes in front of a D800 thinking "we just made the coolest camera we could think of...people are going to flip out."  I would have liked to see a little more of l'amour fou from Canon.

[Nigel Johnson]

There is also a fair amount of information available on the Canon Professional Network Europe Site at:

http://cpn.canon-europe.com/content/news/canon_unveils_eos_5d_mark_iii.do

and accessible from the links on that page.

Regards
Nigel

[DeeJay]

The samples are soft and completely lacking in detail. I really don't see that much difference in image quality from the Mk2 or, dare I say it, the low iso of the mk1. The files are just bigger. Upgrades like these SHOULD have noticeable image quality increases like the Nikon 800 has had. Canon really appears to be asleep.

The 1Dx was a stupid move. They have possibly held back the 5D so it doesn't cannibalise sales of the 1 but for pete's sake Canon WAKE UP!!! It's so weird to watch a company that was at the peak just roll over in bed like this. I can't see see who would buy into this system now and I feel a lot will jump ship to Nikon.

I hope they have something like the fabled 3D up their sleeve or this sink will ship fast.

I never thought the day would come that I said the Nikon is the better choice having been a Canon user for over 20 years. I'm really so pleased with my recent switch to Leica M9. A 3 year old camera that is in a whole other league to the Canon and I look forward to seeing comparisons with the Nikon 800. Bring on the M10 later this year!

[dreed]

So the D800 has weather sealing, spot metering at all focus points, clean HDMI out, significantly more megapixels, etc and is £700/$1100 cheaper in the UK. It's certainly a great camera but for that price, why on earth would you buy it over the D800 unless you needed the fps? Film makers aren't going to pay more for less features. Canon are out of their minds.

The 5D Mark III has two video modes and the higher of which has a bit rate (~90mbps) that is in excess of that used by BluRay (~40Mbps).

It will be interesting how the pixel size decrease in the D800 compares to that of the 5D Mark III (more or less the same size as the 5D Mark II).

It would seem that the D800 has at least comparable results to the D700, which is arguably better than the 5D Mark II. For the 5D Mark III to command a better price, Canon will have needed to improved the output to beyond that of the D700.

[hjulenissen]

The 5D Mark III has two video modes and the higher of which has a bit rate (~90mbps) that is in excess of that used by BluRay (~40Mbps).

The bitrate of a distribution medium ("infinite" automatic/manual tuning resources) cannot be directly compared to those of a recording medium (possibly noisy, need for post-processing colors/sharpness/exposure...)

-h

[Rhossydd]

Canon will have needed to improved the output to beyond that of the D700.

The appeal of video cameras isn't just about output. Although a small improvement on the existing "good enough" quality may make it an appealing upgrade if taken along with other usability improvements.
The ability to use time code is significant by itself, even better if it allows multiple cameras to be locked together, but I can't see that's been implemented from what I've seen so far.

[Jim Pascoe]

My 1Ds 3 is about four years old and still doing great service.  Our 5D mk2 is also a good camera, which I really want to like, but it has handling drawbacks.  However having looked at the new 5D specs I would say it would now make more sense if I need to upgrade to go to this camera rather than the new 1Dx.  The new camera addresses the things I like in the 1 series.  Improved viewfinder, better autofocus, dual card slots, and the 'silent mode'.  These were all reasons for me to stick with the heavier camera.  With an added grip when needed, the new 5D will completely fulfil my personal requirements.  More MP may be nice, but in all honesty I do not really need it very often, and most of the time just fills up drive storage unnecessarily.  The new features as listed easily make the camera worth more than the Mk2, because it is still going to be significantly cheaper than the new 1Dx.

To all those people who bang on about jumping to Nikon because of extra pixels, presumably they don't have a whole cupboard of Canon lenses.  In any case, how long do you think it will be before Canon produces a higher pixel count camera?  And just in case anyone thinks I'm an anti-Nikon Canon fanboy, I'm not.  I just have invested heavily in the Canon system since my first D30 (the 3mp one) and it is a system that works perfectly.  If Nikon had an affordable body in 2001 I would have gone the Nikon route because I had a drawer full of Nikon MF lenses.  It shows the maturity of digital that camera systems are not going to be leap-frogging each other in such a big way as they used to.  Image quality is the key thing, and that is going to improve only very incrementally from now on.

Jim

[Playdo]

Does anyone know if spot metering is linked to the active focus point?

[BJL]

Canon seems to have prioritized video, action photography, and "non-sensor" aspects where it previously lagged, such as finally offering its best AF, a 100% VF and rugged construction befitting any camera in this price range. Cynically, Canon might have a project using about 45 million of the 7D photosites, but right now, that suffers in comparison to the D800, at least in comparisons of per pixel specs like engineering DR and in 100% pixel peeping.

Note that the horizontal photosites count of 5760 is now exactly three times 1920, which raises the hope that 1080p output now uses all photosites in a 3x3 block to produce each video output pixel, with no sub-sampling or imterpolation up.


P. S. I have noticed though that the VF magnification is still 0.71x (as in previous 5D models), not 0.76x (as in 1D models). Nikon instead has always offered its top-of-the-line 100% coverage VF in its 35mm format DSLRs --- but all at only 0.7x magnification. A small but mysterious difference in design philosophy.

[LKaven]

D800 has high-end 96k segment meter, 200k shutter, 14M more pixels, uncompressed HDMI out, $500 less.  

Never mind the features, why does the 5DIII cost so much more?

[DeeJay]

Looking at the marketing it seems they are focussing more on motion and less on stills. They seem to have defined their own boundaries where as Nikon seem to be pushing what can be done with the stills format.

[gingerbaker]

Does anyone know if spot metering is linked to the active focus point?

Pretty sure the answer is "yes". 

[Ben Rubinstein]

I'd read that it wasn't in true canon fashion (they leave that for the 1 series), would be interested to see what the real answer is.