5D Mark III Specs [CR1]

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Aug 11, 2010
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x-vision, you seem to be very convinced a 1DV is on the way ... I'm curious as to why you believe this to be the case. most evidence as I understand it points to a totally different conclusion.

first, the 1D Mark IV was released 1Q 2010. for canon to replace it with a 1D Mark V in 1Q 2011 would be a 1 year refresh cycle ... unheard of in professional cameras. for good reasons, too, having to do with recouping R+D and production costs.

second, there is nothing horridly wrong with the 1D Mark IV that warrants emergency replacement. one could argue the closest any camera came to warranting this sort of drastic measure would be the 1D Mark III, yet Canon stalwartly stood by that product for the duration of its lifespan. from what I've seen, the 1DIV performs pretty much like everyone expected it to, which is to say in fine fashion.

so ... just struggling to understand where this is coming from. also, when you make comments like this on other posts:

"Aah. Somebody's been wet-dreaming again.
Pixel-binning and weak/missing AA filter are technical characteristics that have no appeal for real photographers - just for the techno geeks that came up with this lame rumor."

and then come out with a statement about expecting the 1DV to materialize at Photokina this past year ... people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, you know?
 
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The 1DIV may look like a new model but in fact is a mid-cycle facelift product.
As such, its lifespan will be short. The 1DIIn, for example, was on the market for less than 18 months.
The 1DIV is a more substantial facelift than the 1DIIn was but it’s still a facelift.

Also, even though the 1DIV is well spec’d, its 1.3x sensor format is a drag and is working against Canon at this time.
Individual buyers may prefer the 1.3x format for the extra ‘reach’ but having a smaller (read ‘inferior’) sensor than the competition - at the flagship level - is a marketing suicide. A switch to FF needs to happen sooner rather than later.

Thus, the camera that needs a replacement the most at this time is the 1DIV – not the well selling 5DII or 1DsIII (at its new $6K price point).

As for the AA filter and pixel-binning: like I said, these are low-level technical characteristics, not selling points.
No company will delay a flagship product for characteristics that many buyers have not heard of or don’t understand.

P.S. Sorry for the ‘real photographers’ comment.
I meant to say people buying/using cameras for taking pictures – as opposed to the people buying cameras as just toys and obsessing over their technical specs.
 
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Edwin Herdman said:
The specs seem like what I'd expect actually, though the non-100% viewfinder surprises me. I guess it'll still be larger than the 7D's however.

Yes, I wonder about this as well, in general. Why aren't all view finders 100%? 98% seems so close to 100%, what makes the last 2% so hard? In contrast, I don't find the magnification factor as important. Sure, with a higher magnification you are probably able to discern more detail, but for composition it's a bit tiring on the eye to roll around too much to cover all corners of a magnified frame (for FF, for APS-C it's no issue).

You're right that the 5D viewfinder is much larger than the 7D.
 
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Edwin Herdman

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epsiloneri said:
You're right that the 5D viewfinder is much larger than the 7D.
And in turn the 7D is probably bigger than the sad pentamirror finder of the T1i.

But nothing compares with the giant viewfinder of the medium format Mamiya RZ22! Playing with MF power, uh huh! o_o
x-vision said:
The 1DIV may look like a new model but in fact is a mid-cycle facelift product.
As such, its lifespan will be short. The 1DIIn, for example, was on the market for less than 18 months.
The 1DIV is a more substantial facelift than the 1DIIn was but it’s still a facelift.
Plausible, but consider the economic climate as well.

Also not sure where the Mark IV could make massive improvements, unless you want to turn it into a movie camera. It could use some more megapixels perhaps.

One of the biggest changes from the Mark II to the IIN was the back color LCD, changed from 2" to 2.5", a pretty noteworthy change. Right now it's standardized at 3" on most models. I'm sure some people would like to see a bigger screen still, and there may be some room before we run into problems like trying to make it a touchscreen to accommodate all the controls as well.
Also, even though the 1DIV is well spec’d, its 1.3x sensor format is a drag and is working against Canon at this time.
You dismiss the whole sports segment as "individual buyers?"

As for the AA filter and pixel-binning: like I said, these are low-level technical characteristics, not selling points.
No company will delay a flagship product for characteristics that many buyers have not heard of or don’t understand.
Canon is a smart enough company - I would hope, else they are putting themselves in peril - not to ignore the AA filter. I assume you mean getting rid of the AA filter? Not smart. I'm sure there will be an AA filter developed specifically for the sensor used, as always), or fudging pixel-binning for video if other manufacturers can do it (considering how much data would need to be moved, while sensors continue to get denser in terms of megapixel, I don't see anybody catching up for the sake of pixel binning in video. Perhaps I'm not sure what you meant here, but AA filter and pixel binning perhaps aren't high on the list of photographer demands because they're relatively transparent to normal photographers and the demands of cranks uninvolved with camera development but who have concrete opinions about "best practice" haven't been reflected in Canon or Nikon camera development. If you want my opinion on what Canon really ought to do to make their cameras better, I would start with (for the low end) better quick selection of bracketing (have to dive into a menu on the T1i, though it's only a few seconds to do) and especially getting a better mirror lock up solution.
 
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Edwin Herdman said:
Perhaps I'm not sure what you meant here, but AA filter and pixel binning perhaps aren't high on the list of photographer demands because they're relatively transparent to normal photographers...

That was exactly my point but I had the misfortune of using the term ‘real photographers’ instead of ‘normal photographers’, which caused some unintended stir.
 
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Jul 21, 2010
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dilbert said:
Canon Rumors said:
The first spec list
...
A high-speed AF system. Double Cross Centre, Cross assists 19 points – 26 points. 5 AF point selection mode, types of automatic. Advanced AI Servo AF
...

This doesn't add up - literally.

19 + 5 = 24.

5 would be center and 4 in a diamond?

If it were to be 19 + 7 = 26, ok, but where do the extra 2 sensors go?

Given this, I'm willing to call this whole thing bogus as it suggests an AF system with fewer active sensors than is currently found in the 5D Mark2.

The person who fabricated these 5DIII specs seems to be stating 26 AF points total. I'd read the "5" as referring to the number of AF point selection modes (presumably taken from the 7D specs - auto, zone, manual, spot, and point expansion).

I'm not sure how they came up with 26, though...maybe they are not counting the 'double cross center' in the 19 cross points, so it's 1 double cross center + 19 other cross type + 6 linear (the same 'invisible' six the 5D and 5DII have)??
 
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Flake

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bvukich said:
DoesNotFollow said:
The idea that at new 5D Mark 3 would not have the new Digic 5 chip and rather have two Digic 4's is not likely.

That a non-1d body would have DIGIC-V first is more unlikely.

Why when the Digic IV was first seen in the 50D?
Canon Rumour from Wikipedia (even they're getting in on the act!):

Some rumours appearing lately suggests that DIGIC 5 will be released in Q2 2011 along with EOS 5D Mark III. Some of the rumours say from 20-30 Megapixels and possible introduction of filming in 4K at 30 fps and 1080P at 60 fps.
 
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Justin

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What do digic 4 and digic 5 even mean? It's not like we have geekbench to test these against each other. What an odd thing to argue over.

Bob Howland said:
bvukich said:
DoesNotFollow said:
The idea that at new 5D Mark 3 would not have the new Digic 5 chip and rather have two Digic 4's is not likely.

That a non-1d body would have DIGIC-V first is more unlikely.

Who says that Canon has to use all of the Digic-5 features in a non-1d body?
 
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Why is everyone getting hot under the collar about a single Digic V vs a Dual Digic IV? Their proccessing through put is pretty much the same. Ie about 160 mb/s. The only thing a Digic V will offer a 5DIII is a slightly lighter chip set.
Im not sure on the 28mp / 6fps. From my math, Id make the through put at 28mp and 5.7 fps ;-)

I get the feeling that Canon used a dual Digic IV array for the 7D to bring in the processing power of the next gen camers to the XD range without having the Digic V chip ready. Which prolly means that the non 1 series XD range will. Always have dual Digic processors of the old tech from now on.

The Dual Digic V processsors are alledged to have a though put of upto 320mb/s so a 32mp / 10fps cam is quite possible. As such, I think the Digic V will be the last of its kind, Canon would not need a fast chip again, which is prolly why they are holding it back.
 
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cancan

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scalesusa said:
I'd like to see improvement in the Auto and Av settings though. Specifically, the option to change the default shutter speed from 1/focal length to a settable ratio. This would fix the auto ISO as well, since ISO would rise or fall according to the shutter speed ratio, and in effect, be changing the minimum or maximum limits depending on lens focal length used, at least while in auto or Av mode. It might help in Tv mode too, I haven't thought much about it. Right now, I have to use full manual, or set the ISO to get fast shutter speeds in Av mode.

I completely agree with your request. Perhaps if we can set a minimum shutter-speed in Av + Auto ISO, that will solve most of the problem too.
 
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RogerC

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Canon have taken a tremendous amount of stick over the last few years with their focussing problems and quality control. To cap it all Nikon vastly improved their high iso performance. This resulted in a mass exodus by a lot of professionals from the Canon camp.

Canon showed signs with the 7D that they would try to halt this. But they are going to have to make a massive leap forward to get these people back. Regrettably I do not see this happening because Canon’s policy has always been to make small step by step improvements rather than a quantum leap.

With the 5D mk2 the marketing people seemed to have had the strongest voice. Development work was concentrated on the video function rather than sorting out the inherent sluggish behavior and focussing problems of the mk 1. I do hope this does not happen again with the mk111.
 
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scalesusa

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RogerC said:
Canon have taken a tremendous amount of stick over the last few years with their focussing problems and quality control. To cap it all Nikon vastly improved their high iso performance. This resulted in a mass exodus by a lot of professionals from the Canon camp.

Canon showed signs with the 7D that they would try to halt this. But they are going to have to make a massive leap forward to get these people back. Regrettably I do not see this happening because Canon’s policy has always been to make small step by step improvements rather than a quantum leap.

With the 5D mk2 the marketing people seemed to have had the strongest voice. Development work was concentrated on the video function rather than sorting out the inherent sluggish behavior and focussing problems of the mk 1. I do hope this does not happen again with the mk111.

One thing you forgot to mention is that Canon is making tons of money, and Nikon has been cutting costs to stay afloat. They have just begun to show a profit in FY 2011. Those tons of people you claim to know of have just barely made a dent in Nikons losses. Maybe the foundation is being laid for future profit, but Canon knows how to manufacture cameras cheaply and sell them at a lower price point. Canon cameras are very good, but they do not pull out all the stops, they just make them good enough to sell for a big profit. They have been doing this for 40 years quite successfully.
 
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