briansquibb said:
When the 5DII was announced the 1DS3 already left it for dead in terms of an allround camera - yet history will remember the 5DII as the great camera and the 1DS3 as the turkey because it was 'overpriced'. Here we are 4 years on and the 1DS3 still has more advanced features than the 5DIII and in the landscape/studio segment it is still the top dog.
The 5DIII has morphed into a general purpose camera - lets hope history is kind to the 5DIII
It's interesting... the 5d3, I agree, is a general purpose camera. At that it does a good job - if you are a "jobbing" photographer (some weddings, some portraits, some commercial work, some PR work etc..) and you need a camera, it's probably the one to get: it AWBes better, JPEG quality is better, focussing is spot on, 22mp is enough without being too much, FPS is fast enough for most general needs and so on.
And to be fair, there are a lot of these kinds of photographers around that just need a camera to do it's job without pushing DR or printing at A2.
I do wonder how history will regard the 5d3. My take on the 5 line would be:
* 5d1 - first time we had FF for a decent price and beautiful image quality! Was the king of the hill without a doubt.
* 5d2 - pretty much the highest MP around for a while, yet still really good high ISO. Video was revolutionary and took pretty much everyone by surprise..
* 5d3 - the first 5 series which is a good allrounder: jack of all trades but master of none.
The other cameras have been fantastic at a few things but they've had disadvantages in other areas too. Is that enough to put the 5d3 in the hall of fame? While I think it's fantastic for my needs, I suspect not. The PR victory will be to the d800 I suspect.