Canon has officially announced the EOS-1D X Mark III, price tag £6,499.99 / €7,599.99 / $6,499, the company’s new flagship, full-frame DSLR.
Aimed at professional users, the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III is a replacement for the EOS-1D X Mark II and uses a 20.1-megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor alongside Canon’s latest DIGIC 8 processor.
Built for speed – and just in time for the 2020 Olympics – the EOS-1D X Mark III offers continuous shooting rates of up to 20fps with AF tracking in Live View or 16fps when shooting with the viewfinder.
Sensitivity has been improved, offering a wide native range of ISO 50 to 819,200, suggesting it should perform well in low light. There’s also a new High Detail Low-Pass Filter, which Canon says samples the light over a greater number of points to help produce sharper images.
Autofocus
The EOS-1D X Mark III has a new AF system that features 191 selectable AF points, 155 of which are cross-type.
With its new AF sensor, the EOS-1D X Mark III provides 28 times the centre resolution of the 1D X Mark II. Canon says:
Programmed via deep learning, the camera’s AF system can identify human subjects in a range of sporting situations, bringing them into focus – at high speeds – with newly-developed advanced subject tracking system. With this deep learning capability, the camera will lock on to a subject’s head or face – the primary place of focus for the human eye when looking at images – even in situations when the subject’s eyes are covered by the likes of helmets and goggles. A new Auto AF case setting has also been incorporated in the camera to tune the AF settings to match the subject – making setting up the AF system easier than ever before – ideal for professionals photographing subjects which occasionally maybe blocked.
Video
Canon has aimed to meet the increasing demands for video from stills photographers by providing 4K 12-bit Raw internal video recording. The EOS-1D X Mark III is the first non-cinema Canon camera, in fact, to offer Raw recording.
What’s more, it is also the first EOS-1 series camera to support Movie Digital IS – providing 5-axis stabilisation to cope with a wide range of movements – a feature seen in high-end Canon cinema cameras like the EOS C500 Mark II.
Footage can also be recorded as 12-bit CRM file at 5.5K (5472×2886) for highly detailed 4K video.
The Canon EOS-1D X Mark III can also record video using Canon Log Gamma, captured as a 10-bit HEVC/H.265 file. The EOS-1D X Mark III also supports file recording in a MP4 container for faster transmission of files.
Memory
The EOS-1D X Mark III uses the new CFexpress memory card format, which deliver much faster write speeds.
What’s more, the EOS-1D X Mark III is also the first EOS camera to support HEIF (High Efficiency Image File Format) files. This new file format, based on the HEVC codec, enables images with 10-bits of data to be saved in a file the equivalent size of a JPEG but with less compression artefacts.
Canon EOS-1D X Mark III Price & Release Date
The Canon EOS-1D X Mark III price tag will be £6,499.99 / €7,599.99 / $6,499 with a release date set for February 2020.
You can pre-order the EOS-1D X Mark III at retailers such as Park Cameras, Adorama or B&H Photo Video.