The prosumer DSLR market just got a little more crowded, with Canon's EOS 5D Mark III set to hit the market by the end of the month, but we hope you've been saving your pennies.
This year marks Canon's 75th anniversary, and last Friday the company marked the occasion with the official announcement of its latest iteration in the prosumer range, the Canon EOS 5D Mark III, with which we managed to have a nice, little hands-on play.
The EOS 5D Mark III comes some five years after its Mark II predecessor and features a 6 frames-per-second, 22.3-megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor with the new DiG!C 5+ processor and boasting a 100-25600 ISO range. What this boils down to is better image quality in a greater range of lighting environments, the greatest advances being in low-lit environments, which for our money is where Canon's greatest competition, Nikon, excels.
The improved low-lighting functionality is indeed wonderful, but Canon's focus with the Mark III is clearly in indie filmmaking, with the only other significant improvement to still imaging being the addition of in-camera HDR. (Probably not a feature we'd actually use, considering the greater level of control in managing your bracketed images in post.)
However filmmakers will rejoice, with new inclusions such as an audio jack and in-camera levelling; features we're certain will make every indie filmmaker dump their current jury-rigged setup and pay attention. It definitely is a sexy setup.
The downside? The hefty price point, with users looking to upgrade their current kit facing an RRP in the vicinity of $4,000 for the body alone when it hits the street in late March. There'll also be a standard lens kit SKU as well as a premium version, but Canon wouldn't commit to any solid pricing as yet. And really, pricing is the biggest challenge here for consumers; how much of a value proposition is the Mark III when it's almost twice the cost of its predecessor? Let us know what you think.
