Wednesday, October 23, 2019

BREAKING NEWS: Canon announces development of the EOS-1D X Mark III camera

At midnight tonight EST, Canon announced the development of their new flagship DSLR, the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III. When it ships, this will be the new top-of-the-line camera for Canon and the one that I will be using at the next Olympic Games in Tokyo.



Canon has not announced a lot of information about the new camera, other than the fact that they are working hard on it, and that it should be out well before the Olympic Games next summer.

Even with the limited amount of information released, I am VERY excited about the direction Canon is going with this new DSLR. Here are some key points:

* Canon says that the camera will have better focus points and an even better focus system, which is always a benefit to those of us shooting sports and high speed action.

* The new camera will capture up to 16 frames per second with AF tracking, instead of today's 12. Some of you may think that this is unnecessary, but trust me, this speed boost will increase the chances of us sports shooters capturing the peak of action.

* There is a new sensor in this camera, which usually means better image quality. More info to come on that in the near future...

* A new DIGIC processor which will give me better images at high ISO. This is always welcome!

* The buttons on the back of the camera are now backlit. I remember being in a Canon focus group many years ago and they asked if I wanted this feature. At the time, I told them that it was not needed. But...after spending the last 10 years shooting parties and receptions in dark venues, I welcome this addition.

* Finally, the 1D will have WiFi built in. The Canon 5D Mark IV has had this for a long time and it was long overdue.

* This new flagship DSLR will have two CFExpress card slots which is awesome! These are the newest memory cards which can move data much faster than the older CF, SD or CFast cards. This will be hugely helpful for anyone wanting to clear their camera's buffer quickly or under a tight deadline. I wrote a blog post back in July, pleading with Canon to move to these new cards and I am so happy they listened.


Hoping that this camera would include these new cards, I have been testing new CFExpress cards from Pro Grade Digital.

Since I shot a wedding last weekend using my Canon 1D X Mark II (today's earlier post), I had 54GB of Canon RAW images on a CFast card. I timed how long it took to download those images from the CFast card to my internal SSD on my 2018 model MacBook Pro. I then copied the same 54GB of images to the CFExpress card (using a prototype Pro Grade Digital CFExpress reader connected through Thunderbolt 3) and copied them to the same SSD to see how much faster this card is. Here are my results:

Data: Canon RAW and MRAW files
Size: 54GB
Files: 2571

Copied from a Pro Grade Digital CFast card: 2 min and 17 seconds
Copied from a Pro Grade Digital CFExpress card: 37.4 seconds

When I see this data, it just makes me think about how much more efficient I can be at the upcoming Olympics. As many of you know, I have a 15 minute deadline for Team USA, and every second counts!

As I said at the beginning of this blog post, Canon just made the technology announcement, which is different from a product introduction. Now we have to wait for more information, the price and the release date. But I do know this. I will have one of these in my hands to test, and give you the full results when I have them.

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