Canon just announced the EOS-1D X Mark III Camera - Did they read my blog?

You may remember back in July of last year, I wrote a blog post called "What I want for my next cameras - Canon are you listening?"  It appears that Canon was listening, at least as it pertains to the flagship model. We will have to wait and see what Canon does for the 5D Mark IV replacement.

We saw a technology announcement from Canon back in October, but now Canon has officially announced the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III Camera and seems to have hit almost everything on my wishlist!

The first and most important request was for Canon to step away from their previously conservative approach to memory card slots and go all in with CFExpress. I was frustrated with Canon putting in one fast slot and one slower slot. With the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III, I can burst out more than 1000 frames without any buffer lag, but more importantly I can download images much faster than in the past. This time around Canon took the plunge and did it right, and I can't wait to be using these new super fast cards. I hope to have one of the pre-release cameras in my hands any week now.

I wanted more focus points and an even better focus system and in the technology announcement, Canon alluded to something new. Now we know that the 1D X Mark III has a iTR AF X 191-Point AF system (iTR stands for Intelligent Tracking and Recognition). It is not completely edge-to-edge for the focus points, but from everything I have been told, this is a much improved system with face detection and more.

I wanted cleaner images at high ISOs, and from what I have been told, this camera should deliver on this. The standard ISO range is 100-102,400 but this is also expandable to 50-819,00 which  This means that the camera could theoretically shoot in almost pitch black and grab images. There is a new low-pass filter and a new DIGIC X image processor which should deliver extremely sharp images. I will test this and let you know my own opinion soon.

I did ask for lighter weight, and this camera is slightly lighter, but not dramatically so. Oh well, we can't have it all! This is a big camera with a lot of technology in it. The good news is that I should be able to shoot almost 3000 images on one fully charged battery. This is a huge advantage over cameras like the Sony A9 which can do just a fraction of this.

I really wanted both WiFi and Bluetooth to be integrated directly in the 1D X Mark III and Canon did that. Not only did they integrate both wireless technologies, but they increased the speed of the built-in Ethernet port and offer an external WiFi transmitter for increased speed and range.

Canon increased the burst rate to 16 frames per second, which will be really handy when capturing images at the upcoming Summer Olympics in Tokyo. When shooting in Live View, the camera can achieve 20 frames per second, and do so completely silently, although I don't expect to use this as often. Well...the silent mode maybe when shooting events on a tripod (like bar mitzvahs and weddings), but it is not likely that I will be looking at the LCD on the back of the camera when shooting sports and wildlife.

For those people interested in video, Canon has increased the specs for video capture, but since I am a still shooter, I will leave that review up to the experts.

All of this goodness comes at a price, with the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III costing us $6499. They are currently available for preorder at B&H Photo.

Overall, I really excited to get my hands on this new flagship camera from Canon, and I promise to give you my real-world review once I do. I expect this to be very soon.

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