Canon Rumors is reporting that the long awaited Canon 5d Mark III may be announced as early as next week.

Specs

  • 22mp
  • 61pt AF
  • 100% VF
  • 3.2″ LCD
  • Dual CF/SD Card Slots
  • Price: Around $3500 USD

No reports yet on video capability, but I’m very happy to see the upgraded Auto focus system. Once you get used to the 7d’s focus speeds, the 5d mark II’s auto focus system starts to feel very underwhelming. It should also be a good sign that Canon hasn’t gone crazy with the megapixel count. Sure the 36 megapixels available in the up and coming Nikon D800 will be useful to some, but I think many of us would happily give up on the megapixel race for better low light performance.

$3500 seems like it would be a hard thing to justify for many ultra low budget projects, unless there is a major jump in video functionality. Will Canon bless the 5d Mark III with some of the features of the EOS C300? Or will they continue to cripple DSLR video in order to support their camcorder line up.

What I would Like to see on the 5d Mark III:

  • 4:2:2 MPEG-2 compression(like the XF105) or ALL-I compression (like the 1DX)
  • 1080 60p mode
  • clean hdmi out that doesn’t disable the camera’s screen
  • Proper headphone jack
  • Longer recording times
  • Auto Focus in video mode
  • Usable footage at 12800 iso

I don’t think we’ll see all of these things, but I hope that at least some of them make it into the Mark III. I’d also like to see some of the Magic Lantern features incorporated into the new model like histogram and focus peaking in video mode.

Regardless of the features, you can, at the very least, look forward to a price drop for used 5d Mark II bodies as everyone rushes to sell. Keep your eye out on ebay, I’m guess we’ll see the price of a drop under $1,500 in the next couple of weeks.


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Canon 5d Mark II, Photography, Updates, Used Gear watch