The Canon EOS 5D Mark III is a professional-grade 22.3
megapixel
In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device.
In most digital display devices, pixels are the ...
s full-frame
digital single-lens reflex
A digital single-lens reflex camera (digital SLR or DSLR) is a digital camera that combines the optics and the mechanisms of a single-lens reflex camera with a digital imaging sensor.
The reflex design scheme is the primary difference between a ...
(DSLR) camera made by
Canon
Canon or Canons may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base
* Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture
** Western ca ...
.
Succeeding the
EOS 5D Mark II, the Mark III was announced on 2 March 2012. This date coincided with the 25th anniversary of the announcement of the first camera in the
EOS line, the
EOS 650, and was also Canon's 75th anniversary.
The Mark III went on sale later in March with a retail price of $3,499 in the US, £2999 in the UK, and €3569 in the Eurozone.
On 25 August 2016, Canon announced the camera's successor, the
Canon EOS 5D Mark IV
The Canon EOS 5D Mark IV is a professional-grade 30.1-megapixel full-frame digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera made by Canon.
Succeeding the EOS 5D Mark III, it was announced on 25 August 2016. The Mark IV went on sale in September 2016 ...
.
Features
New features over the EOS 5D Mark II are:
* Resolution increased to 22.3 effective megapixels full-frame
CMOS
Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss", ) is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSF ...
sensor
A sensor is a device that produces an output signal for the purpose of sensing a physical phenomenon.
In the broadest definition, a sensor is a device, module, machine, or subsystem that detects events or changes in its environment and sends ...
(5D Mark II has 21.1 megapixels)
*
DIGIC 5+
Digital Imaging Integrated Circuit (often styled as "DiG!C") is Canon Inc.'s name for a family of signal processing and control units for digital cameras and camcorders. DIGIC units are used as image processors by Canon in its own digital imagin ...
image processor (as opposed to the
DIGIC 4)
* Maximum
ISO speed increased to ISO 25600 (50, 51200, 102400 as optional expanded settings) – Compared to ISO 6400 as optional maximum setting (50, 12800, and 25600 as optional expanded settings)
* New 61-point autofocus (AF) system with 41 cross-type AF points and five dual cross-type points, High-density Reticular AF, and EOS iTR (Intelligent Tracking and Recognition) – none AF points plus six Assist Points on the 5D Mark II. The Mark III's autofocus system was inherited from the then recently announced
EOS-1D X, and marks the first time since the
EOS-3 film SLR that Canon has put its top-of-the-line autofocus system in a non-1-series body.
[
* Faster ]continuous shooting
Burst mode, also called continuous shooting mode, sports mode, continuous mode, or burst shot, is a shooting mode in still cameras where several photos are captured in quick succession by either pressing the shutter button or holding it down. ...
at 6 fps (3.9 fps for the 5D Mark II)
* New metering zones with 63 zones – compared to TTL, full aperture, 35 zones
* Silent, low vibration TTL
TTL may refer to:
Photography
* Through-the-lens metering, a camera feature
* Zenit TTL, an SLR film camera named for its TTL metering capability
Technology
* Time to live, a computer data lifespan-limiting mechanism
* Transistor–transistor lo ...
shooting modes (single shot or 3 fps) – compared to live-view-only silent shooting modes.
* New 100% viewfinder
In photography, a viewfinder is what the photographer looks through to compose, and, in many cases, to focus the picture. Most viewfinders are separate, and suffer parallax, while the single-lens reflex camera lets the viewfinder use the main ...
coverage that offers 0.71× magnification – compared to 98% viewfinder coverage
* Larger 3.2″ (8.1 cm) LCD with 3:2 aspect ratio (3″/7.5 cm LCD screen with approx. 920,000 dots resolution, in 4:3 ratio on the 5D Mark II). In turn, this means that the native still images of the Mk III completely fill the screen, while the Mk II's native images are displayed with a black border on the bottom of the LCD. Also, while HD video remains letterboxed on the Mk III LCD, as on the Mk II, the 3:2 ratio allows more of the screen to be used for video display.[
* Headphone-out to monitor audio (the previous one having none)
* Dual card slots: one ]CompactFlash
CompactFlash (CF) is a flash memory mass storage device used mainly in portable electronic devices. The format was specified and the devices were first manufactured by SanDisk in 1994.
CompactFlash became one of the most successful of the e ...
(CF) with full UDMA support, and one SD (including SDHC and SDXC cards, but does not exploit the UHS-I bus) – the Mark II has only one CF slot.
* Eyecup Eg – as opposed to the Eyecup Eb
* Improved weather sealing (resistant to water and dust, although it is not waterproof)
As with the 5D Mark II, the shutter life is rated at 150,000 cycles.
Known defects
Canon issued a product advisory indicating that the camera's LCD panel, when illuminated in extremely dark environments, may impact the camera's light metering when shooting. Any camera bodies sold with the issue will be fixed by Canon free of charge, and any body shipped after the first week of May 2012 likely had the defect already rectified.
Firmware updates
Firmware 1.2.1 was released on 30 April 2013 to allow the camera to output uncompressed video
Uncompressed video is digital video that either has never been compressed or was generated by decompressing previously compressed digital video. It is commonly used by video cameras, video monitors, video recording devices (including general-purp ...
via HDMI
High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a proprietary audio/video interface for transmitting uncompressed video data and compressed or uncompressed digital audio data from an HDMI-compliant source device, such as a display controlle ...
and permit autofocus ability up to f/8.
Notable works shot on the camera
* ''Kung Fury
''Kung Fury'' is a 2015 English-language Swedish martial arts comedy featurette film written and directed by David Sandberg. It pays homage to 1980s martial arts and police action films. The film stars Sandberg in the title role, Jorma Taccone, ...
''
* ''Wallpaper for macOS El Capitan''
*''Hale County This Morning, This Evening
''Hale County This Morning, This Evening'' is a 2018 American documentary film about the lives of black people in Hale County, Alabama. It is directed by RaMell Ross and produced by RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes, Su Kim, and is Ross's first nonficti ...
''
Cubesat
In July 2020 an attempt was made to launch a cubesat
A CubeSat is a class of miniaturized satellite based around a form factor consisting of cubes. CubeSats have a mass of no more than per unit, and often use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components for their electronics and structure. CubeSats ...
named CE-SAT 1B equipped with a 5DIII sensor on an Electron rocket
Electron is a two-stage, partially recoverable orbital launch vehicle developed by Rocket Lab, an American aerospace company with a wholly owned New Zealand subsidiary. Electron was developed to service the commercial small satellite launch mar ...
.[ ] The rocket failed to reach orbit.
References
External links
EOS 5D Mark III
Canon U.S.A. , Consumer & Home Office
{{Full-frame DSLR cameras
5D Mark III
Cameras introduced in 2012
Articles containing video clips
Full-frame DSLR cameras