Canon 5D Mk III is shipping in UK (pictures)

[Tariq Peter]

Hi Andy,

Yes Mr Bloom is the man so I guess I may just wait that little longer for his review to. I have spoken to Ian Cruz and he swears by the 24-70 over the 24-105. He has them both and said the weight for the 24-70 helps the glidecam and after a little practice you no longer need IS. He purchased the 24-70 after owning the 24-105 because he was always wanting that extra fstop.

That has really made me think again as he knows his stuff. If I see a C100 I am going to crazy, but looking at how long it's taking for the C300 to roll out I doubt it will be shipping anytime soon.

[Andy Wilkinson]

The general impressions that I'm noticing (from the various 1080p web videos and downloadable clips that are starting to appear) is that the 5DMkIII looks pretty soft, probably somewhere near 700 lines of resolution has been mentioned by some (but I don't know how accurate that claim is). My gut feel is that this figure seems to be "in the ball park" - until we know for sure by those that are good at testing these kind of things. Disappointing if true.

That being said, the low light performance seems truly stunning in some of the web videos I've seen. Amazing. And of course its a great stills camera (which is its primarly role after all).

Hmmn.... roll on NAB.

[Nigel Barker]

On the 5D3 given a choice between resolution & low light performance then I would go for high ISO every time. The resolution is good enough for us. We use all 'L' lenses & the images are pretty sharp. I stopped using old manual lenses because the Canon lenses are easier to use but also because the 'L' lenses are sharper. There are so many other new features that anyone who is an experienced 5D2 user will appreciate that this a really worthwhile upgrade.

30 minute recording time is ample for just about any gig we do.
3/4 letter user configurable filename prefix so we can tell which camera the clip is from & don't end up with duplicate filenames.
Improved Live View LCD screen which is much easier to focus with even without using my customary loupe (Zacuto will have a re-designed attachment plate real soon now).
The A+ auto-everything still photo mode is a bit of a WTF? for a professional camera but makes it really easy to flip between shooting video & shooting stills which are pretty damn good. We have never been able to carry off shooting video & stills at the same gig & this just might make it achievable. AF in stills mode is amazingly fast & accurate.
Moire & aliasing are absent.
Two card slots is good although personalIy I would have preferred two CF slots like the 1DX.
Low light performance is fantastic. Where we wouldn't normally shoot over ISO3200 with the 5D2 at the weekend at the two big weddings we filmed we were using ISO6400 & even ISO12800 & the image is clean & noise free. This will make such a difference to our work as instead of having to use F/1.2 or F/1.4 primes in dark receptions & churches we can use an F/2.8 zoom or even the lovely 24-105mm F/4L. It makes keeping stuff in focus easier too.
I couldn't care less about clean HDMI out as I prefer to use a DSLR with as little extra baggage as possible. I don't have a shoulder rig & find a loupe is all that I really want for focusing & extra stability.
We haven't really compared the differences between the high bit rate All I-frame & lower bit rate IPB mode but we used the latter all the time at the weekend & a welcome spin-off was that at about 30Mbps versus the 40+Mbps of the 5D2 that the recording time on the cards is improved by a big chunk.
We haven't even shot anything at 720p yet but with the lack of moire & aliasing & improved CODEC I am expecting it to be far superior to any of the older Canon DSLRs.

There are changes from the 5D2 that as a long time user irritate me. Moving recording start/stop from the Set button in the middle of the rear wheel up to a dedicated video button like the 7D is particularly annoying & several times I caught myself hitting Set to start recording. Many functions can be custom configured on various buttons but sadly start/stop on Set is not one of them.

Most of the comments around at the moment regarding the new 5D3 are ill-informed as there are so few of us who have actually had hands-on experience. Resolution could be higher but really is perfectly good enough. Our brides don't want every zit & wrinkle exposed anyway. The colour, look & Canon full frame aesthetic are still all there & it's easer to handle plus stripy shirts & brickwork are no longer terror objects they once were. Those who expected an Epic or a C300 at this price point are bound to be disappointed but that doesn't stop them mouthing off in forums. It's expensive compared to a GH2 but so much better in so many ways (I speak from experience). It's not expensive as a professional tool & we will quickly & easily recoup the purchase price. It's a lot cheaper than buying a new car.

[Andy Wilkinson]

Great info. Thanks Nigel.

[Tony Davies-Patrick]

Originally Posted by Nigel Barker

...Many functions can be custom configured on various buttons but sadly start/stop on Set is not one of them...

That is a big disappointment for me, because the stop/start button is now too far away from my thumb when the camera is inside my Scuba housing. Hopefully I can rig up an underwater remote cord that will perfom the same function.

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Tony Davies-Patrick

That is a big disappointment for me, because the stop/start button is now too far away from my thumb when the camera is inside my Scuba housing. Hopefully I can rig up an underwater remote cord that will perfom the same function.

I am not sure if this will help your situation but you can now set up the camera so that you can use any Canon remote to start/stop video. It was an old gripe with the 5D2 that you could use a cheap wireless remote to take stills but not to start/stop video recording. This is of great importance if you have a locked off unattended camera. You could with the 5D2 use the £700+ Canon WFT-E4A Wireless Transmitter & operate the camera from an iPhone but now a £10 device that can restart video recording from across the room is probably all that many of us need although with 30 minute record time there is less need to restart than with a 12 minute limit.

[Tariq Peter]

Hi Nigel.

Would you say the SanDisk Secure Digital High Capacity Card Extreme Video HD 16GB are good enough to use with the 5DMKIII For video? I have a ton of these and hope they won't fail me.

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Tariq Peter

Hi Nigel.

Would you say the SanDisk Secure Digital High Capacity Card Extreme Video HD 16GB are good enough to use with the 5DMKIII For video? I have a ton of these and hope they won't fail me.

As far as I know they should be fine. There is no list of blessed cards like there is for the Canon XF cameras so any that are a decent named brand & meet the specs should be fine. The 5D2 certainly has never been picky about what cards it works with. If I start using the all i-frame high bit rate mode I may even be converted to using SD cards as I see that the Transcend 64GB Class 10 SDXC cards are only £64 while the equivalent CF cards are nearly double the price.

[Tony Davies-Patrick]

Originally Posted by Nigel Barker

I am not sure if this will help your situation but you can now set up the camera so that you can use any Canon remote to start/stop video. It was an old gripe with the 5D2 that you could use a cheap wireless remote to take stills but not to start/stop video recording. This is of great importance if you have a locked off unattended camera. You could with the 5D2 use the £700+ Canon WFT-E4A Wireless Transmitter & operate the camera from an iPhone but now a £10 device that can restart video recording from across the room is probably all that many of us need although with 30 minute record time there is less need to restart than with a 12 minute limit.

I've been using the RM-40 to remotely start & stop video recording on the Mk2 for the past few years and it works fine. It also works on the Nikon and Pentax cameras. The RM-40 is however, difficult to use inside of a housing with the Mk2.
I use three different remote controls for the Mk2 in varied situations to fire off stills:
1) Shoot delay-Timer Remote
2) JYC Remote
3) Phottix Hector Live-View Remote Phottix Hector Live-view remote.

It is possible any of these could be set up inside the Scubacam to control underwater video start/stop function. If that doesn't work, then the only other option would be to buy a completely new UW housing for the Canon Mark III...an extremely expensive road to take!

[Tariq Peter]

Just picked up my 5DMKIII and 24-70! Woo Woo! So excited!

[Justin Molush]

I see it was mentioned earlier in this thread that you wanted to use it in dimly lit situations where the DJ will use strobes...

Strobes are TERRIBLE with DSLRs... I shot some band stuff at night clubs and asked them to turn the strobes off... They didn't. And half of the DSLR footage was ruined. Thankfully the HM700s were doing just fine.

[Tariq Peter]

If worst comes to worst I will use my XHA1.

[Tariq Peter]

Hi All.

Anybody had any luck trying to get the focus check button working in the top right instead of the left? Is it possible? I am so used to using my thumb to check focus and now it just feels wrong.

[Andy Wilkinson]

From what I have read you can reassign the SET button for Focus Assist so that you can use your thumb for that (much used!) requirement with video. This should be a lot better than the 5DMkIII default button to the left of the LCD which requires a second hand to activate. Whoever thought that was a good idea to position this button there should be shot!

[Tariq Peter]

It's amazing how that was cleared by canon.