Rapid Reflex CANON EOS-1D X MARK III

Driving a supercar – the definition motoring journalists give to the highest performance Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Aston Martins and the like – is not just about speed. It’s about the confidence that having so much performance instils. On the road it’s about knowing that you can handle any situation that calls for on-tap power. On the track – driver skills permitting – it’s about the instant response to the commands of go and stop. So it is with the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III.

Not many photographers need 16fps continuous shooting on a regular basis, or something that makes one of Patton’s military tanks look flimsy. Nor, in many cases, do you need autofocusing that’s more intelligent than you are. But you might. And that’s the thing with the EOS-1D X Mark III. It’s built for speed, but it is just so extraordinarily capable overall that its appeal extends well beyond the primary audience of sports and press photographers. It will do anything you want, whenever you want. It is, quite simply, right now the ultimate interchangeable lens camera; reflex or mirrorless. And, interestingly, it’s both reflex and mirrorless. Not a true hybrid design, of course, but Canon has gone a long way to making its performance in live view – i.e. with the reflex mirror locked up – on a par with anything currently being offered in the mirrorless world. So, for example, the continuous shooting speed lifts to 20fps and the capabilities of Canon’s much-lauded Dual Pixel CMOS AF extended to pretty-well match everything that’s available when shooting with the optical viewfinder, including face/eye detection and adjustable tracking. On the video side, there’s some Cinema EOS camera DNA in there, including RAW shooting at 5.5K, 10-bit Canon Log (both internally) and uncropped 4K DCI at 50fps with ALL-I compression (go to the 'Making Movies' panel for the rest of the 1D X III’s video story).

It is a quite remarkable combination of functionality and performance; so much so that it does transcend the traditional notion that Canon’s pro-level DSLRs are niche products. They have been, but not this one – it’s still a speed machine, but it’s a whole lot more too.

Speed Thrills

A number of elements combine to make the EOS-1D X Mark III the fastest DSLR ever (actually the fastest SLR ever, as nothing in the 35mm era came close). Firstly, there’s the new DiG!C X processor which, incidentally, does virtually everything on its own and is over three times faster than the Mark II’s pair of DiG!C 6+ engines. It’s a massive 380 times faster when it comes to continuous processing speeds. Separate ‘blocks’ handle various duties such as noise reduction processing, sharpness processing and autofocusing in live view. So, at 20fps, continuous AF/AE adjustment is still maintained.

So, Sony, we’ll see your A9 II, and raise you… The viewfinder AF system gets its own DiG!C 8 generation processor, so full AF/AE adjustment