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Canon EOS-1D X Mark III – First Look

February 1^st, 202012

by Jeff LochFebruary 1^st, 2020

BSC Expo 2020 in London, and our team had a chance to catch up with Barry from Canon to talk about the brand’s newest flagship camera: the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III. Let’s take a closer look at it!

Canon EOS-1D X Mark III – Features

The Canon EOS-1D X Mark III was announced at the beginning of January 2020 during CES 2020. If you’re new to Canon’s latest flagship DSLR camera, here is a quick sum-up of all its features:

The magnesium alloy body houses a Full-Frame 20.1MP CMOS sensor.
With the new DIGIX X processor, the camera is capable of capturing photos at 16 frames per second and 20 frames per second in LiveView mode.
You can shoot videos in 5.5K (5,472 x 2,286) up to 60fps in RAW 12-bit with no crop.
4K DCI up to 60fps in 4:2:2 10-bit in Canon Log using an H.265 / HEVC codec. There is a slight crop in 4K DCI mode, around 256 pixels on each side.
For slow-motion and B-roll lovers, you can record at up to 120 frames per second in FullHD 1080P.
The 1D X Mark III uses CFExpress cards to store your media, and they are two slots for redundancy purposes. Also, you can set the camera to use the first memory slot to record your RAW footage and the second memory slot to store Proxy media.
The Canon EOS-1D X Mark III’s sensor is not stabilized. There is a Movie Digital IS to compensate a bit by cropping in the image.
New AF sensor that covers 90% of the image sensor. Dual Pixel CMOS AF technology is still there, but it doesn’t work in 4K 50P/60P uncropped modes and 5.5K RAW 60P video shooting modes.
Peaking and focus guides are available in video modes.
There is a headphone jack, 3.5mm mini-jack input, and micro HDMI port. You can record externally through the micro HDMI port of the camera in 4K 4:2:2 10bit but you can’t record RAW externally.

In the video above, our own Nino Leitner had a chance to take a first look at the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III. We learned that you can store around 12 minutes of RAW footage onto a 128Gb CFExpress card. Indeed, it means that if you intend to shoot in RAW format, you’ll need a lot of these very expensive memory cards.

Also, the internal RAW recording is not exactly the same as the one in the Canon C200 or C500 Mark II. This Canon RAW format is larger, and it is not Cinema RAW Light either. Otherwise, the 1D X Mark III should be the perfect B-Cam for C500 Mark II shooters.