Canon EOS 1D Mark III

Canon-eos-5d If you've ever looked at the sideline of a major sporting event and seen a gaggle of huge white lenses, then you've witnessed Canon's dominance in the sports shooting world. Part of the reason for Canon's edge is its 1D series of SLR bodies which, in the form of the new EOS 1D Mark III, will no doubt continue the Japanese camera company's preeminence among the paparazzi, sports shooters, news photographers, and anyone else who has to shoot fast bursts of high-megapixel images. This new SLR feels like a machine gun when set to its Continuous Shooting mode, with which we were able to capture 10-megapixel JPEGs at an average of 9.9 frames per second. Add to that this camera's amazingly low noise, high-end build quality, and vast custom-function menu, and you've got one of the hottest cameras to hit the market this year.

Design

At first glance, the 1D Mark III doesn't look all that different from its predecessor, the 1D Mark II N. It still has a built-in vertical grip, with duplicate shutter and control buttons, so you don't lose functionality when changing grips. In fact, from the front, the most noticeable difference is that the Mark III has a steeper slope to the camera top on the nongrip side and a smoother slope from the prism hump on both sides. However, even that is difficult to see unless you're very familiar with both cameras.

Turn the Mark III around, though, and you'll see that things have changed quite a bit, largely due to the addition of a 3-inch LCD. This has forced Canon to move some buttons around to make up for the fact that the LCD now extends to the left edge of the camera. Menu and Info buttons move above the screen, while the playback button drops to below it. The Select button from the Mark II N is now obsolete, thanks to the Mark III's Set button, which is mounted in the middle of the large scroll wheel, much like the scroll wheels found on the EOS 30D and 5D. Another feature drawn from those siblings is the tiny joystick controller, which is used to navigate between various menus, among other things.

One of the only problems with Canon's 1D and 1Ds series bodies is that they are big and heavy. Some photographers simply don't want to deal with the weight--about 3 pounds without a lens