Canon 5D MkIII Available for Pre-Order at Adorama!

The Canon Mk III, announced yesterday, is already available for pre-order for $3499 from Adorama.  Expected delivery is March 30th.  Replacing the full-frame 5D MkII, the Mk III responds to the Nikon D800 with many of the features that Canon hybrid still/video shooters have been clamoring for.

On the plus side, Canon seems to have:

• Dealt with their moire problem by eliminating line skipping with the powerful new Digic 5+ processor,

• Upped the ridiculous 12 minute continuous video recording time limit to 29 minutes,

• Included a headphone jack and full manual audio gain control - and the sample videos from Canon look pretty good (here, here and here)...

But on the minus side:

• It still has a fixed LCD, so you'll need to buy a loupe to shoot outdoors

• It has no EVF (because of the antiquated DSLR mirror box), so you'll need a monitor for high/low/around the corner shooting angles

• And it is not clear to me that it has the ability to autofocus in video mode - although Canon's forthcoming silent autofocus lenses indicate that it will.

I plan to rent this camera for a side-by-side with the $900 Panasonic GH2 as soon as it becomes available.  Stay tuned - I'll let you know how it goes!

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