Review of the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III

How many people are going to spend £5,500 on a camera? Even more importantly, how many WDC readers, mainly enthusiast photographers rather than pros, will fork out that amount of money and justify it to their partners? Probably not too many, but Canon’s flagship DSLR is worth looking at for a number of reasons.
First, people are always interested in the top end, desirable-but-unaffordable gear. The car enthusiast who drives a Skoda is still going to be interested in the Ferrari review and the motorbike fan with a little 125cc Yamaha will harbour fantasies of one day owning a Ducatti. For the enthusiast or hobbyist, the dreams of new kit, or of owning the best kit, whiles away the hours when we’re not pursuing our hobby. Hours stuck in traffic, idly thinking, ‘What camera would I buy if I won the lottery?’ Then making a mental list of the Aladdin’s Cave of wonderful equipment we could accrue if our numbers came up. Or is it just us?
Second, what comes from the top eventually filters to the bottom. The top-end cameras today are the entry-level and consumer models of tomorrow. The same amount of money ten years ago would have got you a 2MP DSLR, while the 11MP Mk I of five years ago has now been surpassed by the 12MP models launched recently for about £5,000 less. Similarly, technology other than the pixels trickle down to the consumer ‒ better processing, faster AF and higher ISOs are just some of the improvements to mid-range and entry-level cameras that originally came from the top end.
Finally. It’s the reason that a camera such as this garners such crowds at trade shows such as Focus On Imaging ‒ it’s because everyone wanted to play with one ‒ as I’m sure you would like to.

Features
This is a big camera with a big feature set. The magnesium alloy body alone weighs 1,210g without a lens and battery. Within that body lies a pair of DIGIC III processors, required to transform the large files that are generated by the hefty 36x24mm full-frame sensor.
That sensor is a newly designed CMOS type with 21.1 million effective pixels with an additional 800,000 pixels making up the black masking border used for calibration. Each photosite of the CMOS sensor features its own noise-reduction circuitry, along with individual amplifiers to speed up the transfer process of the signal from the sensor to the processors. Canon claims that this system results in faster image transfers, lower noise and reduced power consumption.
But what exactly does a 21MP sensor offer that a lower-resolution one doesn’t? And who needs it? The obvious answer to the former question is larger images, but apart from the fact that few of us print at 18x13 inches at 300dpi, or larger at a lower print resolution, what does this matter? Well, if you print smaller then your images will be sharper. As to the latter, the camera is aimed mainly at studio photographers, who do need larger images ‒ for ad campaigns, double page magazine spreads (with cropping) and large fine art prints. In short, more pixels have significant commercial advantages. For the studio-based pro too, the chance to achieve high resolution images from a DSLR body as opposed to images from often-unwieldy medium format cameras coupled with digital backs can free up their camera from tripods and increase shooting speed, to name just a couple of plus points.