Firmware Update for the Canon 5D Mark-III Annouced

Canon have announced a new firmware update from the Canon 5D mark-III. Nothing unusual in this you may think but this update won’t actually be available till April 2013. That’s around 6 months, so what’s going on?

 Well, the firmware update is primarily in response from feedback from the movie fraternity to provide substantial improvements in the video facilities such as providing HDMI output. Most of this may be of little consequence if you’re primarily a stills photographers, however, as some recent online rumours have suggested, the autofocusing abilities will also be greatly enhanced to allow autofocusing with lenses apertures down to f/8. Currently autofocus can only be achieved with apertures down to f/5.6, so this means that 1.4 and 2x extenders can be used with many more lenses and should significantly improve the the 5D mIII ability in the sports and and wildlife genres. This will truly mark the 5D mIII as an all allrounder, and put it up there with capabilities of the previous 1D series cameras.

Why the long wait you may ask, six months is some way off? Well I suspect many of these changes are still under development or in the testing phase,  although there are rumours to suggest the firmware release will coincide with another major camera release. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Details from the Canon website can be found here.