4. Dual DIGIC III Processors

Thanks to its dual DIGIC III processors, the 1Ds Mark III can shoot up to 15 raw images at 5 fps.

Canon’s DIGIC image processors handle a range of functions including converting pixels to recordable impulses and shoving them out the memory cards at incredible rates. With a 21.1 megapixel sensor and up to 5 continuous frame per second shooting rates, a single DIGIC processor wasn’t enough. The 1Ds Mark III uses two.

Here’s a simple diagram showing how an image gets from the sensor to memory.

As you can see in the diagram, the EOS-1Ds Mark III uses 14-bit Analog-to-Digital conversion technology. This lets the camera recognize 16,384 colors per channel, four times the number of colors recognized by the EOS-1Ds Mark II Digital SLR camera’s 12-bit conversion system. So, the 1Ds Mark III can produce images with finer and more accurate gradations of tones and colors. The new camera is compatible with the Ultra Direct Memory Access (UDMA) compact flash memory card specification, which supports data transfer to the card at double the data transfer speed of a conventional memory card.