We can’t say for sure if these photos snapped on safari in Kenya reveal a new Canon DSLR, but based on what we see, it could be the long-awaited Canon 5D Mark III.
Photographer Stephen Oach writes on Aperture Academy that he is currently on a shoot in Kenya where he secretly snapped a few photos of a Canon employee using what appears to be a new Canon camera. The camera has a large battery grip a lot like the Canon 5D Mark II and 7D, but certain details about the camera’s appearance seem to indicate that it is new model. From the photos, the purportedly new camera seems to have a larger LCD than the 5D Mark II. It’s also not a 7D because the camera doesn’t have a pop-up flash and the “Q” button is on the right side of the camera’s LCD instead of on the top left. Finally, Oachs spots something entirely new: a joystick of some kind on the camera’s battery grip.
It’s hard to say for sure what we’re seeing in Oachs’ photos, but it makes sense that we could see a Canon 5D Mark III in the near future. The 5D Mark II was first announced more than three years ago so it’s overdue for an update. Also, Canon has been slowly rolling out its new Digic 5 image processor over the last couple of months and we expect it to make the jump to Canon DSLRs sometime soon. [Aperture Academy via the Verge]