Canon has just released the latest in its professional digital SLR line-up, the 1D Mark III. This new camera did not follow its older brother, the Mark II, in using a 16.7 mega-pixel sensor. Canon engineers elected to use a 10.1 mega-pixel CMOS sensor on this new model (APS-H size with a 1.3 "lens factor"). While smaller than the older Mark II's sensor, the Mark III features a self-cleaning hardware and software technology that should make life easier for people who make their living taking pictures.

Here is what Canon has to say about this technology:

"To combat against stray dust that enters the camera and adheres to the image sensor during a lens change, the Digital Rebel XTi features an all-new, Canon-designed Self Cleaning Sensor Unit. The low pass filter cleans itself automatically with ultrasonic vibrations, removing dust from the sensor assembly." (from the Canon website)

Canon's software, "Digital Photo Professional" (version 3) also comes with a dust filter technology in it that most likely uses interpolation to remove dust spots. This technology seems to be popular with consumers. I am sure that Canon expects a lot of customer satisfaction in the professional world where shooters are changing lenses under less-than-ideal conditions.

The Mark III features 19 auto-focus points for better image clarity. There is also a three-inch LCD on the camera back to help navigate menu options and get a clearer preview of your images... AND, Canon has built in a LIVE preview feature, much like that used in Olympus' digital SLRs. Whether or not this new feature is important to professional photographers remains to be seen. I, personally, would never use it. They could save money by not including such a feature in the design and pass the savings to the buyer.

You can expect to see a lot of pro photographers giving this camera a serious look because the self-cleaning sensor feature will save a lot of image editing time and frustration. We'll see if the camera out-sells its 16.7 mega-pixel older sibling. So, now the question becomes this: Do you want more photo-sites (higher mega-pixel count) or self-cleaning?