"Seconds are precious in wildlife photography” – Marina Cano on her Kalahari Desert wildlife shoot with the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III

AF points can be selected with the new AF point smart controller, built into the AF-ON button. The button makes selecting the correct AF point faster and simpler than ever before. Coupled to this is the new advanced iTR X AF tracking system, which locks focus on a subject and tracks it even if it goes behind another object such as a tree or bush.

"One time I was photographing a flock of birds, pressed the button and the camera tracked focus on one of them," Marina recalls. "It didn't matter what they did or how erratically they flew, I could still keep them in focus in the frame. It's amazing. Previously, it was much more difficult for a camera to do that."

The Canon EOS-1D X Mark III offers faster frame-rates (16fps with full AF/AE tracking, compared with 14fps on the Mark II, and 20fps with AF/AE tracking in Live View, compared to 16fps on the Mark II without AF), which greatly enhanced Marina's ability to shoot fast-moving subjects such as wild dogs on the hunt.

Detail in harsh highlights and deep low lights

Another time, she was photographing the dogs in the shade of a tree with the sun in the background – a situation that would be challenging to most cameras – but the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III's enhanced dynamic range enabled Marina to get well-exposed images.

"I could really see that the camera is dealing with these situations much better than the previous model," she says. "There's much more detail in shadows and highlights than before."

The low-light performance was also noticeable when Marina was shooting a mother cheetah with five cubs at sunset. "After the sun went down, the light was critical," she says. "Sometimes with other cameras you just cannot focus because there's no contrast. The Canon EOS-1D X Mark III focused really well in very low light, even when I was shooting at ISO52000.

"The camera gave a really good high ISO performance. Obviously, at very high ISO the images aren't the same quality as at ISO1000, but there's no colour noise and that makes a big difference."

For Marina, the most exciting moment of her trip to the Kalahari came at night, photographing a pangolin, also known as a 'scaly anteater'. This solitary, nocturnal animal is endangered because of widespread hunting for its meat, scales and other body parts.

For three consecutive nights, Marina got up at 2am to go out looking for pangolins with a tracker, then on the third night she finally saw and photographed one.

"They are really vulnerable animals and very difficult to find," she says. "The first two nights, we found one in some bushes and waited for hours, but it didn't come out into the open. But on the third night, one did. It was completely dark and although I don't usually like working with artificial light, with the pangolin we had to, so I used continuous light. It was really exciting to photograph this beautiful animal."