Canon USA marketing new $6,800 camera for pros

Lake Success-based Canon USA says it has a new professional-grade camera, retailing for about $6,800 -- for the camera body, without lenses -- that improves on two of its previous single-lens-reflex models.

It is marketing the camera to a variety of professionals, from photo studios to crime-scene investigators, and expects it to be on the market by March.

The EOS-1D X Digital SLR takes 18-megapixel, full-frame images at a rate of 12 frames a second.  Canon USA is building a new headquarters in Melville.

Canon describes it as a "high-speed multimedia juggernaut replacing both the EOS-1Ds Mark III and EOS-1D Mark IV models in Canon’s lineup."

Trading on the New York Stock Exchange as CAJ, Canon Inc. American Depositary has a market capitalization of $54.1 billion based on its Tuesday opening share price. Its shares were down $0.10 Tuesday to $44.56 in morning trading.

The company had income of $3 billion on revenue of $47.3 billion in the past 12 months; shares during that time are down about 6 percent.

Canon, along with other Japanese companies, dealt with a series of natural disasters that disrupted trade. Canon is also stressed by slackened consumer demand for point-and-shoot cameras that are increasingly supplanted by camera-equipped mobile phones.