Arhi Esansaari
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Upload & Sell: Off
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 p.1 #1 · Just got 5D - REVIEW with pics | |
Ok, here we go. All below pictures are taken with Canon 35mm 1.4 L and 70-200mm IS L lenses. this is not a scientific study, but to let you know how this camera (and these lenses) perform in a daily use. Pictures shown are taken with neutral settings (no picturestyle) and only little PS is performed. I will not go through every detailed function of the camera, as they can be read from e.g. dpreview.
If you want to see pictures of the camera itself, see my previous topic here:
http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/286357
CANON 5D USER REVIEW
Today, I got a call from my local store, telling they had my 5D waiting for me. Needless to say, my second lunch break from my job started immediately. This was my first time to get a new model so fast after it was announced.
When I inserted my 2Gb CF card into the camera and selected option for RAW+L fine, (to make sure image conversion for this review) my camera showed me total of 96 images with ISO 100, and total of 77 images with ISO 3200. Not much for a card this size. Good thing CF manufacturers bring all the time bigger cards available, as with 5D, I would not be very happy to use smaller cards.
If the image quality is lowered, it is possible to shoot contiunously until your CF card is full. This is quite nice!! I'm sorry not to have tried this myself, but the manual shows the following table. By it, if you set Fine Medium quality, you should be able to shoot contiunously 120 frames. Too bad the frame rate is only 3 frames/sec. Maybe there could be a firmware hack for this in near future 
Fine L - 60 pics
Low L - 150 pics
Fine M - 120 pics
Low M - 319 pics (possible until CF card is full)
Fine S - 200 pics
Low S - 446 pics (possible until CF card is full)
RAW - 17 pics
RAW + JPG - 12 pics
Btw. RAW files takes (by manual) 12.9Mb each. My CR2 files ranged from 11.1Mb to 16.5Mb (ISO 200) !! Happy computer hardware upgrading.
Camera and it's buttons feel very nice. It's plain fun to use the camera. Altough after getting used to EOS 1 serie, this camera might feel a bit small to your hand. Never the less, if the size is just what appeals to you, this is the right camera. Program dial has a new mode "C" custom, where you can store different custom settings for different shooting situation. The most important custom setting here would be Mirror lock enable. After setting it here, just dial C and you'll have mirror lock on. Dial Av for e.g. and the camera returns to it's normal state. Nice! Too bad there's just one custom mode.
Viewfinder is nice and large. No complaining here. After getting used to 1.3X crop factor, this camera feels right as it should. Also FF makes lenses like 70-200mm act as they was intented. I myself found this zoom too long with 1.6X crop - I hated it. But now it fits on like a glove. You can choose from custom functions if you want to use default small AF areas or extented AF areas. But one will get used to small areas quite fast. IMO it's just better if the AF area is small, so it really focuses where it should.
Shutter release has a little high pitch on it, and you can feel when the mirror comes back down. Little bit more than with 1D I think, but it's not disturbing. More like a feel of real camera.
PictureStyle has 3 custom settings. Altough one can modify camera's 6 default settings to his/her liking, leaving custom settings unusable. Using PictureStyle is good if you're planning to buy a Pixma or Selphy direct printer, and shoot people on the street and earn some money from it. Or you could have your friend fitted in a clown suit and take photos & sell them for people in the park. Otherwice, I would suggest leaving these settings alone and do the job with RAW converter and Photoshop. You will have more possibilities to make different images afterwards. For e.g. if you shoot monochrome from camera, you will never have colours. But you can always convert a color picture to b&w with computer.
Image quality is pretty awesome with this camera. Let me introduce you some of my quick shot pictures (JPEG, Fine large):
35L f/8.0 ISO 200
Center 100%:
Top 100%:
Left bottom 100%:
70-200 IS @ 200mm f/4.0 ISO 100
35L f/1.4 ISO 100
35L f/8.0 ISO 200
Other than this, the camera acts quite the same way as 10D or 20D. If you have found these cameras good for your line of work, you will not be dissapointed to 5D. If you prefer using EOS 1 serie style body (and plan to buy battery grip immediately with 5D) you might want to thing twice. Save some money, rob a bank or so, and get new 1D serie camera  Canon could have done many things better, like copy the three button command style from EOS 1 and leave program dial from this camera, Have more custom programs, better histogram review options, higher frame rate, maybe also ISO 6400 enabled .. and maybe just 0.5" bigger body for those how have a big hand. But as someone said before, there's not a perfect camera. True. And the 5D does perform quite well for what it was intented to. It takes some kick ass 4368 x 2912 pixel photos!
Verdict: 4.5 / 5 stars for this camera. Highly recommended.
Edited by Arhi Esansaari on Sep 27, 2005 at 07:18 PM GMT (Reason: one crop photo more)
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I guess it's just a personal thing.