I have been shooting with a 1DMK II and a 40D. I am considering purchasing a 5D.

Much of my work is high ISO available light.

What can I expect in terms of image quality from the 5D when compared to the 1D MK II and the 40D?

It'll be great, I'd be more concerned with losing the 1.3/1.6 crop moving to FF.

5D is an excellent camera, the IQ of the 5D will definatly beat the 40D, not too sure about the 1d2, but then again, the 5D has been around forever and is still alot of peoples 'go to' camera.

It'll be great, I wouldn't be concerned with losing the 1.3/1.6 crop moving to FF.

Does the 5D do a significantly better job of controlling noise at ISO 1600 and 3200 than the 40D does?

mgkaplan wrote:
Does the 5D do a significantly better job of controlling noise at ISO 1600 and 3200 than the 40D does?



I have them all, and the 5D's files are a bit cleaner at high ISOs than the 40D, by nearly a stop. And the 1DMk3 is the best of them all (so far), almost a stop cleaner again than the 5D.

I shot ZZ Top a few months ago and for the first couple songs I didn't realize I was at 3200 though. But, no prob with the Mk3:

I can't speak for the 1D, but there is a difference in high ISO noise between the 40d and 5d. Again as others have mentioned, the 5d has I would say at least a one stop advantage on the 40d at high ISO. The other thing is the nature of the noise of the 40d which I can describe as sort of sandpaper like - smaller fine grain noise but lots more of it than the 5d. Sorry for my non technical terms here but that's as best as I can describe it. All around though I think the 40d is canon's best xxd series to date but for high ISO the 5d is better and I've heard the 1dIII is better yet.