philber Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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I own a 40D and was debating whether to upgrade to 50D or 5D2. I am not really interested in "extreme" shots, such as very low light. My priority is not on the "exception" shot, but on the majority of "normal" shots, and IQ is much more important to me than other parametres, such as VF, AF, fps, etc...
With that in mind, my dealer lent me a 50D and a 5D for a couple of hours, and I duplicated the same "normal" shots with the same lenses on the 3 bodies, and also with a 24-105 zoom so that I could compensate for the crop factor, and also with my 50 f:1.4 on the crops compared with my 85 f1.8 mounted on the 5D.
This was a fairly tedious process, and after a couple of hours of changing lenses all the time, making notes, zooming with my feet, etc.. I was glad to call it a day and move on.
Results from my limited experiment are clear. 50D has better IQ than 40D. On a shot of a bush of flowers and leaves, 40D looks 2-dimensional compared to the 50D which looks more 3-D. Better micro-contrast, small shading transitions, better detail in almost washed out zones and over-dark zones.
Is the improvement enough to warrant my upgrading? Maybe. It is clearly visible once I knew where to look, but it is not overwhelming. Subjectively, it is the same order of magnitude as between a good lens and an "L" lens (both primes).
The question became moot when I compared the shots to 5D. 5D IMHO delivers significantly better IQ for "normal" shots than 50D. Sensor size seems to matter more than pixel count.
On 5D shots, not only was sharpenss up, but focus as well, colour shadings were nicer. Again subjectively, the improvement from 50D to 5D seems to be more than the improvement from 40D to 50D.
I blind tested the shots, printed from RAW with neutral seetings, to A4, with my dealer, who found exactly the same hierachy as I, so it wasn't pure luck.
So my upgrade will be either to 5D or 5D2, as and when it becomes avaialable.
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