I just used a 50D at my Best Buy. So these impressions are from someone who owned a 40D and currently owns a 5D.
First, going back to the 50D is a little sad because the viewfinder is smaller. Getting OVER that for a second, wow is the 50D nice. It focuses SO fast with the 28-135mm lens they had attached to it, and the new LCD is positively drool-worthy. Can't wait to get my 5D II for some of that high-res action! There's no question my 5D feels sooo sloooow by comparison, so hopefully the 5D II will be a little speedier! I didn't actually get any pictures to bring home or anything, but I think those of you with 30Ds or lower will be quite happy with upgrading. 40D owners? Not so much. Honestly, unless you really want the high-res LCD, there's very little reason to spend so much when 40Ds go for so cheap these days that it's not worth selling them anymore.
But for the noobs wanting a bigger crop body, the 50D sure is nice.
I was very tempted by the 50d but I just could not pass up the savings on a 40d. I paid $909 US for a brand new 40d. Thats only $100 more than I paid for an XTI when it came out!
I picked up a 50D body only from Stewart's in Anchorage. For background I am a sports and equestrian event shooter that currently owns a 1D Mk III, 1Ds Mk II, 1D classic, and 20D. These days the 20D and 1D classic mostly serve as remote bodies and I have been looking to upgrade the 20D to improve the image quality of my remote shots. If I can use the 50D as an in hand body when I want more focal length, so much the better.
For night DII soccer matches I normally double fist with the 1D Mk III on a 300 2.8 at 2.8 at ISO 6400 and the 1Ds Mk II with a 135 2 @ 2 at ISO 3200 (H). For this game I left the 1Ds Mk II in the bag and tried to swap the lenses back and forth between the 50D and MK III giving each equal time as I moved around.
My overall impression was that the AF is snappy. With the 1Ds Mk II and the 135 2 I often miss shots due to lack of focus lock with this particular fields lighting. The 50D was much better in this regard - it might have even been snappier than the Mk III. Handling of the camera was nice, but I like the 1 series bodies more. I do not machine gun with the Mk III that often, but there is no substitute for 10 FPS when I do. 6.3 is noticeably faster than the 4 FPS of the 1Ds Mk II. The shutter is a lot quieter than I remember the 20D's being and seems to be a more subdued tone than the MK III's, but I am not sure just how different actual dbs differences would be.
Images from both bodies were shot with autowhite balance as jpg's with the standard picture style and all other bells and whistles off. I treated the image sets in post as I normally would - using auto batch routines to perform some noise reduction (in this case NN on layers with the luminance layer at 66% and color at 100%), a contrast boost and slight saturation increase, and then some sharpening. I then quickly ran through the image set to do some cropping and have posted the image set here:
[image upload was begun at 9 pm Pacific and will likely not be complete until midnight PDT]
The images are sorted by time of shooting, so the bodies and lenses are intermixed.
With my current work flow I do not see shooting the 50D at ISO 6400, but the ISO 3200 shots were acceptable. The keeper rate was not obviously skewed toward either body, so that is actually pretty impressive or I was just less picky running through the galleries after this game. Before anyone pixel peeps - images from these games get used almost exclusively at 640 x 400 on the University's web site or for printing 4x6's so I did not go through and check for perfect focus.
I am very happy with my current in hand 1D Mk III / 1Ds Mk II combination but the 50D seemed pretty competent and I expect that I will lose some sales to parents that jump on this body. I will need to do some real hand processed post in the coming weeks to see how the 50D files ultimately behave to determine how often the 50D ends up in hand as a third body/lens combination versus being used only in remote settings where I am looking forward to the Live View and extra FPS's versus the 20D in addition to the extra megapixels.
We have a 1D that provides more than satisfactory image quality and resolution for the majority of our applications up to ISO 800.
So I have been very curious about the image quality that the SRAW2 setting will provide from the 50D. If pixel binning would give the image quality / resolution I would expect from a large pixel size 4mp camera but with even better high ISO performance, then a 50D will likely be our next camera. If not, I think we will start looking for a good used 5D or maybe 1DmkIII to replace our current low light / macro camera, a 400D. The current 1D stays for sport shooting under almost any scenario.
If anyone can share or point to samples for SRAW2 I would very much appreciate it.
I would also be curious to hear opinions about the performance of SRAW2 versus downsampling. I am hopeful that there is some kind of magic in the pixel binning that is superior to what we can do in post processing.
MichAg92 wrote:
If anyone can share or point to samples for SRAW2 I would very much appreciate it.
Thanks,
Byron
The last 3 shots here are ISO 3200 in raw, sraw1, sraw2. Shot in raw and converted in ACR, no other processing. Feel free to download, downsample and compare at will.
Thanks very much for posting the samples. They are a big help.
I haven't yet taken time to download and resample myself, but it is interesting to note how similar they look viewed in the large format as resized by pbase.
Here we go with 5D with 50D comparison. Lightbox, 1 flash light source, ACR by Lightroom 2.1 conversion. WB by gray card in frame. Light - by Seconic 758DR flash meter.
troutstreaming wrote:
I picked up a 50D body only from Stewart's in Anchorage. For background I am a sports and equestrian event shooter that currently owns a 1D Mk III, 1Ds Mk II, 1D classic, and 20D. These days the 20D and 1D classic mostly serve as remote bodies and I have been looking to upgrade the 20D to improve the image quality of my remote shots. If I can use the 50D as an in hand body when I want more focal length, so much the better.
For night DII soccer matches I normally double fist with the 1D Mk III on a 300 2.8 at 2.8 at ISO 6400 and the 1Ds Mk II with a 135 2 @ 2 at ISO 3200 (H). For this game I left the 1Ds Mk II in the bag and tried to swap the lenses back and forth between the 50D and MK III giving each equal time as I moved around.
My overall impression was that the AF is snappy. With the 1Ds Mk II and the 135 2 I often miss shots due to lack of focus lock with this particular fields lighting. The 50D was much better in this regard - it might have even been snappier than the Mk III. Handling of the camera was nice, but I like the 1 series bodies more. I do not machine gun with the Mk III that often, but there is no substitute for 10 FPS when I do. 6.3 is noticeably faster than the 4 FPS of the 1Ds Mk II. The shutter is a lot quieter than I remember the 20D's being and seems to be a more subdued tone than the MK III's, but I am not sure just how different actual dbs differences would be.
Images from both bodies were shot with autowhite balance as jpg's with the standard picture style and all other bells and whistles off. I treated the image sets in post as I normally would - using auto batch routines to perform some noise reduction (in this case NN on layers with the luminance layer at 66% and color at 100%), a contrast boost and slight saturation increase, and then some sharpening. I then quickly ran through the image set to do some cropping and have posted the image set here:
[image upload was begun at 9 pm Pacific and will likely not be complete until midnight PDT]
The images are sorted by time of shooting, so the bodies and lenses are intermixed.
With my current work flow I do not see shooting the 50D at ISO 6400, but the ISO 3200 shots were acceptable. The keeper rate was not obviously skewed toward either body, so that is actually pretty impressive or I was just less picky running through the galleries after this game. Before anyone pixel peeps - images from these games get used almost exclusively at 640 x 400 on the University's web site or for printing 4x6's so I did not go through and check for perfect focus.
I am very happy with my current in hand 1D Mk III / 1Ds Mk II combination but the 50D seemed pretty competent and I expect that I will lose some sales to parents that jump on this body. I will need to do some real hand processed post in the coming weeks to see how the 50D files ultimately behave to determine how often the 50D ends up in hand as a third body/lens combination versus being used only in remote settings where I am looking forward to the Live View and extra FPS's versus the 20D in addition to the extra megapixels.
Andy...Show more →
does anyone know if Canon plans on making a 50Da? The great thing about the 20Da was the modified sensor filter which allowed for increased sensitivity in the red and near IR.... I hope they do the same thing with the 50D.... has anyone heard anything?
itsskin wrote:
Here we go with 5D with 50D comparison. Lightbox, 1 flash light source, ACR by Lightroom 2.1 conversion. WB by gray card in frame. Light - by Seconic 758DR flash meter.
P.S. Lens - 85/1.2@8 to let more in focus. I know 5.6 is sharper . 50D was focused 10x liveview. 5D was focused @ bottle pattern.
Thanks.. Excellent comparison. I had fun with the 3200 shots. A first the 5D seems well ahead (more chroma noise on the 50D maybe 0.5 to 1 stop). But with Neat Image on both they get a lot closer. The 5F is still more naturall on colours and has a little less grain, but printed it would be very hard to notice. The 85 L is resolving down to the pixel level too, and I think there is a little more blurring at the extra magnificaiton of the 1.6 crop. Impressive technology in that 50D sensor. I can't wait for my 5D II now... And am fighting the tempation to upgrade my still very good 40D
Yes, 50D does a great job. Still, strange, that at the same ISO 5D seems LESS sensitive (the image is darker). I can't find any proof for this. But - the results talk for themselves. Same flash, same flashmeter...
Just jumped on the ebay 30% off deals. Picked up a brand new 50D for $1100 shipped. Upgrading from an XTi. So far, these examples have been a great help in helping me click the buy it now button lol. Can't wait to get out there with it.
Erik Schneider wrote:
Just jumped on the ebay 30% off deals. Picked up a brand new 50D for $1100 shipped. Upgrading from an XTi. So far, these examples have been a great help in helping me click the buy it now button lol. Can't wait to get out there with it.
Where on ebay did you see it for $1100? I saw a Taiwan outfit selling for buy it now for $1300 + shipping.
BigJoe wrote:
Thanks for the reports from those of you who have received a camera! The 50D is looking great IMO.
I wonder if anyone out there could do me a favor though. One thing a lot of the professional review sites neglect is very long exposure noise levels. If someone could do an approx. 5 minute exposure with a lens/body cap on at ISO 100 with no NR, I'd greatly appreciate it, as that will give me a lot of info about how this camera handles noise over a relatively long period against a dark background (like the night sky).
Even the 450D does pretty well in this regard, so I expect the 50D to do fine, but I want to be sure.
The 50D raw file looks very good. With all NR turned off, the image is black with no banding. At +2 in DPP some noisier pixels are observed, but no hot spots or amp noise.
Gochugogi wrote:
Where on ebay did you see it for $1100? I saw a Taiwan outfit selling for buy it now for $1300 + shipping.
Look below your post. I think you saw that deal too. They had like 6 available. It was $1100 after the ebay 30% microsoft cashback deal. Maximum of $200 back, so that's how!
to replace our current low light / macro camera, a 400D. The current 1D stays for sport shooting under almost any scenario.
. 50D was focused 10x liveview. 5D was focused @ bottle pattern.