Yesterday Canon finally announced their replacement for the now 3 year old (that's 108 digital camera years) 5D SLR. In a few ways, I miss using my 5D. It's small, light, and has excellent image quality. So as someone who shot over 120,000 frames with a 5D and used it as my main body until very recently, I've been eagerly awaiting this news and have some thoughts I thought I'd share with you.First off, the good stuff. 21MP is super, though at less than 3 grand I'm a little pissed I just bought a 1DsIII. Higher ISO speeds and better high-ISO performance, looks pretty good so far, though I'm a detail guy and find the noise reduction necessary at these levels tends to mush detail a little too much for my liking. High-res screen, super and I wish I had it on my flagship 1D. 1080P video mode, honestly couldn't care less as I don't shoot video, though I guess this would be useful to photo-journalists.
Now for the bad. Same or very similar AF system to the old 5D, hmm.. well I rarely use anything but the center focus point and almost all of my subjects are still, that said, I kind of wanted a pro AF system in a smaller package or at least a really substantial upgrade. The new viewfinder is slightly larger at 98%, thought we'll see if the 5DII's is actually an improvement on what was a very good but not incredible finder on the original. I've become a little addicted to the 100% finder on the 1D.
But the main thing that's stopping me from pre-ordering one right now is the shutter. Supposedly it's the same as the old camera. While 3 or 4 frames per second is fine for me as I never shoot in anything other than single frames, the blackout time on the 5D can simply be described as glacial. Seriously, it's like 150ms or something. I think my 40 year old Hasselblad is faster. We'll see I guess, maybe it's better than I think or maybe I can get over it.
Oh, and I'm not sure why everyone is always complaining about the lack of environmental sealing in these non-pro bodies. I've used my Canon cameras in mild rain tons of times and had no problem. You'd think that everyone on DP Review was shooting on a sandy beach during a huricane the way they talk.
One of the features I was most hoping for on the new 5D was a better AF system. I am rather disappointed that this was not upgraded. I find that the present 5D AF system is quite lacking in accuracy and does not cover enough of the frame. I too mostly use the center, or a manually selected AF point. I would have been happy with a modest pixel count increase, 16MP would have been fine by me. I sincerely hope that Canon has not compromised noise for pixels. If I get both low noise at high ISO and lots of pixels, well, I'll be a happy camper. I was also hoping for 5FPS which would have given me just barely enough speed to shoot hand held HDR images,(something I've been wanting to play around with for a while now). I have to say that the inclusion of 1080P video is really quite cool. I really don't shot video much, just the occasional clip of the kids opening presents and such. I have been considering buying a HD video camera to replace my ancient Hi8 Sony handy cam. Now I can kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. (I'm not sure if I can convince my wife that I just saved $1000 by buying a $2700 Camera Body though...)
Well, maybe we will be lucky to see an improved AF system on the 5D Mk3, along with a mirror lock up button too!!
All nit picks aside, I am very excited about this new body and have already placed my pre-order on Amazon.
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I love to see sample images get posted to see how the high ISO shots perform.