My
wait is now over. (Not that any of you knew I was waiting
for something, but believe me, the anticipation has
been killing me.)
Almost 5 weeks ago I put myself on
the waiting list to receive one of Canons new 5D digital
SLR's. Well, Yodobashi Camera called yesterday to let
me know that my 5D was ready to be picked up. The timing
was almost perfect, and I was able to wrap up a couple
of thing before I zipped up to Kamkiooka during lunch
and wrapped my hot little hands around my new toy.
Maybe "toy" is not the right word. A better
selection of words might have been to call it a "Tool",
after all, it is one beefy and very capable camera.
But with the latter choice of words then I would have
written, "wrapped my hot little hands around my
new tool" (Not something I want to be saying to
people … This is a family show after all…)
My first impression of the 5D is this. "What an
enormous LCD screen!" I had seen what it looks
like in pictures, but believe me, the pictures don't
really do it justice.
All I could do at first was just look at it and see
how well it fit my hands since the battery needed to
be charged before I could power it up. (Good thing too,
otherwise it would have been very hard to get any work
done yesterday afternoon!)
To best sum it up, I would have to
say that the 5D feels and handles like a camera.
To those of you who just said to yourself,
"Well Duh, it is a Camera
Jeff…" read again what I wrote and notice
I didn't say "digital" camera.
This is the most film body like digital
SLR I have used. The grip is satisfyingly large enough,
yet at the same time not too big. The viewfinder is
large and bright, and it weighs just enough to let youy
know that you are holding a quality piece of equipment.
The fit and finish of this camera is excellent.
The shutter is quiet (hip hip hooray!), with a very
muted mirror slap/return. A lot like an older film camera.
Not at all like the machine-gunner sound of the 1D Mark
II or the Psycho-knife-stabbing sound of the Rebel XT
(those of you who have a Rebel XT know what I am talking
about), but a lot more like what my old 10D sounded
like, except…"better". Hard to really
put into words but I like it…
The full frame sensor means that it
has a nice big viewfinder, and manual focus is easy
with this camera. And this full frame sensor is the
main reason why I went ahead and upgraded to the 5D.
That and the fact that if I wait for another iteration
of SLR from Canon the pixel count would no doubt continue
to rise and I don't want or need more pixels. Heck,
8 megapixels was more than enough for my purposes. 12
is nice, but not really necessary, it just means I will
need more storage space (I also picked up a 6 Gigabyte
Microdrive.) I would have actually preferred if the
5D was an 8 megapixel camera with a full frame sensor.
That would have given it the largest photo sites of
any digital camera ever made, and would likely have
dramatically increased the dynamic range and low noise
properties of an already fantastic camera.
I think my Rebel XT's days are definitely numbered…
It has been a great camera for me, and still takes great
pictures, but now with the full frame sensor of the
5D, all my lenses just seem to "fit". 24mm
is actually a serious wide angle again! Happy Happy
Joy Joy!
All of today's pictures were taken with the 5D. And
although you may not see much of a difference in these
low resolution shots I post, believe me, this camera
is an entirely different animal.
I can already see that the 5D has a significant amount
of additional resolution over 8 megapixels, and best
of all, it has a lot more dynamic range.
This improvement in dynamic range really became apparent
to me when I was getting these images ready for the
web. I usually apply a quick "auto curves"
to my images to give fine tune the exposure and give
them a little more pop, and with the cameras I used
before this would almost always improve an image. But
now with the 5D, hitting the "auto curves"
button in Photoshop usually has no impact on the image,
meaning that the image is damn near perfectly exposed
right out of the camera.
Needless to say I am very happy with my new tool,
toy, camera.
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