Sunday, January 20, 2008

New camera on the way

I've ordered the Canon EOS-5D camera and it is on the way. I have recently been reading some posts about the 5D successor. There has been no announcement of a "5D Mark II" but that doesn't stop some people from guessing what the features will be: higher resolution, 14-bit depth versus 12-bit, higher frame rates, etc. I decided to go ahead and get the current 5D instead of waiting. As a friend has reminded me all too often, there will always be something better that comes along. I'm looking forward to moving up to the 5D from my current 10D. There are so many improvements from my 10D. For me one of the more important upgrades is the full-frame sensor. My wide angle lenses will be wide angle again. It's always possible to replicate the magnification factor that I had with the 10D by purchasing a teleconverter (such as the 1.4x TC). Other upgrades are a faster top shutter speed, the ability to simultaneously record RAW and JPEG, E-TTL II flash metering, 9 AF points, larger electronic display, and much more. One of the things that I have been reading so much about is the full-frame sensor versus the cropped field of view sensors. Many articles indicate that with the full-frame sensor, you need to have good lenses. I've got about three good lenses, but I've also got about three mediocre lenses. As many people know a lens performs its best in the center of the image, and performance falls off at the edges. With a camera such as the 10D, you are working within a lens' sweet spot, but the 5D uses all of the lens. I am a little concerned about how the 5D will perform with my mediocre lenses. All I have to do is think back just a few years ago when I still shot film on a EOS-1 or EOS-1V. I thought those lenses performed acceptably on those "full-frame" bodies. Anyway, I currently have a Canon 16-35mm f/2.8L USM, a Canon 100mm Macro USM, and a Sigma 14mm f/2.8 (and I think it is in their L-series equivalent category). My other lenses are a Canon 28-70mm, a Canon 70-210mm, a Canon 50mm f/1.8, and a Sigma 50mm Macro. All of these are non-USM by the way. I do have an ambitious plan to upgrade everything to L-series in the next few months. Here's my order of priority: Canon 24-105mm f/4L IS USM, Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L USM, and 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM. If the 24-105 works as a decent portrait lens as I suspect it will, I will scratch the Canon 135mm f/2L USM off the list. I will let you know how the new camera performs. As always, my photos are usually available on my Pbase site or on my Picasa site.

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