Canon EOS 5D
By Willy O May 28, 2007 | 6 out of 6 found this Canon EOS 5D Digital Camera review helpful
Pros: Excellent Camera and verstile with most of non Canon Lenses
Cons: Still expensive
This is Canon EOS 5D powertool with smooth workflow. The Canon EOS 5D is affordable mid size D-SLR with a image sensor that is as large as a frame of 35mm film, and lighter compare to, other cameras in similar category. That is cameras in its "full-f...rame" class have been large, heavy, and way more expensive. In fact, the only such digital SLR currently available is another Canon, It is Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II, a 16.6-megapixel best of the line and weighs nearly three and a half pounds and costs over $7,000. compare to the smaller EOS 5D which weight almost half, and, cost as little as $3,000, with full-frame CMOS sensor that delivers an impressive 12.72 million pixels of image data, three-quarters that of the 1Ds Mark II. The image result you can print 240dpi images at 12x18 inches without any problem. It come with softwares for editing and printing all user friendly. The 35mm-sized sensor in the 5D gives the camera three key advantages over D-SLRs with smaller image sensors. First and foremost, the 5D's larger chip means that when you mount a Canon EF lens on the camera, it produces the exact same field of view as when the lens is used on a 35mm Canon EOS camera. The image isn't "cropped" the way it is by physically smaller sensors, which typically cover only half the area of a 35mm frame and, as a result, effectively multiply focal length by 1.5X or 1.6X. This factor, known as the field-of-view (FOV) crop, is especially relevant to wide-angle photography. On cameras with the smaller sensor, a very wide 20mm becomes a not-so-wide 30mm or 32mm, whereas on the 5D it retains its expansive original angle of view. This is why such cameras require digital-only lenses (the Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM, for example) to achieve truly wide coverage. But the 5D allows you to use the full variety of Canon's 35mm EF wide-angles, many of which are lightweight and reasonably priced. Secondly, beside Canon EOS 5D's big sensor its has a huge optical viewfinder, with an image area of about 50 to 80 percent larger than what you would see inside the viewfinder of a D-SLR with a smaller image sensor. It is easy to handle. The 5D's eyepiece is almost the same as those of old-fashioned non digital camera, and it makes manual focusing exceptionally easy, even with wide-angle lenses in dim conditions. Last but not least the 5D's supersized sensor accommodates bigger, more light-sensitive pixels. Bigger individual pixels produce less digital noise, giving you smoother, finer-grained photos. And handle low light at speed settings from ISO 800 to ISO 1600, very well with amazing results. In comparison, the Nikon D2X, the 5D's only twelve-megapixel competitor, produces more visible noise at high ISO settings due to its smaller sensor. The EOS 5D shoots multiple frames more slowly compare to the EOS 20D (3fps versus 5fps). But its shutter response is very fast, and, remarkably, it manages to nearly triple the 20D's continuous-burst shooting capacity, to about 60 JPEG or 17 RAW frames. Autofocus is better than on the 20D, since Canon has augmented the latter's original nine-point diamond pattern array with six "invisible" AF points to improve motion tracking. We found the system works splendidly, even in very low light. The additional AF points inhabit the viewfinder's small center circle, which marks the boundary of its 3.5 percent spot meter, the first in a model other than the top-of-the-line EOS-1 D-SLR series. Canon EOS 5D has also Picture Styles menu, which make it a more flexible to organized various way to access, fine-tune, and personalize image parameters, including sharpness, contrast, saturation, and color tone. The 5D's memory make it possible to save and instantly recall virtually any combination of menu items and shooting settings. You can switch AF mode and AF point-selection at the same time, for less fumbling with buttons and fewer missed shots Read more Less
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