Canon EOS 5D - First impression
During the Norwegian press conference, journalists were invited to touch-and-try all the new Canon cameras. For good reasons, the EOS 5D was the obvious first choice for most photographers and they all expressed joy and excitement over their first experience. Canon underlined strongly that the camera samples were so-called Beta versions, assembled prior to serial production and therefore not to be considered as final products.
Construction
The camera seems almost as robust as the professional EOS-1D series, surprisingly light weight and with the same user friendliness as the EOS 20D. The camera body and the exteriour shell are casted in magnesium alloy, but it does not feature the same rigid seals against dust and moisture as the EOS-1D series.
Built on long traditions and lots of experience, it came as no surprise that the EOS 5D fits the hand like a glove. The control layout resembles the EOS 20D, but has a larger, 2.5" LCD screen, the largest on any EOS to date.
The sample camera was equipped with a dedicated BG-E4 Battery Grip, which increased the camera's ergonomics remarkably, especially in vertical camera position. The grip has a shutter realase button, control dial, AE/AF lock and focusing point selector, while the large quick dial on the back of the camera is easily within reach.
Some users may be disappointed to find that the camera lacks a built-in flash, but for the targeted users, it is hardly of major importance. The EOS 5D is compatible with all the advanced flash features in Canon's Speedlite EX-series external flash guns and it may also make use of their AF assisting lamp. The camera itself has no such AF lamp.
35mm CMOS
Reading between the lines of the specs and press release, you may discover that the EOS 5D is the first model in a new strategy frm Canon, in the direction of full frame image sensor in many cameras to come. They have now solved many of the obstacles and production cost barriers, first and foremost related to the lowpass filter in front of the CMOS.
Brian Worley, product manager of D-SLR cameras at Canon Europa, said that it's a long way before all EOS models will have a full size sensor, but Canon's aim is to equip all models, except the cheapest, with a 35mm sensor in the future.
For an amateur photographer, with little or no income from photography, the price of the EOS 5D will be a heavy burden. Still, I'm convinced that many will dig deep into the wallet to find the money. Raleted to the prices of digital system cameras only a few years ago, nearly as expensive as a small car, the EOS 5D will give increadible value for money. However, compared to the price of comparable cameras of today, the question is if the benefit of full use of the focal lengths justifies the investment. Besides, it's a well known fact that many of the older EF lenses, made for photography on film, may not perform very well on a full size image sensor.
New EF 24-105 mm f/4L IS USM
Together with the launch of the EOS 5D, Canon also introduce two new EF lenses, both optimised for digital imaging. All sample images taken during the press event were shot with the new L series zoom, the EF 24-105 mm f/4L IS USM with opticakl image stabiliser and USM focus motor.
Speed
The EOS 5D behaves like an analogue SLR, equally responsive and fast. The startup is virtually instantanous, the auto focus appears quicker than the EOS 20D, but this needs to be verified by a lab test (EOS 5D has nine focus points plus six invisible assisting points). During the press event, some photographers experienced unstable and inconsistent AF performance, but personally I had no such problems during my 65 shots.
The most avnaced version of the DIGIC II image processor is used in the EOS 5D. It processes images at incredible speed, the storage is almost immediate and there is almost no delay during image review. Burst shooting performance is also quite impressive. Even at 12,8 Mp resolution, the camera can shoot 3 images a second and by using a Hi-Speed memory card, the buffer holds an impressive 60 images in JPEG or 17 images in RAW.
For download of the images, the EOS 5D supports USB 2.0 High Speed interface, but not IEEE1394 FireWire, which some may find disappointing.
First impression
The general impression is highly positive. The camera body is well built, with a pleasantly small size (152 x 113 x 75 mm) and surprisingly light weight (810 grams), compared with the EOS-1D models.
The design and control layout is perfect and I found no weak points of importance during the few minutes I had available.
The menus are intuitive, but even with a large 2,5" screen, the letters appear quite small and may be difficult to read in direct sunlight. The screen proved, however, to have good contrast and high resolution of 230.000 pixels.
The few test images I managed to shoot showed that the image quality is excellent at all ISO settings. A new and exciting feature is the "Picture Style" settings, which at first glance gave an "amateur" touch to the camera, but Canon's explaination of the concept gave reasonable meaning. It's an ingenious way of simplifying complicated settings to simulate the qualities of various film types. In its extreme consequence, the EOS 5D has a total of 48.816 possible settings combinations. "Picture Style" gives the photographer preset settings of colour, sharpness and contrast to match the subject type. The choices are Standard, Portrait, Landscape, Neutral, Faithful and Monochrome.
In addition, three self defined settings may be stored. These may be replaced by new Picture Styles that may be downloaded from Canon's web sites in the future.
Apart from an extremely contrasty subject (the grill of a Rolls Royce), I also shot a suitable indoor scene to test the camera's performance with various ISO settings. These shots alone and the fact that the sample is a Beta version, I nrefrain from making a final verdict, but it surely looks promising.
All images were shot in RAW and JPEG, some with Program mode, some with Aperture Priority. As expected, neither of the software I had available (Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Canon Digital Photo Professional) were able to read the RAW files from EOS 5D.
NB:
The camera used for these shots was an early sample. Canon will continue to optimise the camera's performance before serial production.
PS:
You need to register to download the image samples in full size. See "Min side" in the left coloumn.
The camera seems almost as robust as the professional EOS-1D series, surprisingly light weight and with the same user friendliness as the EOS 20D. The camera body and the exteriour shell are casted in magnesium alloy, but it does not feature the same rigid seals against dust and moisture as the EOS-1D series.
Built on long traditions and lots of experience, it came as no surprise that the EOS 5D fits the hand like a glove. The control layout resembles the EOS 20D, but has a larger, 2.5" LCD screen, the largest on any EOS to date.
The sample camera was equipped with a dedicated BG-E4 Battery Grip, which increased the camera's ergonomics remarkably, especially in vertical camera position. The grip has a shutter realase button, control dial, AE/AF lock and focusing point selector, while the large quick dial on the back of the camera is easily within reach.
Some users may be disappointed to find that the camera lacks a built-in flash, but for the targeted users, it is hardly of major importance. The EOS 5D is compatible with all the advanced flash features in Canon's Speedlite EX-series external flash guns and it may also make use of their AF assisting lamp. The camera itself has no such AF lamp.
35mm CMOS
Reading between the lines of the specs and press release, you may discover that the EOS 5D is the first model in a new strategy frm Canon, in the direction of full frame image sensor in many cameras to come. They have now solved many of the obstacles and production cost barriers, first and foremost related to the lowpass filter in front of the CMOS.
Brian Worley, product manager of D-SLR cameras at Canon Europa, said that it's a long way before all EOS models will have a full size sensor, but Canon's aim is to equip all models, except the cheapest, with a 35mm sensor in the future.
For an amateur photographer, with little or no income from photography, the price of the EOS 5D will be a heavy burden. Still, I'm convinced that many will dig deep into the wallet to find the money. Raleted to the prices of digital system cameras only a few years ago, nearly as expensive as a small car, the EOS 5D will give increadible value for money. However, compared to the price of comparable cameras of today, the question is if the benefit of full use of the focal lengths justifies the investment. Besides, it's a well known fact that many of the older EF lenses, made for photography on film, may not perform very well on a full size image sensor.
New EF 24-105 mm f/4L IS USM
Together with the launch of the EOS 5D, Canon also introduce two new EF lenses, both optimised for digital imaging. All sample images taken during the press event were shot with the new L series zoom, the EF 24-105 mm f/4L IS USM with opticakl image stabiliser and USM focus motor.
Speed
The EOS 5D behaves like an analogue SLR, equally responsive and fast. The startup is virtually instantanous, the auto focus appears quicker than the EOS 20D, but this needs to be verified by a lab test (EOS 5D has nine focus points plus six invisible assisting points). During the press event, some photographers experienced unstable and inconsistent AF performance, but personally I had no such problems during my 65 shots.
The most avnaced version of the DIGIC II image processor is used in the EOS 5D. It processes images at incredible speed, the storage is almost immediate and there is almost no delay during image review. Burst shooting performance is also quite impressive. Even at 12,8 Mp resolution, the camera can shoot 3 images a second and by using a Hi-Speed memory card, the buffer holds an impressive 60 images in JPEG or 17 images in RAW.
For download of the images, the EOS 5D supports USB 2.0 High Speed interface, but not IEEE1394 FireWire, which some may find disappointing.
First impression
The general impression is highly positive. The camera body is well built, with a pleasantly small size (152 x 113 x 75 mm) and surprisingly light weight (810 grams), compared with the EOS-1D models.
The design and control layout is perfect and I found no weak points of importance during the few minutes I had available.
The menus are intuitive, but even with a large 2,5" screen, the letters appear quite small and may be difficult to read in direct sunlight. The screen proved, however, to have good contrast and high resolution of 230.000 pixels.
The few test images I managed to shoot showed that the image quality is excellent at all ISO settings. A new and exciting feature is the "Picture Style" settings, which at first glance gave an "amateur" touch to the camera, but Canon's explaination of the concept gave reasonable meaning. It's an ingenious way of simplifying complicated settings to simulate the qualities of various film types. In its extreme consequence, the EOS 5D has a total of 48.816 possible settings combinations. "Picture Style" gives the photographer preset settings of colour, sharpness and contrast to match the subject type. The choices are Standard, Portrait, Landscape, Neutral, Faithful and Monochrome.
In addition, three self defined settings may be stored. These may be replaced by new Picture Styles that may be downloaded from Canon's web sites in the future.
Apart from an extremely contrasty subject (the grill of a Rolls Royce), I also shot a suitable indoor scene to test the camera's performance with various ISO settings. These shots alone and the fact that the sample is a Beta version, I nrefrain from making a final verdict, but it surely looks promising.
All images were shot in RAW and JPEG, some with Program mode, some with Aperture Priority. As expected, neither of the software I had available (Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Canon Digital Photo Professional) were able to read the RAW files from EOS 5D.
NB:
The camera used for these shots was an early sample. Canon will continue to optimise the camera's performance before serial production.
PS:
You need to register to download the image samples in full size. See "Min side" in the left coloumn.
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