Tag Archives: 5D

Canon 50MP 5DS Body, 11-24mm Lens, and Updated Rebel DSLRs

I’ll start with a list, and I’ll add a few comments below.

You may feel differently, but the most interesting announcement to is that of the two versions of the EOS 5DS, a 50.6mp full frame DSLR that seems optimized for image quality. While not everyone will need 50MP in a full frame body, some of us will most certainly benefit from sensor resolution that more than doubles what was previously available from Canon. There are two models, the 5DS and the 5DS R — the 5DS R doesn’t apply anti-aliasing filtering. This has the potential to maximize image sharpness for certain kinds of photographers, and the potential risk of some moire artifacts in photographs of certain types of patterned subjects. The cameras are supposed to begin shipping in June, and I plan to get one — most likely the R model.

For those who like really wide angle zoom lenses, the EF 11-24mm f/4L lens is arguably going to be king of the hill. Early reports are that it is optically excellent, and 11mm is 1mm wider than the excellent 14-24mm Nikon f/2.8 zoom. This lens (as noted above) can apparently now be pre-ordered.

The Rebel T6i and T6s are the newest updated models in the family of consumer Rebel DSLRs. These are fine cameras at a good price, and Canon will no doubt sell tons of them. They use 24mm cropped format sensors, and they are available in body-only version and it kits that include a basic zoom lens. The T6s is said to have a few more “advanced” features added.


G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | FacebookGoogle+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

The Original Canon 5D

(Updated July 26, 2014)

An interesting little article at site-sponsor B&H Photo (“History of the Canon 5D“) got me thinking back on this camera a bit today. The 5D was my first full-frame DSLR, as it was for quite a few other photographers. It was not the first full-frame DSLR, but the earlier models arguably made much less of an impact, either because of design issues that prevented them from being as successful or because their cost was simply prohibitive for too many photographers.

Canon EOS 5D
Canon EOS 5D

Today the 5D may seem dated by comparison to more recent cameras with higher megapixel sensors, additional useful features (dust reduction, video, live view, and more) and sometimes lower prices, back in 2005 the 5D seemed like quite a remarkable development. At this time, almost all photographers were shooting cropped sensor DSLRs and the MP level of sensors was universally a lot lower than what we regard as normal today. So a 12.8MP sensor full frame body seemed – and was! – state of the art in terms of potential image quality. And the price was a “mere” $3299 list  – no trivial amount but much less than the price for the equivalent Canon 1-series full frame model that was the likely alternative. Far more people could find a way to afford the $3299 (or, as the price softened, $2500) camera than a $8000 camera.

Of course, the $3299 model was not the $8000 model. The 5D construction, while just fine, was not equal to that of the legendary 1-series “tanks.” Of course, this also meant that the camera was smaller and lighter – something that quite a few photographers found to be pluses. This was especially true of the large number of landscape photographers, who often carry the gear away from roads on their backs. The AF system was, again by today’s standards, nothing special. But the image quality was as good as it got nearly a decade ago.

I moved up to a 5D Mark II about 3 or 4 years after the introduction of the 5D. The 5DII was a worthy successor to the 5D, nearly doubling the pixel resolution to 22MP and adding a bunch of useful features like live view (which I cannot live without now!), a better display, excellent video quality, a functional dust reduction system, better high ISO performance, and more. In every way the 5DII equals or exceeds the performance of the 5D, but…

The 5D is still as good of a camera as it was back then, photographs made with it still hold up beautifully.

(I have kept my 5D for the past 4 1/2 years or so since I got my 5DII, primarily as a back-up body but occasionally to let me shoot with two cameras at once. That said, the time is finally coming to sell it. I haven’t quite put it on the market yet, but if you are a San Francisco Bay Area photographer who is looking for such a thing, let me know. I’ll also be selling a copy of the Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L lens – the non-IS version.)

Update July 26, 2014: The 5D body has now gone to someone else who should be able to get good use out of it. Since I occasionally read posts from people thinking of buying one today, I thought I’d finalize this story with some thoughts on that topic.

If you can find a good copy of the original Canon 5D (which some refer to informally as the “5Dc” or “5D Mark I”), it should produce photographs as well as it did when it came out about a decade ago. Many of us used the camera to produce some very wonderful photographs, and it can produce good sized prints if you shoot and post-process with skill and care.

Is it a worthwhile purchase today? That is a complex question.

With current prices floating around the $500 mark as I write this, the thing is certainly inexpensive. It is quite likely the least expensive entry point to full frame DSLR photography. People used it to make good photographs when it first came out, and a good unit should be capable of the same quality today. However, I do not recommend buying a used 5D to very many people. Here’s why…

While the 12MP full frame sensor was remarkable in 2003, today that is more than a bit behind the curve. So while you potentially gain something by moving to the larger sensor, when it comes to system resolution you also lose something to the lower megapixel count sensor. Today typical cropped sensor bodies have 50% more photo sites. In addition, even the least expensive cropped sensor bodies today have a better AF system, better low light performance, faster operation, sensor dust reduction technology, useful features like “live view” and video that are missing from the older 5D.

What if you really need full frame and cannot afford it? This is a tricky question. First, I think that quite a few people who are convinced that they “need” full frame really do not. Current cropped sensor cameras can produce truly excellent image quality. Unless you do some very specific things in your photography, the odds are that you will not get better image quality from the 12MP 5D than you would from even an entry level contemporary cropped sensor DSLR. But let’s say you are still convinced that you need full frame but are on a budget. What are you going to do for lenses? Clearly, you are not going to get the advantages of full frame if you cannot also get good lenses.

While I can imagine a very, very small percentage of camera users for whom the value of the full frame sensor might be great enough in comparison to the many other features that you give up with the 5D, for most people it just isn’t a great deal. And keep in mind that the price of the much more capable Canon 5D Mark II (which adds the features from my list a couple paragraphs up) with its 21MP sensor is rapidly dropping toward the $1000 point as I write this. Between $1000 on a 5DII (which is still my primary camera), and $500 for the 5D, I would think about delaying a purchase and saving a bit more.

YMMV, so feel free to leave a question or comment below.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | FacebookGoogle+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Post-Processing: A Shadow Recovery Example

(In another forum someone asked a question – actually, more like posed a challenge – related to how much usable detail and quality could be extracted from a raw file that contained areas of very low luminosity, as could happen with a badly underexposed image or with an image of a scene with a very large dynamic range. Since I went to the work of responding and illustrating my response, I figured that I might as well share it here, too. With minor revisions, here it is.)

First, I actually have a “real” version of this photograph in which highlights were slightly blown, but which I preferred to use since I could bring them back in post and get a bit more shadow detail to start with. (It looks a bit bright to me as an on-screen jpg, but it makes a fine print.) That photograph ended up looking like this:

Kolob Canyon, Morning - Morning light slants over the top of sandstone cliffs above early autumn foliage in Kolob Canyon, Zion National Park
Morning light slants over the top of sandstone cliffs above early autumn foliage in Kolob Canyon, Zion National Park

This photograph and the other I’ll move to below were both shot from a tripod with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II at ISO 100 using the Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS at f/16. While the “keeper” used for the photograph above had a 1/4 second exposure, the example I’ll use below was shot at 1/30 second.

The exposure challenge in this scene was the very large dynamic range between the bright spot of sky at the head of the canyon and the much darker colorful foliage in relatively deep shadow in the foreground. Exposing for optimal quality in the foreground would completely blow out the sky, while exposing for the sky would necessarily grossly underexpose the foreground.

I originally thought that I might like to have four bracketed exposures in case that would let me produce a better final image via layer blending, but it turned out to be unnecessary and the final image (as shown above) has a single source file with no blending. However, this means that I still happen to have one very badly underexposed (by three stops) version at 1/30 second which I’ll use here as the starting point for what I plan to illustrate in this post. Follow along with me and see what I can do with the very underexposed version of the file… Continue reading Post-Processing: A Shadow Recovery Example

B&H: Holiday Deals Update and Last Day for Holiday Standard Shipping

See the Deals Page for updates on the following and more:

  • Today is the last day to order from B&H with “guaranteed” holiday delivery via standard shipping. (You can still procrastinate a bit and pay more for expedited shipping if you want! ;-)
  • The special price in the Canon 5D Mark II body is still available.
  • I have added an updated listing of this weeks holiday specials at B&H – they include a wide range of camera bodies, lenses, and more from Canon, Nikon, and other manufacturers.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | FacebookGoogle+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.