Digital Trends

Canon EOS 5D

January 10th, 2006 | by David Elrich

As I don’t have a collection of Canon lenses, the company supplied a 16-35mm f/2.8 USM zoom that costs around $1,400. Taking this $5,000 package to the streets definitely gives one pause; strolling through a bad neighborhood was clearly out of the question no matter how good the photographic opportunities! And at 54 ounces (3-plus pounds) without a flash, this ready-to-shoot rig gives your arms a nice workout.

The response time of this camera is unbelievably fast. Turn the power switch and it fires up in about a second. There’s barely a pause between the time you depress the shutter to focus and the image is captured. If you feel like taking a series of shots of the kids’ playing ball or a race car zooming around a track, the 5D can take 60 high-resolution JPEGs or 17 RAW files at 3 frames per second without taking a breather (the 12MP Nikon D2x takes 22 JPEGs or 17 RAW files at 3 fps). Yes, there are faster cameras out there including the 5 fps EOS 20D ($1,500) or the ridiculous 8MP EOS-1D Mark II n at 8.5 fps ($4,000) but they’re not full-frame cameras. The full-frame $7,000 EOS-1DS Mark II is 4 fps but it costs twice as much. In other words, this is no big deal except for the most demanding uses. 

This camera has every tweak you could possibly want including ISO options of 50-3200. Now having a wide palette is one thing but it doesn’t do you any good if your images are swimming in digital artifacts. With the 5D, there are few to be seen, even at 1600 and 3200. I had to do some pretty intense blowups to find any. 13x19 prints would be no problem with this camera.

I also used the Picture Styles settings for appropriate shots such as Portraits, Landscapes and so on but primarily the Standard default setting. It wasn’t too difficult scrolling through the menus to get to the settings but it would be a lot more convenient to access to them if there was an icon on the mode dial. I really liked the coloration of the Portrait mode but it’s geared for skin tones rather than furry creatures such as my Norwegian Forest Cat. For her I used the Standard setting and adjusted the aperture to get a subtle blurring. Other shots were taken in Landscape to give the winter skies some pop as well as many in straight Auto. 

As always, images were printed with a minimal amount of adjustments after developing RAW files; these files and JPEGs were directly printed on 8.5x11 glossy paper. Needless to say the prints were dynamite. The EOS 5D is about as sophisticated a digital camera as you can buy and simply takes great photographs…no matter if you shoot in Auto, use the Picture Styles, adjust color temperature, make all the adjustment yourself…you name it.

Image Courtesy of Canon