Simon de la Court - Blog

Sometimes people ask you these things related to the gear you have. After buying a 5D people started asking me, is it a great upgrade, should I do it? Well, I’ll shortly explain the full frame part first. Digital camera’s have a light sensitive sensor, but making these things costs quite a lot. So companies like Canon and Sony decided that they made smaller versions. Smaller being cheaper this also made dSLRs a lot cheaper. For instance the 300D, was a rather affordable dSLR. But most dSLRs and all digital compact cameras still have a smaller sensor than 35 mm film or full frame sensors. They are about 1.5 times or 1.6 times smaller, some are even 2 times smaller (Canon and Sigma)..

Most people see this as something that just multiplies your focal length. And especialy the people who like to use tele lenses are happy with cropped sensors. This gives them longer lenses for free. But I am not really intrested into tele lenses, I do not even own a real tele lens (well, I do, but it is total crap, only collects dust). And those people are more intrested into the sub 100 mm zone. Crop also ment that you have less shallow depth of field, because a 17 mm lens became a 28 mm lens, with the same long depth of field of the original 17 mm lens. And if you want to use an ultra wide angle lens, you need to buy a 12 mm or 10 mm lens with even a longer depth of field. So, UWA on crop sensors mostly means a less shallow depth of field. And that is a pitty, because with a short depth of field you can isolate objects, and because of the wide angle you can still add context to a picture..

But, about 1.5 years ago Canon launched the EOS 5D, an affordable full frame camera. Thank god, although my bankaccount has a different opinion. The camera has a 12.8 megapixel full frame sensor, with a lesser pixel density than the average crop cam. Which results into a very low noise level on higher iso’s, and ofcourse to this full frame. Pretty cool yeah. Finally full frame became sort of affordable (2600 euro still ment selling your kidnies in Pakistan). So, is it worth all the money?

Well, yes, it is. Why? First the image quality. The 5D delivers very clean pictures, straight out of the box. There is no digital SLR (although the Canon 1D mkIII might beat the 5D) that delivers pictures with such a low noise and great rendering. Personaly I think the images look more film like. The colours and contrast are great compared to earlier Canon cameras. So, it indeed is a great camera, right? Well, yes. But there are some things you might want to look into. Actually two things. Vignetting and sharpness in the corners. The corner sharpness is not really a big deal to me. Mostly it means you have to pay a little more attention to sharpening. But the vignetting is a more severe problem. I like vignetting, you can isolate subjects, and it looks vintage. But sometimes the vignetting is so severe (especially with cheaper lenses) that it is hard to correct. And I like to have full control when I am post processing my work..

So, if you have to choose between full frame or crop and you don’t really really need full frame or are a tele shooter, buy a 30D with a 10-22 lens or a Tokina 12-24. Great stuff, but if you like primes, film like soft colours, low noise and wide angle, buy a 5D or 1ds.