I am a believer that great images come from great artists who have great lenses, and its all about the eye and not the camera. That said, I also have a TINY budjet. ahem. However, excuses aside, I find myself finally operating my own photography business with a series of canon L lenses that I run off of my Canon XTI body. performance aside, its a higher megapixel camera than the photog's I used to assist had and I've gotten darn good images. I am now at the point where I have a choice to get another body soon, and use my nice xti as my personal favorate for home, travel and backup. Its going to come in handy having two bodies when I do weddings. but, as a person who starts out slow and pays cash, has yet to take out a business loan - do I go with a 50D body, or wait and get a 5D? yes, a xti is not that professional looking, yes, my itty bitty camera has been laughed at by other photographers, but, realistically, for weddings and portrait work, am I going to really get more out of a 5D vs 50D? professionals opinion, please! thank you!
IANAPP, but from my limited experience so far I would love to have a 5d2 for doing portratis. Depending on the lenses you have a 50d might work a bit better at weddings due to the crop factor. Long term I would probably want both, but perhaps start with the 5d2 since you have the crop covered with the XTI. By my calculations if you crop the center of the 5d2 to a similiar view as the XTI you would get a 8.1 megapixel image, so maybe you realistically wouldn't use both. It could be really handy having two different lenses ready and mounted on a camera though.