Film 2 Digital - 40d or 5d

[bk_m]

hi - this is my 1st. post and i've only heard good stuff about this forum. All

this while, I've been shooting using film camera - Canon EOS. I think I'll

continue to do likewise, but I would prefer to buy a Digital EOS too. I checked

reviews, current promotions, model details and I've filtered down to 40D or 5D.

The reason I am a bit confused is as follows:

<br>- I already have 24-105 f/4 IS, 50 mm. f/1.8 M-I, 85 mm. f/1.8, 75-300 IS,

135 f/2.

<br>- Considering these lens which I already possess, if I go 5D - I don't loose

in crop-factor and subsequently I wouldn't have to purchase a separate lens to

cover wide-angle and I feel I am very "used to" the fact a 50 looks like 50 and

not turn out to be a 85 (under crop).

<br>-I believe in 50 mm. and it's my most used lens. Under crop - I'll then need

a 30 mm. (which Sigma has - a great one)

<br>-The cost of JUST the 5d today is $1900. Cost of 40D + a wide-angle (10-22)

+ 30 mm. is definitely more.

<br>-I shoot mostly between 24 to 80 mm. sometimes as a consequence to a great

frame (portrait) I might use the 135 f/2 or the 85 mm. Indoors I am happy with

my 50 mm.

<br>-I do a lot of people photography (in streets) and indoors mostly

concentrate on infants and kids.

<br>-I am not a professional but I do have a home studio with 1 cont.

light+umbrella, 1 flash-mounted light (strobist), backdrops - which I use for my

personal enjoyment.

<br>-I understand either way I will need a EX flash and due to cost / ergonomics

(refer details below) will use 430 EX.

<br>Question (Respected Sirs/Maams) -> Is my rationale considering points

mentioned above justify my 5D purchase over 40D ? Confused as 40D is newer and

thus provide some additional (may be useful?How much useful?) features over 5D

<br>Question (Respected Sirs/Maams) -> In case it's a 40D then any reasons - as

provided justifying this would be really helpful.

<br>Question (Respected Sirs/Maams) ->Finally, I tried (through

renting/borrowing) the 540 EX-II and the 430 EX series lens. 540 EX-2 is way too

big and heavy for me - pure ergonomics. I understand 430 can NOT act as master -

then what options I have (other than POCKET WIZARD) to enable 430 as a master

and any other slave flashes you can recommend? Alternatively, I could MOVE 430

away from the body. In that case as 430 does not have a PC terminal - what

options do I have (assume OC-3 is way too short)

<br><br>I sincerely thank one & all for ANY advice, criticism against this post.

[hank_skinner]

You have the glass. I would go with the 5D and get a factory refurb to save money.

[link]

I bought a 5D 3 months ago. It was my 1st digital camera (though I've scanned film for

years).

 

I think you're choice is easy: Get the 5D, you have the lenses and the image quality is far

better than you'll get from film for sure. It's also quite good in low light where shooting film

is really out of the question.

 

I'm not sure I'd get a refurbished camera though unless it was lots cheaper. I'm seeing

5D's in ads this week going for about $1900.

 

Good luck!

[RobertChura]

You will be happy with the 5D

[bob_osullivan]

I agree 5D. The main reasons for getting a 40D would be if you needed the faster motor drive. But you didn't mention any sports shooting so that is not an issue. The 40D does have some more advanced bells and whistles, non of which I feel amount to very much. The 5D should also have an edge on noise performance and image quality/resolution on large prints.

 

As for your flash questions, I would really try to get into the 580 instead of the 430. It has more power, strobe mode, master, and pc cord all for about $100 more. The weight of the 580 shouldn't matter that much if you use it off the camera anyway. And besides that Canon 1 you use is real heavy anyway.

 

If you do opt for the 430 you have a few options to get it off the camera. There's a 2' cord you can get. This cord is a better option than a PC cord as it preserves the ETTL function. Or you can get a wireless ST-E2 transmitter which has most of the wireless master functions the 580 has.

[tim_klimowicz]

As a 30D owned, I'd definitely suggest the 5D.

 

The 40D has some notable technological improvements, but the only real one to rave about (IMHO) is the DigicIII

processor, which, in my opinion, just attempts to close the gap in quality that's lost when you cram smaller pixels into

the same area in an attempt to get higher MP images (at the expense of quality because of increased noise). The 5D

has a big ole full-frame sensor, and I'd bet the images it produces are at least as good as the 40D, but with the added

benefit of being full frame (HUGE deal for me -- tiny viewfinders are awful for manual focusing), and being 100%

compatible with your lenses as you're currently used to using them.

 

One other thing to watch out for is that the 5D, I believe, is a bit slower in writing and in burst FPS, which really

shouldn't matter unless you plan on doing lots of high-demand sports shooting.

 

To this day, I (as an amateur) still keep dreaming about selling my 30D and 3 EF-S lenses (doh!) to get a 5D and a

single 50mm 1.4....

[g dan mitchell]

In your case, I think I'd go with the 5D. While it costs a bit more, you save on the cost

of lenses if you don't have to purchase an additional wide angle lens. IQ is potentially a

bit better on the 5D, though IQ on the crop sensor 40D isn't at all bad.

 

If having a burst rate of only 3 fps isn't an issue, I think your decision is probably going

to be easy....

[joseph_wisniewski]

The only case I'd recommend a 40D over a 5D is for heavy macro shooters: the live view feature is just too useful to live without.

 

Your lens collection makes it seem like macro isn't an important part of your life, so I'd say 5D...

[bobatkins]

The 40D is a better camera for telephoto work where you are limited by focal length and would need to crop the full frame images. While it sounds like this might be a minority situation, in fact it's probably the majority situation for wildlife photographers who usually find whatever lens they have isn't long enough!

 

For anything where you have the lens to get the framing you want without cropping, the 5D is the technically better camera interms of image quality - though I have to say that for most shots the 40D is certainly "good enough" for most users and the difference between the two is not huge.

 

The 5D is better at subject isolation through shallow deoth of field too.

 

With the OPs current lens set, the 5D makes most sense.

[sheer]

I just spent a long time trying to decide between these two excellent cameras. I spent a week with the 5d (someone else's) and fell in love with it. Then I bought a 40d to test for a week and felt it was sort of a downgrade. It felts less solid, the view-finder was smaller and it showed banding at high iso (mostly 3200 which might be due to the way its pushed in-camera). So I returned it and bought a 5d (a day or two ago). While I'm slowly falling back in love with it I have to admit I miss many features of the 40d. Sadly quite a few of them are user-interface related and canon could easily upgrade the 5d with such features by just providing new firmware. Anyway, the moral is both are spectacular cameras.

 

A few points that were relevant for me:

 

- 5d needs longer lenses for the same framing so gets nicer background blur. There's also a downside that less DOF can be problematic.

 

- 40d is has a very well thought out and usable interface, including a larger screen.

 

- LiveView could have been nice but the lack of easy auto-focusing clobbers it for non-tripod work. If you have a high shutter speed and large DOF it can work hand-held.

 

To answer a few other points you mentioned:

 

- I have the sigma 30mm f/1.4 and its nice on a crop body but mine makes a squeeky sound when it focuses and I think it focuses slowly. I'm guessing its defective so I'll need to send it back for repairs. Both sigma lenses I've owned have had problems so perhaps its just bad luck but I think I'm going to avoid sigma from now on. This is one of the reasons I went FF: many good ef-s lenses are third party while canon has a great lineup of EF lenses and I think I'll pay the heavy tax and stick with canon lenses. If you go with the 40d you can still get a fast canon 24 or 35 prime (even an L prime if you have the money).

 

- If you want an off-camera flash setup consider getting a gadget-infinity cactus wireless receiver and a vivitar HV285. I don't speak from personal experience but from the recommendations on this site:

 

http://strobist.blogspot.com/

 

see also:

 

http://www.mpex.com/page.htm?PG=Strobist%20Kits

 

I will probably be getting one of the above kits myself.

[Stock-Photos]

UNLESS you shoot mostly action sports or wildlife w/ telephotos, I recommend the 5D.

[peter_langfelder]

There's one area where the 5D falls short of the 40D and film bodies such as EOS 3, and that is the coverage of the focus points in the frame. On 5D they are clustered near the center. I find I do much more focus-recompose than I used to on EOS 3 and this is my main complaint about the camera. Try before you buy.

[bk_m]

Thank you very, very much. I sincerely appreciate all the feedback. I am going for 5D and just placed the order through B&H. Thank goodness for this website since I was almost fooled by low prices in alternate website but I AGAIN came to this site, saw a special link by Bob Ait? (sorry - forgot now) where specifically some site were listed as BAD are given. B&H is really great, in terms of price. THANK YOU>

[samoksner]

Get the 5D, it's on rebate right now for a great price. The 40D does have a couple cool features like liveview and such, but as film shooter, i doubt you'll miss that at all. Some suggested you get a refurished 5D, i would stick with the new, the warraty is great and you just can't go wrong.

 

here is a link to B&H for the 5D with the current sale: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/397314-REG/Canon_0296B002_EOS_5D_Digital_Camera.html

 

here it is at adorama:

http://www.adorama.com/ICA5D.html?searchinfo=5d

 

Good luck shooting.

 

sam

[robin_sibson1]

Considering the kit you have and what you do with it, a FF digital body does seem to be the natural choice, and it's no surprise that the advice you have been given - and have followed - is to buy a 5D. Enjoy.

 

I am a fan of the latest version of Digital Photo Professional, particularly for its capability to correct a range of lens aberrations almost losslessly. The CD that comes with your 5D may well not have the latest version (3.4) on it, and I recommend you to download the upgrader - I don't think you even need to install the CD version, just have the CD in your drive as a 'key disk'. You will be using your 24~105 a great deal on the 5D. It is a very sharp lens, but has quite a lot of distortion at 24mm and heavy vignetting at 24/4. A couple of clicks in DPP makes these vanish - difficult with vignetting, near-impossible with distortion through a wet-darkroom process, and hard work on digital images produced by scanning film - and the difference is quite an eye-opener. The aberration correction facilities in DPP support the 5D, but without the use of distance information (can be set manually, but in most cases it's only fine-tuning). All your lenses except the 75~300 IS are supported. Alone among the lenses you have, you may find that the 75~300 IS shows up as a rather weak performer on the 5D, which is very unforgiving of anything but pretty high lens quality. The optimal replacement is the 70~200/4L IS and an Extender 1.4x II.

[bk_m]

Robin - I have decided to do way with the 75-300 IS lens in the near future. In my early days of shooting - I remember I saw 2 ads - a 75-300 IS for (say) $300 and a 70-300 IS for (say) $500.00 I thought - what the heck, just for 5 mm. I need to pay $200.00 , so I bought instead the 75-300. So very sad, since I never really read between the lines. I plan to eBay this lens and purchase instead the 70-300 IS in the near future. I heard only good stuff about this lens.

<br> On a side-note, I am currently "hunting" for a MACRO lens, unfortunately the options limit me. For example - I have a 50mm and a 85 mm. Thus, wouldn't want to purchase the 50 f/2.8 Macro and nor would I really need a 100 Macro. Alternatively, I am looking at the lens adapters/extenders. I think I might go for the 550D adapter. I don't want to post a NEW thread, since there are already many on the topic.

<br> I am going to check the 70-200 f/4L and the extender - definitely. Thanks, never thought of that lens + adapter thus giving me the required reach.

[carlwakefield]

Hello BKM

I nearly every said 5D I agree. Futher to the tele I have both the 70-300 IS USM and the 70-200 2.8 IS USM lens with both 1.4 and 2.0 extenders.

The 70-300 is an excellent and underated lens which has it place for because of weight and size. If you are shooting in good light and don't need the speed of 2.8 its and produces very good picture. The 70-200 is tops but it has it price and wieght. The 70-300 is a very good choice.

Regards Carl

[robin_sibson1]

I don't have the 70~300 IS, but all reports suggest that the build seriously fails to do justice to the decently good optics. I also don't have the 70~300 DO IS, which is apparently very much better built, although somewhat below L-series standards, short but fat, quite heavy, and optically less good than the non-DO 70~300 IS. Given its price, you'd have to value its good qualities very highly to buy it. I do have the 70~200/4 L IS, and I do have an Extender 1.4x II. On its own that is a stunningly good lens, and of course gives you f/4 out to 200mm. With the Extender it is still very good indeed, far better than you have any right to expect from a zoom+extender combination, and I have seen reports that the combination is better than the 70~300 IS (non-DO) on its own, which would not surprise me.

 

Bear in mind that, used on the 135/2, the Extender 1.4x II will give you a very good 189/2.8, perfectly useable wide open if you need an extra stop over and above the zoom but don't mind losing IS.

 

As for macro, the best choice for you is surely the 100/2.8. I have that and the 85/1.8, and use them in quite different situations, and I have no sense that they duplicate one another. The 50/2.5 is a very good lens optically, but has similar not-too-brilliant handling to the 50/1.8 (original), and I do agree that you might feel that having both was redundant. The 180/3.5L is a much more specialist macro lens, and very heavy and expensive.

[._._z]

"I'm not sure I'd get a refurbished camera though unless it was lots cheaper. I'm seeing 5D's in ads this week going for about $1900. "

 

Before Canon's current $300 instant-rebate on 5D bodies, shops like Adorama every so often would get in Canon-refurbished bodies with 90-days warranties which would sell (and sell out quickly) for $1650. No availability right now, but I'd think it was worth $250 for that full year's warranty (doubled to 2 years if bought with an AmEx card).

[greg_tan]

I have both. I would suggest the 5D.

Both are excellent though.

The one cool thing the 40D has over the 5D that is not mentioned often is that depending on the Canon lens, distance information is kept. So the lens corrections within DPP are automatic as it knows the distance.