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Reviews (1)
May 21, 2022
A great professional body bargain with impressive image quality that suits most needs
1 of 1 found this helpful This camera model is 17 years old as of the time of this review. In our day and age of technological leaps, you'd be excused to assume that it's an artefact from its era; however, the reality couldn't be any further away from this! The 5D still takes amazing looking photos that will leave you very satisfied.
While the dynamic range is not as wide as in today's technology, you can get amazing results under good lighting conditions that you won't be able to differentiate from any modern camera today. In fact, I like its rendering and colors more than some of my more recent bodies.
In the race for the highest megapixel count, this camera shies away with its 12.8 megapixel sensor; however, if you don't need to crop much for prints or pixel peep, there is no issue at all here. If you're looking at your photos all the way up to a 4k computer screen/TV, photos taken from this camera will look perfect. However, if you have an 8K monitor then you will probably notice some limitations. That said, for prints, this camera is more than enough for any large print that you might want to have, no issues there.
A few things to consider when buying this body:
This is a bargain camera. I bought mine which is in a very good condition with the box and everything else that comes with it for $255, shipping included. Of course there are a few negligible scuffs from use that do not impact the looks of the camera. There is also a noticeable discoloration around the edges of the hot shoe as Canon used to have these painted black, and other than in new bodies, I haven't come across any used copy where the black paint hasn't peeled off. The last thing is that the side flap that covers some of the connectors was almost entirely missing; however, there are tons of these brand new on ebay for as low as $3 so you can easily buy and install one which I did for my camera, it takes minimal effort and gives you that element of protection and a better looking body overall. Other than these minor imperfections, the camera is in a perfect condition. So, if you get a cleaner copy than mine, I would still not pay anything beyond $300.There are a lot of stupid deals for double the price, in which case you'd be better off buying a new entry level camera, or a 5D Mark II which has a lot of improvements over this model and sells in good condition for around that same mark.
The other thing is that this is purely a photo camera, no video. Consequently, there is no live view mode either, which might make precision manual focusing much more challenging. So, again if you need that, look for a 5D MKII instead.
One more thing is that this model is apparently known to have an issue where the mirror breaks after continued use (this is not from my experience, but from reviews out there). The issue seems to impact all models with serial numbers starting with 1 or 0. Reports are that Canon fixed the issue in later models with serial numbers starting with 2. I got to know this information just after my purchase, and my body's serial number happens to start with 1; however, I don't have a shattered mirror so far and everything seems to be working perfectly even though the body has tens of thousands of shutter actuations. Ideally I would have asked about the serial number prior to purchasing the body had I known about the issue earlier, but all in all, Canon seems to be able to service this with a fix that reinforced the mirror and addresses the problem, so I'm not too concerned.
The last thing I will share has to do with the build quality of the body. While it feels solid and very nice in the hand, I can vouch that it does not feel as sturdy as a Canon 5D MKII or a Nikon D700. While similarly to the aforementioned bodies, this camera's chassis is made of magnesium alloy and stainless steel, it still doesn't feel as rugged. This is my personal feeling; however, people over the internet praise the rigidity of this body and claim that it can take a beating just as well as other professional cameras. Note though that this is not rated as a weather sealed body, so ensure not to shoot under harsh weather conditions.
Overall, the camera has a very simple menu layout (one page only with everything as opposed to the multi-page menu system of later Canon bodies), a limited ISO range from 100 to 1600 native and 50 to 3200 extended, a bit of a primitive autofocus system that doesn't favor extreme low light shooting conditions, and a basic motor drive that goes up to only 3 FPS which might pose a challenge for birders and sport shooters. Other than that, this is an excellent body with great professional picture quality that can be used for paid jobs to this day and produce great results. It might just slow you down a bit due to some of its limitations, so if your workflow does not require a very fast paced shooting, you're in for an insane bargain with this impressive imagining tool, and you can never go wrong with a classic 5D.