Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Canon 5D MkII considerations...

After this nice camera has been released I started wondering if it's worth buying. And finally I think it is, but...
All in the world is about "but". I didn't buy 5D MkI, because it was just giving worse results than my precious 40D. Of course it had full frame, but you couldn't find lens that would be counterpart to 17-55/2.8 IS for full frame. You can choose 24-70/2.8, but it lacks IS and according to many tests it's worse than 17-55/2.8. To be honest it's hard to make a fair comparison of these two lenses, because one is dedicated to cropped body and the other one to full frame, but...
Important thing is to have a set (body+lens) that gives you just better results and I'm convinced that 40D+17-55/2.8 IS will give better results than 5D MkI+24-70/2.8. Besides I - as a landscape photographer - need some wide angle lens. Of course I can choose 16-35/2.8 for 5D or even for 40D. In this case it's better to have 5D, because you can reach 16mm that is very wide. But again you can also have 40D+Tokina 12-24/4 that gives you similar results at muuuuuch lower price. And what's important at the end of the day is picture. But...
...it was the case of choosing 5D against 40D. Now we have new 5D MkII. This body is really amazing and has a lot to offer. It has more megapixels, can record movies in HD, has microadjustments for autofocus feature and many, many more... So I started the research again. Currently I've 40D+17-55/2.8IS and Tokina 12-24/4 - would need to get a 5D MkII + 24-70/2.8 and 16-35/2.8 MkII instead. The price of the latest set is more then twice as big as price of 40D set and would it give me really so much more possibilities for better pictures? I'm not convinced... but I'm trying to convince myself, because I like the body :)
After switching to the new set I'd have at least two problems... 1. lack of IS, 2. filter size 82 mm. First problem is not a big one, because I rarely use IS and personally I'm not big fan of IS technology. Of course it's useful sometimes, but I don't know for who? Landscape photographers use tripods, and reporters can't use IS, because they usually take pictures of moving objects and it's not a perfect use for IS. The only users of IS are probably amateur photographers that are to lazy to carry tripods and are taking pictures of architecture etc.
Second problem is filter diameter of 16-35/2.8 MkII - 82mm is something new for me. All my current lenses have diameter of 77 or sometimes 67mm. I've a plenty of filters that are 77mm in size and changing them all is impossible, because these filters are usually expensive. From the other side taking landscape pictures with such a lens with no filters is waste of time. So I would need to buy some more filters at 82 mm - another bucks to spend.
So finally I still don't have money for 5D MkII, lenses and filters so must wait till dollar will reach proper level and maybe then I'll buy. But I still don't believe to get so much better pictures, because as I always repeat - it's the photographer who take picture, not the camera. Camera can only help to take better picture and that's it.

No comments: