I probably should have started my 5D blogging with this post, but it’s only just dawned on me that it might not be a common thing for people to choose to do…

When I started shooting with my 20D I was impressed with it’s low-light ability compared to 35mm film but after the novelty of changing ISO between shots wore off, I naturally started experimenting with ISO 1600, H (ISO 3200) and also H-2 (two stops under exposure, on the basis that shooting in RAW mostly allows up to 2 stops of recovery in post). The results weren’t pretty, although I did spend some time underexposing ISO 1600 to compare to H, the resulting banding noise patterns were very obvious, and very digital.

Fast forward to this year, and my love of trying to take candid pictures in dark places (eg: wedding receptions) hasn’t abated but DSLR’s are now sporting ISO 12,800 as a normal top range option, and the recent crop of compacts such as the Panasonic Lumix and micro 4/3 systems were also looking very attractive until I started playing with the data provided by DxOMark (NB: Flash required for a fair amount of the data display).

DxOMark have a standardised approach to testing cameras, sensors (and more recently lenses) to come up with a ‘magic’ number for the quality of a camera – I’m not about to dive off into a Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance discussion on quality here, but one aspect of their testing is very interesting to me: what they term Sports shooting. Here’s an extract from their page on the Use Case Scores:

“When shooting a moving scene such as a sports event, action photographers’ primary objective is to freeze the motion, giving priority to short exposure time. To compensate for the lack of exposure, they have to increase the ISO setting, which means the SNR will decrease. How far can they go while keeping decent quality? Our metric, Low-Light ISO, will tell them.”

So how does my 20D stack up against the 5D and more interestingly, against recent cameras such as the 7D, 550D and the 5D Mk II (ok, not that recent, but at least it’s current) ? Go to the menu on the left, click on “Camera Sensor” and then “Compare Sensors” and you should get this page. Note that the 550D has a top ISO setting of 12,800, compared to the 20D’s 3200, but only a marginal increase in the Sports rating.

I should stop here and point out that the 550D has many more compelling features than the 20D, not least of which is the pixel count: to get that many pixels into the same area and still manage to edge out the 20D in terms of noise is a truly remarkable achievement, and yes, I have ignored the potential improvement in image quality if I pixel-binned in post the 17MP 550D down to an 8MP 20D equivalent. HD video, Live View and more are also 100% ignored…

What interested me most was the exposure (sorry) of the internal logic inside Canon: what appears to have been done is to design a sensor with as many MP as possible, but with performance that can be measurably and accurately shown to be not worse than previous generations. Yes, if they made an 8MP sensor today it would have a far, far better low-light ability (they could make it 16MP in reality and pixel-bin, for example) but I wanted to know which camera gives the best low-light performance and will still accept my collection of lenses.

Go to “Camera Sensor” and “Sensor Rankings” to get this information – I can’t offer a direct link this time, but choose “Canon” as the manufacturer, leave the sensor size set to “Sensor format” (ie: all sizes), leave “Mpix” and “Price” alone, and click on the “Sports” button.

Now you will have the year of release along the bottom, and the DxOMark scores up the side, with higher being better. If you follow the band of triangles along the graph from left to right just under the 800 line, you’ll notice that most of the xxD and xxxD cameras fall into that very specific quality range, with very little variance: it’s almost as if new cameras were brought out when the sensor tech advanced sufficiently to squeeze in another MP or two and keep the noise inline with past models. The two highest values are recorded for the 5D Mk II and the 1Ds Mk III, but go back to between 2005 and 2006 and there’s the original 5D: a camera whose low light ability is only bested by the flagship 1D series, or it’s own successor…

Factor in the price of the better cameras plus the fact that photography is not income generating for me (it’s not even income-neutral) and going for a 5 year old system seems a lot more logical.

I was intending to mention the dealers I bought the second hand gear from, mainly because the descriptions and packaging were excellent and they deserve to be credited, but I’ve also been asked a few more general photography purchasing related questions today and so have decided to compile a list of all the places I’ve had good service from in the past:

Ffordes Photographic
Based in Scotland, and used multiple times by my Dad for 2nd hand Contax lenses and more recently by me for the Canon 5D body. Superb quality gear: I honestly couldn’t have said that the 5D was used until I spotted a small paint scuff on the flash hotshoe – and this wasn’t even the best quality level for 2nd hand goods.

MPB Photographic
This is where I got the used Canon 17-40mm F4 L to go with the 5D and again, even though it wasn’t the highest quality rating I simply cannot find any faults or markings. Excellent.

Camtech
Local 2nd hand camera dealer: was happy to let me go and visit them one lunchtime to buy a lens rather than insisting I had to have it posted (they are an internet shop who visit some camera fairs and not a retail establishment). The Sigma 10-20mm was in excellent condition, and has been in regular use ever since with no problems.

Warehouse Express
The largest purchase from WE was my Tamron 28-75 f2.8, which was at an unfortunate time when the quality control at Tamron was going through a bad patch. As a result I needed to send back two lenses before I got one that worked, and I was initially rather disturbed at the returns procedure (no need for an RMA !), but there was never a dispute in sending out a new lens, and I also received a follow-up call one evening from a manager there checking up that the 3rd lens was indeed ok. More recently they had the Lowepro Slingshot AW100 on sale, and that arrived very quickly indeed.

Park Cameras
Not used them myself, but my Dad did for his Sigma SD14 body, and they were very helpful on the phone and provided an excellent quality of service.

Morris Photographic
I bought my Tamrac Adventure 9, and also an Adventure 7 (a present: I don;t have that much of a bag fetish) from here, and the transaction was quick and painless. They even had no problems shipping to a different address after I’d faxed them a change note.

Mifsuds
Again, not a shop I’ve used myself, but they come highly recommended from many quarters: would not hesitate to use them if they had what I wanted.

7dayshop
A Channel Islands-based retailer, who can live up to their name if you choose the free delivery option (ie: it takes 7 working days to arrive…) – in the interests of fairness I haven’t chosen the extra charge P&P, which they claim cuts out the delays of the free shipping. Have used them extensively for small-ish items such as NiCD batteries, chargers, LensPens, ND filters, CompactFlash cards etc. The one time I’ve needed to return a faulty USB memory stick there was no fuss, and the replacement was provided quickly and accurately.

DigitalRev
A Hong Kong based camera shop, who also had an eBay store when I last used them. Not bought anything particularly expensive from there, as I was always wary about customs charges and warranties on grey imports, but they had the most outstanding prices on polarising filters (72mm for 30 UKP or so when shop in the UK were asking 120 UKP !), and the filters I have bought were all great, and delivered without any problems at all.

I’ve recently become the (very happy) owner of a second hand Canon EOS 5D, and despite the camera being 5 years old this year the difference between it and my previous Canon EOS 20D is stunning. One unexpected change was the difference in the depth of field at any given f-stop between a full-frame and APS-C sensor: take a look at this review page for a clear summary, but that (like the dimensions of a mobile phone) didn’t mean much until I started shooting with it.

I have done a lot of 35mm photography (along with 110, 126 and some medium format), more years, infact, than I have been shooting digital, so I can’t say for sure if my DoF expectations have been coloured by my early shooting, or if it’s simply that the whole relationship between f-stop of DoF just feels more natural at 35mm. I’m leaning towards my own experience colouring my judgement, as medium format photographers probably regard 35mm DoF as hideously deep…

There’s no 20D vs 5D pictures here, just a selection of 5D images taken with a Canon 17-40mm f4 L and a 50mm f1.8 with some post-processing has been done in Aperture 2 (click for a larger set):

The vignetting is also a lot more pronounced, especially at the 17mm end of the 17-40. Again, nothing too surprising on paper, and the subject of many press-releases since the 5D came out from Canon and other manufacturers, carefully describing the latest improvement in micro-lenses or sensor pit depths. The 50mm example fares much better than the wide images, again, not surprisingly.

Does the darkening impact my photography ? Not that much, actually. I’ve not been shooting for that long with the camera, but I have to admit to an almost unhealthy addiction to the Vignette tool in Aperture when processing my 20D images so for the most part the edges are acceptable to me (I would very much like to upgrade to Aperture 3 so that I can de-vignette in post when the images calls for it, but so far the experience of the trial version has left me unable to do so).

Well this was well buried in the normal media:

European Court rejects Home Office appeal, Section 44 found illegal – British Journal of Photography.

Excellent news, and not a moment too soon considering the latest inane activities in Romford:

Young photojournalist detained for army cadet pics – British Journal of Photography.

I can only hope that the lack of a formal complaint to date is due to potentially deeper legal action based on the European Court ruling.