Canon 5DMkII or 1DsMkIII

scubabuzz

I have been considering buying a 1DsMkIII to go along with my 5D. Actually the 5D would become the backup and the 1DsMkIII would become the primary. When Canon announced the 5DMkII I started looking at that as a possible alternative to my plan. I shoot landscape and nature and was thinking that I would benefit from the faster AF of the 1DsMkIII over the higher ISO of the 5DMkII. I don't do much low light photography off of a tripod or without a flash. My question is which one would be better for my type of shooting? I am guessing that the noise level at the 100-1600 ISO range will be very close so I am not too worried about that. Any comments are welcome.

Joe

swintonphoto

The 1DS mkIII is built in my opinion for people who need lots of frames per second, integrated vertical grip, etc - people like sports photographers, press photographers, very busy wedding photographers etc. I see the 5DmdII serving more people who are focused on artwork, weddings, portraits, etc who don't always need an integrated battery grip, don't need a zillion frames per second, etc.
From your description, the 5DmkII sounds like a better fit to me.

ziggy53

Joe,

The short answer would be that if you are happy with the Canon 5D you would probably be very happy with the Canon 5D MKII.

If you ever had difficulty with either the autofocus (AF) speed or accuracy then the Canon 1Ds MKIII might be a better solution.

It would appear from the specifications that the imaging chip is very similar on both cameras. It is not too clear if the processing section is the same and some early reports show the 5D MKII as even slightly better at high-ISO noise control. (Could be the result of many different things.)

For sure the 1Ds MKIII has a greatly different and generally improved AF sensor and AF processor and the shutter mechanism is rated at about 3x the actuations.

In the end both are probably arguably suitable for your basic task.