Canon 5D vs 40D

TallyHo

Hi,

Will be purchasing one of these next week and was looking for opinions on which would be the better one to go for.

I know the 5D is about to get replaced, but with the current canon incentives its only 500 CDN more than the 40D


Thanks

gus

That question is totally endless. You need to explain what you wish to use the camera for as a starter.

Also a lot of great info here & as pointed out in this thread..in the search function.




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TallyHo

Thanks, i will check it out

gus wrote:

That question is totally endless. You need to explain what you wish to use the camera for as a starter.

Also a lot of great info here & as pointed out in this thread..in the search function.




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Photoskipper

It depends on who you are.

If you are film user and just want to switch to dSLR, you will appreciate more on the 5D's full frame 12.8MP. If you have already had a dSLRs (with crop factors), you will find the 40D looks more familiar.

I like the 5D's full frame as I had been using negative and slides for ove 20 years. I see the picture looks very similar for landscape, marco and portrait. I owned a Rebel for few years but still not happy with the limited wide angle.

But, again like the discussion in other thread (Sport photography), the 40D has faster frame and shorter lag time which give you more muscle for sports photography. But the crop factor and lower pixal limited your print size. You need to get a 10 or 11 mm lens to achieve the 18 mm wide angle.

You may want to sit down for 15 minutes and ask yourself what you want to do with the new camera and what is your interest. Both camera are great, either one can give you sufficient fun.

Poseidon

Photoskipper wrote:

But the crop factor and lower pixal limited your print size.

I disagree, the only limit to print size is your wall space! I have printed 20x30 from a 6.3MP 10D file, and it looks FANTASTIC. Programs like genuine fractals, and others allow you to up res quite effectively, and besides, what is the viewing distance on such a large print?

Tommyboy

From a practical/economic standpoint, a successor to the 5D will likely be announced at the upcoming PMA. Now is not the time to purchase a 5D. You may still want to get one, but it would be prudent to see what the newer camera offers and see how the price points on both camera settle out.

FWIW, I got a 40D and love it.

jdryan3

Tommyboy wrote:

From a practical/economic standpoint, a successor to the 5D will likely be announced at the upcoming PMA. Now is not the time to purchase a 5D. You may still want to get one, but it would be prudent to see what the newer camera offers and see how the price points on both camera settle out.

10 days and counting

Tommyboy wrote:

FWIW, I got a 40D and love it.

FWIW, I got a 5D and love it. But I am looking at the 40D as a backup and for sports & telephoto work.

Freezframe

Application !!!!!
What are you using it for ????? IMO !!! If your a landscape ,nature,macro photographer. The 5D is probably your best bet.....The 40D for every day photography.More fps for sports is a big plus for me.

Weigh all your options on what you want and go from there....

Goodluck:Brady

Tee Why

Honestly, unless you are dedcated to the full frame format or intend to print very large as your default size or you mainly shoot in low light setting, I think the 40D represents a much better bargain. For the cost of a 5D body, you can probaby get a 40D and a nice lens or two.

TallyHo

I love landscape and want to get into more architecure and portraits which is why I was considering the 5D. I may just get the 40D for now and a few L lenses and then if i find i want to get really serious upgrade to full frame later on.

Photoskipper

Poseidon wrote:

I disagree, the only limit to print size is your wall space! I have printed 20x30 from a 6.3MP 10D file, and it looks FANTASTIC. Programs like genuine fractals, and others allow you to up res quite effectively, and besides, what is the viewing distance on such a large print?

I ever printed a poster with the file from my 6.3 MP Rebel. It looks ok. But I still like the presentation of 5D large print which make me feel more close to the old slide era. My 3.2 MP SonyEricssion phone and old Olympus C700 2.1MP give good picture and nice 3R print also.

But for the digital photographer, we are now enjoy more to to do some cropping and composition after a day of shooting. Larger sensor, lower noise level, and more pixal give us more room to play.

For landscape and portrait, I like to include a bit more and crop it off later so that I will not miss anything. Pull the file out at the middle of night and most of time I can find something more interesting to compose. :skippy

z_28

Buy both - then decide !

BTW - price diffrerence is actually about $1000 !!!
So two 40D's for one 5D.
Or maybe CDN are so valuable these days

TallyHo wrote:

Hi,

Will be purchasing one of these next week and was looking for opinions on which would be the better one to go for.

I know the 5D is about to get replaced, but with the current canon incentives its only 500 CDN more than the 40D


Thanks

Shizam

I agree with some of the other positings (having used both and more) to generalize I'd say if you plan on doing any or all of these four things consider the 5D, otherwise the 40D suit you much better:

1.Landscape
2.Architecture
3.Tilt-Shift lenses
4.Printing at or greater then 8x10

Sam

zafar

I have had both 40D and 5D for a two weeks now. Testing them side-by-side I can safely say that there is no argument in favor of 40D except cost.

The resolution, detail, contrast, color rendition of 5D are signficantly better than 40D. When I bought 40D I was upgrading from Nikon D70. I ran both side by side and there was no differnce in picture quality with comparable lenses.

When I did 40D/5D comparison; 5D stood out immediately. In my testing I found
1. 5D makes better photos with cheaper lenses
2. 5D photos, when viewed 100%, look normal. 40D (or any 1.6 crop cameras) at 100% look fuzzy. You have to downsample the 1.6 images to get good image.
3. 5D gives better color than 40D for the same picture style

Theoretical 40D advantages (or myths):
1. 1.6 crop gives you better telephoto. In my experience, in most cases I could blow up 5D image 200% and still get a better picture than 40D at 100%. This is because of the better local contrast in 5D files. When the image is blown up, the resizing algorithm can create better image due to better contrast. I would not recommend using 40D images at 100% (much less at 200%).

2. Frame rate. If you are shooting action sports or shooting wild-life action and absolutely need 5+ frames per second, 5D will not work for you. However in many cases you do not care to catch just that right moment when the ball strikes the bat. In most cases you need fast focus and clear picture. 5D gives you that! Shoot at ISO 1600 and increase your shutter speed to catch the action! In my opinion 5D is quite good for sports photography and very good for bird/wild life photos. It will focus fast and apture great details.

My choice? Even though I know 5D is up for a replacement, I am selling the 40D and keeping 5D. I am justifying the cost by using cheaper lenses for now (a combination which gives better images than 40D+L). It doesn't matter that a 5D replacement is likely to appear in August. Even with a 6D, my 5D will continue to give me the best photo quality that there is (sometimes even beating 1Ds cameras if some reviewers are to be believed).

Ask me if you would like to see some of my comparison shots.

rwells

zafar wrote:

Ask me if you would like to see some of my comparison shots.

I'm askin'


I'm on the fence about the 5D myself, and this comparison would be welcome.

Photoskipper

zafar wrote:

I have had both 40D and 5D for a two weeks now. Testing them side-by-side I can safely say that there is no argument in favor of 40D except cost.

The resolution, detail, contrast, color rendition of 5D are signficantly better than 40D. When I bought 40D I was upgrading from Nikon D70. I ran both side by side and there was no differnce in picture quality with comparable lenses.

When I did 40D/5D comparison; 5D stood out immediately. In my testing I found
1. 5D makes better photos with cheaper lenses
2. 5D photos, when viewed 100%, look normal. 40D (or any 1.6 crop cameras) at 100% look fuzzy. You have to downsample the 1.6 images to get good image.
3. 5D gives better color than 40D for the same picture style

Theoretical 40D advantages (or myths):
1. 1.6 crop gives you better telephoto. In my experience, in most cases I could blow up 5D image 200% and still get a better picture than 40D at 100%. This is because of the better local contrast in 5D files. When the image is blown up, the resizing algorithm can create better image due to better contrast. I would not recommend using 40D images at 100% (much less at 200%).

2. Frame rate. If you are shooting action sports or shooting wild-life action and absolutely need 5+ frames per second, 5D will not work for you. However in many cases you do not care to catch just that right moment when the ball strikes the bat. In most cases you need fast focus and clear picture. 5D gives you that! Shoot at ISO 1600 and increase your shutter speed to catch the action! In my opinion 5D is quite good for sports photography and very good for bird/wild life photos. It will focus fast and apture great details.

My choice? Even though I know 5D is up for a replacement, I am selling the 40D and keeping 5D. I am justifying the cost by using cheaper lenses for now (a combination which gives better images than 40D+L). It doesn't matter that a 5D replacement is likely to appear in August. Even with a 6D, my 5D will continue to give me the best photo quality that there is (sometimes even beating 1Ds cameras if some reviewers are to be believed).

Ask me if you would like to see some of my comparison shots.

I agree with Zafar. here is a 5D with 24 -104L photo taken in raw and converted to Jpeg without editing.
But I am also planning to get a 40D to replace the old 300D. For the speed and wildlife photos.

ziggy53

Zafar,

Welcome to the Digital Grin.

I would also be interested in comparison images as well as your impressions on low-light and low contrast focusing.

zafar

bummer. I wasn't serious when I offered to share the images:). So I had to go and prepare those for posting. You can see some here. Dont expect to see great images, just pixel-peeping.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13209786@N04/sets/72157603827705006/
I will try to add more next week and update the forum.

I have not tried to compare the focus performance of 40D and 5D specifically. However I can say that shooting at night I didn't have any complaints with 40D. However it seems that 5D should do a little better in low-light as it seems to have about 1/3 stop more sensitivity to light (see the brighter images for the same exposure in the link above, I also read this in a 5D review somwhere).

I will try it out next week.

Zafar

Photoskipper

some calculations
Just dug into the specification of current EOS DSLRs and compare with my old 300D. I found something interesting.

I must declare that I only copy the specification from the website and it may have some error or omit errors. It is not an official document for comparison. readers should use their own judgement and refer to the official data. (just to cover my backside for any legal issues)

It seems the 40D has the highest pixal density per mm sq area.

If I use the same fix focal lenght lens on all models, and crop it to the same size photo, 40D may give me the most of pixals while the 5D give half of what 40D and even less than the old 300D.


ModelOfficial pixal no.Crop factorSensor size / mmPixals (No.)Pixal/ mm sqPixal as 1.6X crop WidthHeighttotal areaWidthHeighttotal Pixal300D6.3 MP1.6X22.715.1342.773152206865183361901765183365D12.8 MP1 X35.823.9855.62436829121271961614866509560640D10.1 MP1.6 X22.214.8328.56388825921007769630672100776961Ds MK321.1 MP1 X362486456163744210263042433679958361D Mk310.1 MP1.3X28.118.7525.473888259210077696191786301269

I am not sure whether it is a fair comparison.

Again, the lower pixal / mm sq area means more distance between pixal and expose to more light and less noise.

any comment?

zafar

Yeah well. Many pocket consumer cameras cram 10 mega pixels in a sensor the size of your fingernail. They have the highest pixel density but not the best picture. More pixels don't mean better image quality.

The flip side of this argument is the crowd claiming the superiority of full-frame chips because of bigger sized pixels (captures more light, etc.). oh yeah? So this mean that 3MP DSLR should have better image quality then 10MP DSLR because it has bigger pixels, right? NOT!

The truth is that the signal/noise ratio and the sensitivity of each pixel is dependent on many esoteric electrical and physical characteristics of the sensor, the details of which we may never know, understand, or care for. Some of the technical challenges in designing a FF sensor are outlined in Sony's recent press release announcing development of 24.7MP FF sensor.

Zafar

zafar

Here is a very interesting comparison between a camera phone, Xt, and 5D.
http://www.16-9.net/lens_tests/k800i/index.html

Draw your own conclusions!

Bendr

zafar wrote:

Here is a very interesting comparison between a camera phone, Xt, and 5D.
http://www.16-9.net/lens_tests/k800i/index.html

Draw your own conclusions!

:giggle What a comparison!

Photoskipper

I have similar line up at home

zafar wrote:

Here is a very interesting comparison between a camera phone, Xt, and 5D.
http://www.16-9.net/lens_tests/k800i/index.html

Draw your own conclusions!

I love the test. Thanks a lot to Zafar.

I have almost exactly the same line up on my desk now. But it is 300D (an older version) instead of 350D. I love my K800i very much. I had been using the O2Xda II 2MP phone before I changed to K880i. It is very useful to take the document copy, record any notice board, map, direction and anything happen to be next to me.

Although the K800i meet most of my expectation, the low light photo is unacceptable, the flash range is very limited, the close up distortion is not acceptable and the digital zoom is useless. (but I need to be reasonable accept it is just a camera phone)


I got this photo with the K800i in good day light. Put it side-by-side with same photo taken by 5D/24-105 F4, nobody knows it is from the phone. When I enlarged it to 18X24, it has significant difference.

May run a similar test this weekend and look for the good excuse to upgrade to 850i - 5 MP camera phone.

NeilL

zafar wrote:

Here is a very interesting comparison between a camera phone, Xt, and 5D.
http://www.16-9.net/lens_tests/k800i/index.html

Draw your own conclusions!

Interesting, thanks!

A pushbike, a cheapie Korean and a top-end German car can all go 30mph. Similarities don't always dissolve differences...