# History: The Original Canon EOS 5D Camera



## Canon Rumors Guy (Dec 6, 2013)

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<p><strong>From B&H Photo

</strong>B&H Photo has posted a nice article about the coming of the original Canon EOS 5D camera body. At the time, it was the first full frame camera that was “affordable”.</p>
<p><strong>A snippet from the article

</strong><em>“Most photographers in the mid 2000′s had developed their eye using 35mm film cameras. When they attached a 50mm lens and looked through the viewfinder, they expected to see a 50mm focal range. However, nearly all the DSLR cameras available at the time were using APS-C-sized sensors, which introduce a significant amount of crop factor. The classic nifty fifty is cropped to 80mm. This compromise threw many people off, and proved to be a persistent nuisance.”</em><strong>

</strong></p>
<p>The original Canon EOS 5D was the first full frame camera I ever used. I borrowed it a lot from the photo store I worked at, I just couldn’t go back to my EOS 40D, which was a great camera in its own right. I didn’t actually own a full frame camera until late into the life of the 5D Mark II, as I was using APS-H for a long time with the 1D3 and 1D4.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/insights/blogs/photography/history-canon-5d-it-arrived-2005.html/bi/2466/kbid/3296" target="_blank">Read the full article</a></strong></p>
<p><strong><span style="color: #ff0000;">c</span>r</strong></p>
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## sanj (Dec 6, 2013)

Thank you admins for posting this.


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## sjp010 (Dec 6, 2013)

Still using mine! And my 40D is still collecting dust!


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## Joynt Inspirations (Dec 6, 2013)

Stellar read! So glad this was posted.


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## Click (Dec 6, 2013)

Thanks for the link.


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## vscd (Dec 6, 2013)

For me the Classic 5D is still one of the best cameras around. The 12MP on a FullFrame Sensor and it's lowlightcapabilities are still awesome. Some may miss liveview (I don't) but everything else is up to date. Don't believe the hype of the "new".


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## BL (Dec 6, 2013)

a landmark camera and a real game changer back in 2005.

i still love using mine with a high precision screen and only put it down when i need live view or small form factor.

bravo cannon!


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Dec 6, 2013)

I bought a guys entire camera system to upgrade my rebel way back then, it included the 5D, flashes, Epson portable file viewer, flash, set of 3 Canon extension tubes, flash, canon remote, right angle viewer, and so on. I bought a new 24-70mmL and immediately disliked the camera. The lens made it unbalanced, and it felt way to heavy. I returned the lens, and sold most of the stuff I bought for about twice what I paid for it, and bought a new 40D which I loved. When the 5D MK II came out, I pre-ordered, since I was ready for a bigger and heavier body by then.


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## Knut Skywalker (Dec 6, 2013)

Interesting to see that a single series of cameras has revolutionized the industry twice. The first 5D was the first affordable FF digital camera and the "camera that killed film" and the MkII the first FF camera that featured 1080p video recording and low-light capabilities better than the "real" movie cameras back then, which was followed by a crazy hype in low-budget-filmmaking. 

I bought my 5D MkII in 2012 and enjoy using it nearly every day.


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## mrsfotografie (Dec 6, 2013)

Knut Skywalker said:


> Interesting to see that a single series of cameras has revolutionized the industry twice. The first 5D was the first affordable FF digital camera and the "camera that killed film" and the MkII the first FF camera that featured 1080p video recording and low-light capabilities better than the "real" movie cameras back then, which was followed by a crazy hype in low-budget-filmmaking.
> 
> I bought my 5D MkII in 2012 and enjoy using it nearly every day.



With the MkII, the 5D came of age. A better camera in most respects, such a ergonomics and the all important sensor cleaning technology plus an expanded usable iso range. Sure it still wasn't a sports camera, but boy what a joy it is to use. The ability to change focus screens (ie precision screens) makes this more of a 'real' camera than the MkIII (try using MF lenses and you know what I mean). 

I bought my MkII in january 2010 and still haven't felt the need to 'upgrade'. I think I would sooner replace my 7D.


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## ksagomonyants (Dec 6, 2013)

Love my 5d. There's something special in the images it takes.


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## KAS (Dec 6, 2013)

Definitely agree with the post...and with all the above comments.

The 5D classic really got me onto the FF bandwagon. As much as I enjoy the new features on the mk III, I really really miss being able to change the focus screen. It really is the physical characteristics of the camera that make it good...not so much all the software/firmware features.


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## Rienzphotoz (Dec 6, 2013)

+1 for all of the above


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## RGomezPhotos (Dec 6, 2013)

It's great that the 5D was the first 'affordable' full frame camera. I've seen pics from it and the quality is on par with just about anything today. I agree with an earlier statement. Don't be fooled by 'new'. Newer cameras have some features that make taking pictures easier in less than ideal conditions. But how many people does that truly affect?


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## JonAustin (Dec 6, 2013)

It's amazing to look back just a few short years and realize how much has (and hasn't) changed.

I bought a 5D in 2007, and relegated my 20D to back-up status. When traveling, I frequently carried both bodies: the 5D with a wide / normal range lens, and the 20D with a telezoom, since the 20D offered higher resolution than an APS-C-sized crop of the 5D RAW image.

I skipped the 5D2 and bought a 5D3 about a year ago. The features I like most are the AF system, locking mode dial and repositioned and resized DoF preview button. Most of the time, I shoot in MRAW, since 10MP is enough for the vast majority of my applications. 

An APS-C-equivalent crop of the 5D3's sensor is higher resolution than the 20D, so nowadays when I travel, I use the 5D with a wide / normal lens, the 5D3 with the tele, and the 20D sits on the shelf. I keep hoping that a niece or nephew will want to use the 20D as a starter body for dipping her / his toes into SLR photography. When I want longer reach than my lens will afford (and when I remember to do it), I switch the 5D3 resolution to full RAW, and crop those 22 MP in post.

I'm looking forward to the inevitable price drop of the 5D3 when the 5D4 is released. Short of a miracle in new technology, I'll be happy to pick up a second 5D3 for about $2K, retire the 5D and call it a day.


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## sulla (Dec 6, 2013)

Oh yea, the 5D is still a very fine camera.
It serves me well every day.


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## tianxiaozhang (Dec 6, 2013)

Still a decent camera.. 

Although I must rant.. it's been this many years and it's still the utterly unreliable 50/1.4 on (nearly) every camera's press photo..


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## Lee Jay (Dec 7, 2013)

sjp010 said:


> Still using mine! And my 40D is still collecting dust!



Still using my 5D and 20D.


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## dppaskewitz (Dec 7, 2013)

My 5Dc is still going strong. For a long time, when I wanted to have two bodies going, I paired it with my 30D (the controls are virtually identical). When I upgraded to the 6D earlier this year, it was because I wanted to have live view, focus adjustment and auto sensor cleaning. Thought those might be nice to have (and so far I do like those features). I had no real dissatisfaction from what I was getting from the 5Dc (from a quality standpoint - my skill level is another matter). The 30D has gone to e-bay land.


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## RLPhoto (Dec 7, 2013)

I still preferred the colors out of my 5Dc than my MK3s. I skipped the mk2 series because it wasn't worth upgrading for me.


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## privatebydesign (Dec 7, 2013)

RLPhoto said:


> I still preferred the colors out of my 5Dc than my MK3s. I skipped the mk2 series because it wasn't worth upgrading for me.



I never understand comments like this. It is digital, why not profile your camera to get whatever "look" you want from it? The free with every Canon camera ever Picture Style Editor is a remarkably powerful program that you can even edit and save then upload your "look" to the camera Picture Styles menu, and every shot with that style comes out looking exactly as you'd like it to.


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## deleteme (Dec 7, 2013)

privatebydesign said:


> RLPhoto said:
> 
> 
> > I still preferred the colors out of my 5Dc than my MK3s. I skipped the mk2 series because it wasn't worth upgrading for me.
> ...



Thanks for that. I have been using Canon digital since my 10D and never looked at that software.


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## epsiloneri (Dec 7, 2013)

privatebydesign said:


> RLPhoto said:
> 
> 
> > I still preferred the colors out of my 5Dc than my MK3s. I skipped the mk2 series because it wasn't worth upgrading for me.
> ...


There's more to colours than simply three numbers. E.g., the colour separation (amount of "cross-talk" between colours) might be different between different detectors (I'm not saying it is for 5D and 5D2, just that it could be). The Bayer detector has three filters: R, G, & B. By making the filters broader in wavelength, you gain some sensitivity, but you also run the risk of having the filters overlap in wavelength and counting the same light twice, e.g. for both R and G, and that will decrease the colour fidelity in your image compared to filters where there is less overlap.

So, not all detectors necessarily reproduce colours the same way, and it is no possible to correct in software (because it would be an ill-posed inverse process).


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## mrsfotografie (Dec 7, 2013)

JonAustin said:


> Most of the time, I shoot in MRAW, since 10MP is enough for the vast majority of my applications.



+1, there are not many that do this but I guess it also depends when you've started photography. I was never disappointed about the 10 megapixels resolution from the 40D that was my first DSLR, so I've pretty much accepted that as my base resolution.


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## Rick (Dec 7, 2013)

*Not sure the 5D needed a retrospective*

After all, it's overall IQ was not outstanding and even for it's time. a primative camera operationally. Bear in mind the hyperbole-master Ken Rockwell had a hand in this article.

What is of great value in this article are statements by Tyler Stableford, one of Canon's "Explorers of Light." 

*"The 5D brought amazing image quality in a package so much smaller and light - and less expensive. The 5D was easier to pack into the mountains or hip bag on a ski day."*

Canon should listen to their celebrity shooter here. The idea of bringing the next hi-rez camera in a 1 Series body with its traditional size/weight and pricing is a bad idea. Studio shooters will compromise on size/weight, many have by using the 5D series in this role. But few will want to carry a brick into the backcountry and fewer will pay a 1 Series price tag.


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## Rick (Dec 7, 2013)

epsiloneri said:


> privatebydesign said:
> 
> 
> > RLPhoto said:
> ...



I'm throwing a flag on this statement. First off, anybody willing to accept the overall IQ of the 5D over later versions should have no problem adjusting color in ACR or other top-end editors. Secondly, since your statement is non-specific, it has no vlaue in a 5D vs "anything else" conversation.


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## RLPhoto (Dec 7, 2013)

privatebydesign said:


> RLPhoto said:
> 
> 
> > I still preferred the colors out of my 5Dc than my MK3s. I skipped the mk2 series because it wasn't worth upgrading for me.
> ...


You don't understand because you can't decipher outside of a test chart.


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## sjp010 (Dec 7, 2013)

It's so wonderful to see how an article that simply reminisces about the 5D can devolve into snippy comments on this forum. Why don't we all just agree that the 5D was notable in the recent history of photography. Then we can each get on with our lives, and we can each go out and shoot some photos with whatever gear we find acceptable.


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## mrsfotografie (Dec 7, 2013)

tianxiaozhang said:


> Although I must rant.. it's been this many years and it's still the utterly unreliable 50/1.4 on (nearly) every camera's press photo..



I agree.


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## dppaskewitz (Dec 8, 2013)

sjp010 said:


> It's so wonderful to see how an article that simply reminisces about the 5D can devolve into snippy comments on this forum. Why don't we all just agree that the 5D was notable in the recent history of photography. Then we can each get on with our lives, and we can each go out and shoot some photos with whatever gear we find acceptable.



+1


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## gfoulk (Dec 8, 2013)

sjp010 said:


> It's so wonderful to see how an article that simply reminisces about the 5D can devolve into snippy comments on this forum. Why don't we all just agree that the 5D was notable in the recent history of photography. Then we can each get on with our lives, and we can each go out and shoot some photos with whatever gear we find acceptable.



But... but... someone is wrong on the internet!
http://xkcd.com/386/


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## sjp010 (Dec 9, 2013)

gfoulk said:


> sjp010 said:
> 
> 
> > It's so wonderful to see how an article that simply reminisces about the 5D can devolve into snippy comments on this forum. Why don't we all just agree that the 5D was notable in the recent history of photography. Then we can each get on with our lives, and we can each go out and shoot some photos with whatever gear we find acceptable.
> ...


Nice one!


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## privatebydesign (Dec 9, 2013)

sjp010 said:


> gfoulk said:
> 
> 
> > sjp010 said:
> ...



Well yes and no, now you think it is fine to censure people who are only interested in correcting incorrect statements and fallacies, if that dumbing down and misinformation is your goal, well done, you are getting there.


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## Rienzphotoz (Dec 9, 2013)

sjp010 said:


> gfoulk said:
> 
> 
> > sjp010 said:
> ...


+1 ... yours truly is guilty as charged :-[


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## vscd (Dec 9, 2013)

> Well yes and no, now you think it is fine to censure people who are only interested in correcting incorrect statements and fallacies, if that dumbing down and misinformation is your goal, well done, you are getting there.



I think he was only concerned about the atmosphere in the forum. And by the way, I think your statement was wrong. With picture styles only, you can't correct some of the special characteristics of some cameras.


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## Sporgon (Dec 9, 2013)

*Re: Not sure the 5D needed a retrospective*



Rick said:


> After all, it's overall IQ was not outstanding and even for it's time.



There's some truth in this statement. Up until 2005 I'd been a Nikon user for about thirty years, the last Nikon camera that I had was the D200, bought at about the same time I moved to Canon because if the 5D being an 'affordable' FF camera. I really hated the crop factor of the APS sensor size. The Canon won, because it was FF, and I left Nikon for good. 

However I think the CCD in the D200 gave better overall IQ than the 5D with the exception of outright resolution where, of course, the 13 mp FF sensor left the 10 mp APS eating dust. It took me some to time to get away from the 'harshness' or 'hardness' of the 5D files, call it what you will. It seemed to suffer from an abrupt change into both highlight and lowlight. Also the 5D cost twice as much as the D200 on 2005. 

I've found the 5D II gives significantly better results in terms of graduation to highlight/lowlight, contrast and colour rendition. So much for DxO's colour metric or what ever they call it. 

Haven't seem the same increase in 'IQ' with the 6D against the 5D II at low ISOs. Maybe the 6D is a fraction better in its tonal graduation.


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## privatebydesign (Dec 9, 2013)

vscd said:


> > Well yes and no, now you think it is fine to censure people who are only interested in correcting incorrect statements and fallacies, if that dumbing down and misinformation is your goal, well done, you are getting there.
> 
> 
> 
> I think he was only concerned about the atmosphere in the forum. And by the way, I think your statement was wrong. With picture styles only, you can't correct some of the special characteristics of some cameras.



Picture Styles does have some limitations, like getting those settings applied to RAW files in third party software, but it is very powerful, with six HSL primary colour adjustments, there isn't much you can't correct for, certainly the differences between a 5D and a 5D MkIII are no issue.

However, basic dual illuminant profiles are much more robust, and if colour accuracy is your goal then the only way to go. Sure there are limitations even to those kinds of profiles, but none that anybody here is ever likely to run into. It might be nice theorising about Bayer array filter interaction, but the truth is cameras are capable of capturing the range of light we can see and we are capable of profiling that data, however "inaccurately" it might have been recorded, to be an accurate representation of the colours we see. If 24 patch dual illuminant profiles don't cut it, one, you already know this stuff and two, you know you can use more patches to create even better profiles.

People might dismiss this post, I don't really care, but who amongst you would not do a WB, or profile your monitor? Well profiling your camera is just one step further down the road to consistent and accurate output. I don't understand why that is so antagonistic, or why it isn't understood to be a normaliser just like WB.

Image this scenario, shoot a wedding with a 5D and a 5D MkIII, WB is set to 5,000 on the 5D and Auto on the 5D MkIII, when you come to process the images the dress colour is all over the place, would you not normalise the WB? Well if you take 2 minutes to profile both cameras first not only will WB and dress colour be 100% consistent across shots, but also the ribbons and skin tones will match. Well that is how I work.


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## epsiloneri (Dec 28, 2013)

Rick said:


> I'm throwing a flag on this statement.


I'm not sure what this idiomatic expression means, but I suspect it's not a compliment on my insightful post...



Rick said:


> First off, anybody willing to accept the overall IQ of the 5D over later versions should have no problem adjusting color in ACR or other top-end editors. Secondly, since your statement is non-specific, it has no vlaue in a 5D vs "anything else" conversation.


In the text you quote I was responding to a specific question by privatebydesign (here rephrased): Why is the colour reproduction of different sensors discussed at all, when profiling ought to make them all identical? As I explained, the mapping of a full spectral distribution into three numbers (R, G, B) depends on the particular filter curves of the sensor. Profiling helps in making this mapping as close as possible to some standard, but it is in general not possible for sensors with different filter curves to give the same colours for arbitrary spectral distributions, _no matter how careful the profiling_. I can give a more detailed explanation with examples to help you see why this is so, if you are interested, but I suspect you are not.

In summary, that is why claims of "better colour fidelity" of a particular sensor (in this case that of 5D) cannot be simply discounted by arguing that you can always profile away any differences, since that is not generally true.



privatebydesign said:


> Picture Styles does have some limitations, like getting those settings applied to RAW files in third party software, but it is very powerful, with six HSL primary colour adjustments, there isn't much you can't correct for, certainly the differences between a 5D and a 5D MkIII are no issue.


I'm sure the colour reproductions you can get from 5D and 5D3 are similar enough to not be an issue, but I find the claims of 5D's higher colour fidelity interesting and wouldn't mind seeing some evidence for it.


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## privatebydesign (Dec 29, 2013)

epsiloneri said:


> privatebydesign said:
> 
> 
> > Picture Styles does have some limitations, like getting those settings applied to RAW files in third party software, but it is very powerful, with six HSL primary colour adjustments, there isn't much you can't correct for, certainly the differences between a 5D and a 5D MkIII are no issue.
> ...



I quite agree, often claimed but never illustrated.


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## Kiboko (Dec 29, 2013)

Disappointed in this article because I immediately jumped to it on skim-reading "History: The Original Canon EOS 5......." I thought this was a forum item on my beautiful pristine and much prized as new thoroughly mint EOS 5 which LCE won't consider in P/E because it's simply "too old" and I could probably only sell for £40 on eBay for much the same reason! (bought it new just before they discontinued it as a replacement for my old one because I thought it was such a great camera, without the expense of the 3 or indeed the 1). It will no doubt become an antique in the future, a working pristine one at that!


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