I received and interesting query the other day from someone wanting advice on what camera to upgrade to. Here’s he question:
“I am currently thoroughly enjoying your book “In search of an African Wild Dog”, which got me contemplating my upcoming holiday in Mkuze & Hlulhuwe. I am (at the moment, at least!) a Canon user with a 500mm f4 and 100-400 with a single 20d body. I also have the 10-22, 24-105 and 70-200 lenses. Given the issues with dust, lost opportunity, etc. in changing lenses, I am considering a second body. Herein lies my dilemma, I am undecided between the 7D and 5D bodies, and every second day, methinks I should rather spend less on the body and buy a 50D, before I switch minutes later to a MKIV (which in my more sober moments is simply too expensive for an occasional photographer). Please help as my wife no longer is interested in my monologues on indecision.
Any help appreciated (even the number of a budget psychiatrist)…”
First off, while the 20D was a great body in it’s day, camera technology has advanced so much in recent years that upgrading to either a 7D or 5D MkII would make a huge difference to image quality. The interesting thing is, which body? Like so much in photography, it depends… It depends on what you shoot. If you do mainly wildlife then the one to go for would be the 7D and then enjoy the benefits of the the 1.6 multiplication factor on the length of your lenses (More on this later). If the majority of your photography is fairly general – landscapes, people etc. then the 5D mkII would be the camera of choice. The Canon 7D uses a so called APS-C sized sensor which, at 22.2 x 14.8 MM, is smaller than the full frame (24 X 36mm) sensor used in the 5D and other full frame cameras. What this means is that it only utilises the central portion of the image projected by the lens and the effect is that the lens on the camera appears longer (by a factor of 1,6 with the 7D, 1,3 with the 1D and 1,5 with Nikon’s DX sensor cameras) than it is. The focal length of the lens remains the same of course. Let’s say you fitted a 300mm lens to a 7D. The effect would be like using a 480mm (300 X 1,6) lens on the 5D. Have a look at this graphically:
Comparison between full frame and APS-C format
This is a wonderful advantage if you are shooting wildlife. Your 500mm f4 lens now effectively becomes a 800mm f4! Wow! Have you any idea what that would cost if you could buy such a lens? The 100 – 400 effectively becomes a 160 – 640mm zoom. The downside is that the same happens to your wide angle lenses and that, ultimately you will get the best image quality (from a noise point of view) from a full frame sensor. I’m in no way suggesting that the 7D images are noisy – it’s just that, for any given ISO value and all other things being equal, the images produced by a full frame sensor will have less noise than an APS-C sensor.
The downside of a full frame sensor camera is that you cannot take advantage of the lower priced EF-S lenses – one has to go for the expensive but superb quality EF lenses.
You’ve got some superb lenses then and, if you can, go for either the 5D MkII or 7D rather than the 50D
Hope this helps. Need more info? Write to me.
