Fullframe fever. Am I crazy?

So my wife wanted a bit of a wider lens than our 50mm for our 7D. I'm assuming she also needed a wide aperture, or she would have just used the kit lens (ours is super sharp, so I've been in no rush to replace it). People seem to really like the 30mm Sigma, so I went and added it to my cart, along with a few other odds and ends. Then I did a quick peek into the used section, and that's where it all started to go horribly wrong.

In the used section, I saw I could have a 5D for $150 more than the 30mm lens. There's the cheap full frame everyone wants! Sure it won't have the best high-ISO, and the resolution would be a bit worse, but I'd have a full frame! Our 50mm on the 5D would act like the 30mm on the 7D, solving the original issue, but also our 85mm and 70-300L would get magic transformations too. I'd get the choice of moving in with the 5D to get bokeh, and a perspective shift to get more background, or I could stay back with the 7D to minimize how much background is visible. I'd have a camera for when I can't back up, and a camera for when I can't get closer... All these options open up, for the same price as a low-end lens. Amazing.

The wife also wants servo performance. The 5D won't do that. Hmm. What to do?!? I kept looking.

For much the same price as the 30mm or the 5D, a 1DmkII was available. Several actually. I'd get a wider view, 1D build quality, portrait controls, and servo performance. But not the full focal length and perspective difference. In order to get the wider focal length, I'd still need to buy a lens. I didn't want to get a body along with a lens I can't use on it, so the 30mm was now out. I looked for a similar focal length fullframe compatible lens. Canon's 28mm is pretty close. It costs just a bit more. A 1DmkII along with a 28mm would work I suppose. But I wouldn't really have a fullframe, just a 1.3 crop, which isn't that different from what I've got. And I'd lose resolution. Phooey.

I'd gotten my heart set on a fullframe by now, the 5D wasn't going to cut it for servo, and the 1DmkII with a lens was getting expensive, and wasn't what I wanted. Hmm... What to do?!? I kept looking.

For much the same price as the 1DmkII and 28mm, I could have a 1DsmkII. I'd have fullframe, servo performance, 1D build quality, portrait controls, pretty much the same resolution as I'm used to (15MP with T1i, 18MP with 7D, and 16.6MP with 1DsmkII).

Add to cart, buy (and worry about it later). And that's how you turn a $500 purchase into a $1400 one.

So, am I crazy? Anyone going to follow me down the rabbit hole? You can do it cheaper with the 5D (both Adorama and B&H have used ones available in the $650-$750 range).

I don't think your crazy, but you could include the 1Ds in your choice. Yes it's not as good as a 1Ds II but if the price is a bit steep for your wife that could be an option. There is a 1Ds II with a shutter bounce issue in my area that is very cheap and could fix it myself, that thing temps me more than once! But keep focus, super telel, super tele!:p

Cheers,
John.

I did see a 1Ds, but figured it would be too ancient. Besides, it's too late. When I said "Add to cart, buy", it wasn't a figure of speech. The order is sitting in queue somewhere deep inside Adorama, right now.

DxoMark says I should expect less noise too. Yay! I wasn't sure if I'd get the noise advantage of full frame, due to the age of the sensor and processor, but it looks to be around an ISO stop better at both luma and chroma. Seeing that helped remove some of my "Oh my god, what have I done" jitters.

Congrats, David!! Can't wait to see some shots taken with it and get your overall opinion on it compared to the 7d!

Huh, i hadn't thought of going used on the 1d series. Could be a genius move. Let us know how it turns out.

I know there's a fine line between genius and insanity, so I'm glad you all seem to be leaning towards the genius option. :)

From what I can gather, I should expect a bulky heavy body with a tiny screen, no live-view, no movies, no auto sensor cleaning(!), and awkward controls. In return I'll get awesome IQ and servo performance, which is what it's all about. Oh, and weather sealing as a bonus.

I'll be sure to post pics, but I probably won't get the camera until mid-week, and may not have much opportunity to shoot until the weekend.

I have gone insane - I just did the Adorama on the 5dIII. 30 days to try it/see if the price comes down or a new camera comes out.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DavidEccleston

I know there's a fine line between genius and insanity, so I'm glad you all seem to be leaning towards the genius option. :)

From what I can gather, I should expect a bulky heavy body with a tiny screen, no live-view, no movies, no auto sensor cleaning(!), and awkward controls. In return I'll get awesome IQ and servo performance, which is what it's all about. Oh, and weather sealing as a bonus.

I'll be sure to post pics, but I probably won't get the camera until mid-week, and may not have much opportunity to shoot until the weekend.

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BK, Sorry. I didn't realize it was contagious... Ok, fine, I had a fairly good idea that it might be. If you don't like the 5D3, and it takes you 31 days to figure that out, I'm willing to help out with an even trade for the 1Ds2.

This is going to be the longest weekend ever.

In one of my earlier posts I suggested the 5dIII make it to $2,500. Given I could get it w/o sales tax, it is effectively under $2,500.

Now if someone will ship one of the 24-70s I pre-ordered......

Dave... I spent the weekend in the same boat.. even threw in a bid or two on eBay for a clean 1Ds II but didn't win.. still on the fence about it.. did more reading on the 1Ds II vs the 5D classic vs the 5D II than I care to say.. in the end, I remain camera less.. I love the fact the 1Ds II is built like a tank.. Seldom use live view on my old 40D, could care less about the small screen.. cant see without my glasses anyway.. Video would be nice, but not a deal breaker.. IQ and getting 3-5 years out of it would be my goal.. My reservation was solely the age of the 1Ds II and if repairs were going to sour my purchase... need to give it some more thought.. but yep, seeing clean ones (cosmetically that is.. shutter count is still dependent on what seller reports) in the ball park of 1400 as well..

The UPS website said to expect the package by 12PM on Tuesday. My wife waited patiently until 3:15, when she needed to go out and pick up Bella. At 3:21 the UPS man showed up. Oddly enough, the UPS website, even AFTER 12PM said the package was on time and should be delivered at 12PM. Now, you could argue that maybe they don't have a live update, but minutes after the attempted delivery I did see the failure.

So, if they know where the truck is, what's been delivered so far, and where I am in the queue, why can't I get a reasonable delivery estimate? Because they can charge extra for that. Grrr. I'm hating you more and more UPS.

Today I stayed home from work to save my wife from having another unproductive day of waiting for Mr. Brown.

I must say, the comments about the 1Ds Mark II having awkward controls don't do this camera justice. I've never seen anything as obfuscated as this, ever. I'm nearly 40, so I was around when home PCs were a new thing, when people tried all sorts of unusual things. The menu and image navigation controls are a particularly quirky design I hope to never see repeated.

The LCD screen is amazing(ly bad). The previous owner (who's name is embedded in my images, which you can't change outside of EOS Utility, which no longer supports this camera) had the LCD set too bright, so everything looked over-washed out and blurry. Now it just looks blurry. I mean, this screen must have been considered a joke in 2004. Truly.

The Custom functions are fun. Half of them are not camera settable, you must use EOS utility. For things as advanced as "Burst rate", with options as convoluted as 1, 2, 3, and 4. Nope, can't possibly set that in camera. You'll note above, modern copies of EOS utility won't speak to this camera. I told you it was fun!

The pictures though, they are pretty. It's hard to judge here, because, as usual, my images are slightly too big for my Flickr account, and Flickr resizes them. I've just noticed that images from this camera get super extra sharpened by Flickr. It didn't do that to my T1i or 7D images. No idea what Flickr is thinking. Perhaps I'll find time to upload some smaller images tomorrow.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8035/8...02b7a9b4_c.jpg
70300L by namethatnobodyelsetook, on Flickr

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8313/8...a7e80752_c.jpg
70300L_100pc by namethatnobodyelsetook, on Flickr

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8300/8...c6cbe03c_c.jpg
85b by namethatnobodyelsetook, on Flickr

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8454/8...e29a6feb_c.jpg
85 by namethatnobodyelsetook, on Flickr

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8296/8...120795e8_b.jpg
50 by namethatnobodyelsetook, on Flickr

I don't know David but you may not be too happy with the controls, etc. but IMO, your photos have some real "pop" going on here and I think they all look great!

Congrats on your purchase. I hope all the "fun" is worth it. I'll check back on those photos after work. ;)

Just a note to anyone planning on following in my footsteps.

1. You will need an old XP machine with firewire.
2. You can find a WIA 5.5.0 driver on Canon's USA site (the European WIA 5.5.0 driver doesn't appear to work). You will need this to make the firewire port work.
3. Then you can find EOS Viewer on Canon's Europe site. This is the utility that will let you change your copyright information and custom functions. While you can transfer files with USB 1.1 (*sort of), you will need firewire to change settings.

*sort of - USB1.1 transfer is at a rate of about 1 image per minute. I started a transfer, made supper, let the dogs out, went to the store, bought a CF reader, came home, and my USB transfer still had an hour to go, so I canceled it, and transferred the images via USB 2 Lexar multi-reader in about 3 minutes.