Funny, Rob. You spent the weekend doing this, and I spent the weekend taping up all the Canon logos on my gear with black gaff.
After reviewing your images, I'm not at all surprised. The 50D overpromised and underdelivered, especially compared to the (IMO) superior 40D. For anyone reading this who doesn't know, Canon introduced the50D while it was still competing in the megapixel war with Nikon and the other camera companies, and this is the natural result of that war (if memory serves me right, Nikon was offering cameras with slightly higher resolutions and Canon [foolishly] must have felt likeit needed to overdose on the MPs to make a statement or show dominance or something). There's no reason to have 15 MPs for most people.
<span style="text-decoration: line-through;"]One thing you didn't mention was the significant noise in your 50D images (compare the white space in the background of the images). That, of course, can result from a lot of factors, but probably results from trying to cram too many pixels onto a sensor that's just too small (gapless pixels and microlenses and better pixel pitch blah blah blah aside).Hmm, now that I'm looking at the images on a different monitor, the noise seems to have disappeared. Interesting. . . .
Fortunately, the major camera companiesseem to beeasing up on the megapixels. Canon (especially after the release of the G10) recently released the G11 with fewer MPs than its predecessor, although the mark 4 has 16-ish MPs (compared to the Nikon D3 or new D3s, both of which have 12.1). Still, it's reviews like this that embarrass me and make me cringe as a Canon-shooter.
In a way, I feel like discussing theneed for more MPs is a bit like kicking a dead pig. By now, people should know that more MPs doesn't always equal better images. What's important is that these companies listen to their consumers and put out products that we can be proud of. And mind the quality control, lest we all jump ship to Sony! I'm tired of making my frequent trips to the Canon repair center because my brand new $1000+ L lens is backfocusing or focusing unevenly across the frame from left to right, or because my 5D mk II's sensor is dying or because its outermost focal points can't focus worth a damn in low light. Am I being unreasonable? Cuz it's kind of upsetting when I know that I could probably produce sharper images at an indoor wedding with a Canon G11, a non-TTL sync cord, and a Metz or Nikon SB-900 flash.
P.S. DOF differences are most likely related to the different sensor sizes. As you know, bigger sensors = greater DOF. That's why certain videos shot with DSLRs are so impressive, compared to dedicated camcorders and video cameras.
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Originally Posted by Conway Yen
