Recently I was chatting in a photo forum and mentioned that I am loving my new Canon 5D MK2. Someone noticed and said, "do you mean the MK3?" When I told them no, I recently bought a new MK2 I got flamed with questions of, "WHY?!?!" Well let me explain...
You see, I had been shooting on a Nikon D300 since November of 2008, and it had served me well. At the time of my purchase I was shooting a lot of things that involved movement and on-camera flash (I was shooting a lot of "underground" hardcore punk rock shows). The D300 coupled with an SB900 served me perfectly. As time went on though I broke away from shooting these kinds of shows, and broke away from using on camera flash. Slowly but surely I found myself shooting more stuff in natural light, or with off camera flash. I dreamed of purchasing a D700 for a while, but as time went on and life ran its course, my financial situation never permitted the upgrade.
Fast forward 4 years and now I primarily shoot portraiture and fashion editorials. I was no longer utilizing the 52 point AF system of the D300, and in fact I had reverted back to primarily using my center AF point as I did when I shot film on a Nikon N90s. I often found myself shooting wide and cropping in, which at 12mp wasn't always the best idea. It was time to look for more. I knew I wanted to make the jump to full frame, but I had some options to weigh. On the Nikon side my options were the D600 or the D800 (I had no desire to drop the kind of money I would need on a D4). The D800 had me salivating, but the thought of having to buy way more hard drive space and ram to handle those file sizes is what turned me off. The D600 had it's own set backs, and at the time the sensor dust issue was a giant turn off for me. On the Canon side there was the 5D MK3, MK2, and the 6D. The MK3 was awesome, but at $3500 at the time, it was a little out of my price point (I was trying to keep this purchase below $2500 if at all possible). The 6D was nice, but as with all new technology, I didn't trust it yet. Also the 1/180 flash sync speed of the 6D was appalling to me. That left me with the MK2.
The MK2 has an inferior AF system compared to the MK3, but when I am just using it with the center AF point and for pretty still subjects, it is beyond perfect. The MK2 doesn't have as good of low light performance as the MK3, but comparing ISO 2000 of my old D300 vs the MK2, there is no contest. The MK2 doesn't have a burst rate like the D300 or the MK3 but I am not shooting action, and thus I have no need for this. Finally, the file size of the MK2 files is almost double that of the D300 files, but not so extreme that I was looking at massive upgrades for my computer. At the time of my purchase too, the MK2 could be had for $1500. It was a no brainer for me.
At the end of the day, I don't even think that the camera makes the photo, but rather the photographer does. With that being said though, the upgraded features of the MK2 over my D300 definitely make taking photos much easier for me, and make my job a lot easier in many situations. Technology is going to constantly evolve, and at what point do we say, "ok, this is good enough," for me, that was with the MK2.
My name is Anthony Tripoli, and I proudly bought a 4 year old camera.
I was in the same situation about 2 weeks ago.. but i bought the D700 with Nikkor 50mm f1.4D lens and it's pretty stunning upgrade from D90.
I now have a second hand Nikon D3 (five years old) with a whopping 423.000 actuations on it and it works like a bloody dream. Still cant believe I own this camera. (got it for an amazingly low price second hand)
Yay old cameras!
haha, feels like an AA meeting with that last line. rock the gear that you have, even a 10 year old camera is light years ahead of a 50 year old camera. there's no reason to jump on the vicious cycle of constantly upgrading gear, although the manufacturers would like that...
I had the same price reservations; however, my mk iii was purchased on eBay. The previous owner had never opened anything but the body, which had less than 500 exposures. The battery and all other accessories were still factory sealed. I got it for about the same price as a new mk ii. Granted, there was the risk that there would be a problem with the body or somesuch, but eBay's buyer protection program made it worth the risk. I had (and still have) a t2i; being full-frame and having the low-light capabilities that I do now was worth the financial hit.
poor guy.... the 6D would be the better camera.
Thank you! It is not the gear. This website is so full of gear heads. So im glad to see a entry on here about it not being the new new gear. I shot on a d70S from 2006-2010. While im happy i finally upgraded, I shot some of my best work on that camera. Gear is great, and makes our lives and jobs easier,but if thats all you know about and all your concerned with, then your photos will suffer.
I couldn't agree more with your sentiment Anthony
I bought the mk2 three months ago for the same reasons and i dont have any regrets, my transition was from a Sony dsc R1 to a Canon mk2 ;)
I bought the mk2 three months ago for the same reasons and i dont have any regrets, my transition was from a sony dsc R1 to a canon mk2 ;)
Good for you, Anthony! I think both the D700 and 5DMk2 are extremely competent cameras, just as they have been since intro. Spend the savings on glass. I've been saving for a D700 for a while, and lusting after Fujifilm's X100. Once the specs were released for the new X100s, I realized I need to wait for the XPro1s/XPro2. Why? Because I want something different, and their sensors/glass are [finally] back to a professional level. In the end it's the gear that makes you comfortable and confident to achieve your goal, then gets out of the way to let you do it.
I'm currently trying to trade my 1D Mark III for a 5D2 (getting out of sports). I'd love the 5D3 but the 2 is a hell of a camera for half the price!
I would be very happy with a canon 5d mk1 but i can't afford it....
Hey Anthony, what lens have you bought since you bought the Mk2?
I really don't get why you passed from Nikon to Canon.
I mean, if you are just starting out, than every brand is ok, but if you bought in the years Nikon gears, what will you do with them?Now you have to sell your Nikon lenses to buy Canon one. It really not makes sense for me.
he had to buy full frame worthy lenses anyway
When it comes down to which the "best" camera is for someone to buy, it ultimately comes down to one thing anyway: whatever one will satisfy that inner desire for one. Let's face it, we can get pretty much any new camera these days and create equally great work (as long as we can create great work), and all will be good. But the one thing that still drives someone to choose something in the end is whatever makes them feel good about their decision in the end. We're emotional creatures, can't get away from that. Let the guy buy what he wants, its his money and decision, anyway. Good luck with your new, er old, er, new, camera!
Well all that aside, I own a 350d, not much but hey I produce great images because I know how to use it to it's full potential.
Konica Minolta 5D used a lot. Can anyone tell?
Yeah, that's all well and good, but you changed from Nikon to Canon and not one mention about the cost of changing lenses!
Any camera in the right hands does magic. As long as you know how to use it.
I have ancient equipment, Canon 1Ds and Hasselblad 500C. The photographer makes the image the equipment simply records it. There are times I would like better or newer tools, but that’s not what creates art. www.jragle.com
Went and did the exact same thing. Picked up the 5D Mk II in the past month or two and have been perfectly happy. The new cameras are honestly showing less and less of a gain over their predecessors in my own opinion. Of course they will always be better, but when is the 1% increase in performance going to be worth the $3000 extra cost? A question I would imagine more photographers are starting to ask and will be asking in the up and coming years. This of course assumes there aren't any completely revolutionary new breakthroughs in sensor tech that change everything.
Love the fact that he weighed his options and stuck with what he needed and not what marketing and media wanted him to have!
"The D800 had me salivating, but the thought of having to buy way more
hard drive space and ram to handle those file sizes is what turned me
off."
You're not a professional, now are you?
This article is a bit annoying, mostly because his conclusion seems to be "I am happy with my upgrade." As others have pointed out, there are a lot of cameras that would have fit his bill and made him happy. This isn't a Canon vs Nikon debate but I feel like he switched platforms for entirely wrong reasons.
Shooting wide and end up cropping? The answer is to compose your images better, not buy a new camera with higher MP.
Fully conscious of my decision, I carefully bought a Fuji S5 Pro, a six year old camera. I love it too, but I dont see my purchase particularly unusual. Even the d700 is five years old. It annoys me that his final line is what it is.
I think this guy just made all this shit up. None of it makes any real-world sense. I think he's just a Canon fanboi fanning flames.
YOU got a camera and are happy with it?
CONGRATS :-) a lot of people don't even get that far.
You bought a fine camera and a proven workhorse.
(can i have your old nikon stuff?) hehe
I too recently got a Canon 5D MkII for $1,500 new. I actually got two, sort of, I got one from Amazon at the price of $1,800 because I didn't think the price would drop any further when being sold by a reputable dealer, but then three days later, they dropped the price to $1,500. I called customer service to see if they could do anything. They told me to send back the camera and order a new one and I would get the $1,800 back and would save $300. I tried to tell them that I had already started using it and that it would be a lot better to just send me the $300 so they didn't have to sell the camera as used. They kept with it and I sent the camera back and got the money back but it was very strange for Amazon to do. Also loving the camera, I do landscapes and portraits and the high ISO performance, better autofocusing and faster burst rate of the 6D and 5D MKII would have done nothing for me so I am extremely happy I was able to get the camera for the price I did.
Good luck with the autofocus system
I've been shooting professionally with the 5D II for 3 years, never missed a shot. In my poinion The AF issue is a non-issue..
I recently bought an 8 years old camera...the canon 20D.
I'm just taking my first steps into DSRL photography, I didn't want to spend too much and I didn't use that much mp. I'm used to shot daylight portrait. And the images are for the web. 8mp is enough.
Of course, I want a better camera, mostly with better iso performance, but ratter spend that money in good glass.
i just bought a 10 year old Imacon/Blad 343 Scanner. Does the job, so im more then happy
I still love my MK 2 and only used the center focus most of the time.
Why I wouldn't buy a 4 year old camera:
1400 for a used 5d mark ii vs 1800 for a used 6d. The extra 400 dollars gets you:
Some of the newest technology available
Higher fps
more megapixels
Better noise handling
Better IQ
Improved autofocus
IMO it doesn't make much sense to buy a 5d mark ii anymore unless you find one really cheap, the 6d is a much better camera and not much more money.
Agree completely. Canon I did the same thing myself - full frame is what converted me and I have several prime Canon lenses + a Canon EF 300 F2.8 I picked up cheap in working condition. I am multi system now so use the best of both worlds and don't bother with keeping up with the Jones syndrome any more, its too expensive and so what with speed, if you know what you are doing what you use is immaterial. An utterly awesome lens to use is the Canon EF 100mm F2 if you can get one and the EF 180mm macro F3.5 is no slouch either and for flashless work on a Canon are beautiful to use. I Don't use flashless much these days- too lazy I suppose but there are an awful lot of "professional" [I use the term very loosely] pic takers out there who would not know how to take a photograph properly without using flash and use of M aV Tv and M beyond alphabetic comprehension
After using the first 5D since 2007, I finally upgraded last week! I actually went with a used MarkIII, but I was really close to buying the Mark II as well. They are both awesome tools.
I´m doing exactly the same thing. Just sold my D300 and opting for a 5D Mkll. What I don´t understand is why so many are so anal about technology. Old cameras are still going strong and they get cheaper by the minute. Too match my frame rate I had on the the D300 I bought an old 1D MKll N that work nicely for shooting sports, it 45 focus points and a whopping 8,5 fps. So the 5D MK ll will suite my purposes for calmer objects. So my bottom line is that now you can buy two older cameras and still get money over for the more important items, FAST GLASS!!
I did very similar recently and bought a D3. I'm totally happy with it. I have fairly shaky hands, so D800 was out (and yes, I have used one for about a month), so for me it was a toss up between the D600 and the D3. At the end of the day, price won out for me as megapixels wasn't an issue.
Massive upgrades? You skipped out on a D800 because of less than $350 of (nice to have anyway) computer hardware? I just added a 2TB drive for photography, fast, good name behind it, and 24GB of high speed RAM with a lifetime warranty. I'm on a PC though, so upgrades and swapping out hardware is both easy and cheap for the same or higher quality. I suppose if you're one of those people who thinks Apple is a good investment, it's a bit scarier a prospect to upgrade.
Oh, BS. I change hard drives and RAM on Mac's all of the time. There are Macs you can't do this to easily, just as their are PC's you can't do this to easily. There are Macs you can do this to easily, just as there are PC's you can do this to easily. Geez.
When people go on about "I just got a new Mac", I've never seen it NOT be one of those idiotic consumer scams, the iMac. Need a hard drive update? It's (I believe) a 15 step process that doesn't even mention a hard drive until step 10, and involves disconnecting a thermal sensor among other silliness. If you're buying a tower, there's more options, but you're over paying either way. I ran a studio that had iMacs when I started, and it cost us far more to update (read: throw them out and buy new ones), than it ever would with a PC. No need to get upset, I understand buyer's remorse :)
Macbook Pro's outsell iMacs by orders of magnitude. They can be upgraded in minutes. I still call BS. Your perspective is slanted mightily by your angst. Ergo, you are talking out of your butt. Buy an all-in-one desktop or an Ultrabook and see how upgradable it is. Furthermore, I can tell you how often anyone upgrades any of their computers internals: almost never. They buy new ones anyway.
One might think it idiotic that you would toss out iMacs instead of spending the 2 minutes to upgrade the RAM (1 phillips screw, 2 pull tabs!) and about 35 seconds to plug in a Firewire drive. Tough upgrade there, eh? So, buyers remorse aside, I still call BS on your comment. Just because you don't know how to do this stuff doesn't mean others are in the same boat.
Sorry, too busy enjoying my camera to keep up with all those spreadsheets for what electronics are selling over another :)
You're mistaken anyway. The iMac's have a "season" they were produced in and only supported a certain amount of RAM. They fill all the slots with the lowest amount per stick, so you have to take everything out, throw that away, and replace it. I know you thought you were smart by picking the only easy upgrade on the thing.
An "ultrabook" isn't a PC and the "all-in-one" is the same as a Mac! You just made my point for me, so thank you. A company artificially limiting what I can do with my purchase. No thanks. As for people not upgrading... your argument is that people are stupid I guess? One good point.
So now you are eliminating Ultrabooks and All-in-one PC's from the Windows side. So, if you eliminate Airs and iMacs from the Apple side - the equivalents - that pretty much leaves you with Mac Pro's, which are upgradable and easier to upgrade than most Windows PC's.
You've just drilled down your own argument to the point of being silly. Apple's products are no more or less than their Windows PC counterparts. You have to buy the right one for what you are doing. You just hate Apple so much that you threw out a carpet-bombing style statement that I've called you on and you keep defending it even though you have been proven wrong.
Just like the iMac, many PC's can't take just any amount of RAM. The chipset/mobo limits this, just like with the limitation you put on iMacs. This is nothing new, isn't an artificial limit put on by Apple and has been an issue with all personal computers, mainframes, etc since inception.
I don't care what anyone uses. I use a full combo of Windows, OSX, iOS, Linux and Android machines and like them all for the tool that they are.
If you don't like Apple's products, fine. But dishing out BS about them because YOU hate them is disingenuous.
I just deleted my whole post after looking at the Apple store page. They made my point for me. You people are seriously fucking crazy for buying these. $2,500 for 3.2 ghz, 6GB RAM!!!, 1TB HD, a model lower than my video card that I put in... I don't remember when, and whatever a "super drive" is. $2,500... Yea, great deal there. It's either an idiot tax or weird cult. I don't even know anymore. I spent less on a my grown up's PC when everything in it was new! Keep drinking the kool-aid.
I've considered picking up a 1d mkiii, I wanted to use it for event photography. I liked the ruggedness and the $1500 going price. I dont need 22mp, since most would go up on the web anyways.
I bought a Nikon D2X and have not regretted it once.
The shutter count as we speak is over 190,000 so far.
I'll gladly pay Nikon the 350.00 to have the shutter replaced when needed.
The happiness it's helped create when doing free family portraits, of/for people who cannot afford to have them done, is priceless. And later today I'll be taking even more photographs with it.
:-) old cameras are awesome.
Had a 5Dii from November 2008, I've never found myself wanting for much more from it... the only niggle has always been low light AF... however I just can't justify £2100 vs £1065 that I bought my (2nd) brand NEW 5Dii (and sold my trusty old backup 40d). I now have a matching pair that will carry on serving me for another 4years at least.
I switched from a D7000 to MKII when they had the printer/gift card sale at B&H so I paid $2600 and got a $400 Amex card. So it's like I paid $2200 for the MKII 24-105 and a Pro 13x19 printer. And now just the camera and lens is $2999 +$400 card.
It's seems sluggish compared to my D7000, but the full frame is nice, the lens is way better than what I had. Video is better. I miss the dual card slots, and CF is more expensive, but I shoot mainly portraiture and still life. And even with the sports candids I do I still find the camera works fine. I miss Nikon but the deal I had on this Canon I couldn't pass up. The D800 and MKIII are way too expensive for what I need my camera to do, and If you ask me a D3200 could produce images that I need, and clients wouldn't know the difference.
Did I make compromises? Yes, a lot. But do they add up to the $1500 difference in cost from a MKII to D800/MKIII? Hell to the NO. That $1500 would be much better spent on a lens or more lighting/accessories
Hi! I'm Ralph and I use a 30 year camera that I bought new.
Why?
1) My Canon A-1 still works.
2) MA Motor Drive
3) Minor investment in FD lenses or T-mount.
4) Sunpak 522 flash
5) Film is still available
But the big reason is that everything still works. Yes, I'm looking to buy a DSLR; but I don't know if a DSLR would have the longevity of my A-1. It's a doggone "arms race" with Canon and Nikon trying to out-pixel and out-feature eacy other. It's like they are now using Detroit's model of "planned obsolescence". If I'm going to spend $2000 dollars on a camera system, I want it to last a while.