Canon 50D Initial Impressions, Phillip Colla Photography

I’ll offer my comments on my Canon 50D. I’ve used it for one shoot so far, and will keep it for at least another shoot (at Bosque del Apache next month) before I decide whether to keep it. Note that this is not a formal test, just my anecdotal observations of one body. I am fairly critical of my images as ultimately I would like them to past the laugh test and go out into the publishing world to be seen by bazillions of admirers.

First, when I received it I checked the focus of the camera right out of the box using a 300 f/2.8 on a few static subjects in my back yard. It was fine, no front or back focus that I could see. My raw converter (Capture One) currently does not support 50D raw files (hopefully in a few weeks this will be fixed) so I am using the DPP software coming with the camera. I find that I need to use a high sharpening setting in the raw conversion to get results I am happy with. In other words, the raw images appear soft coming out of the camera, which was mildly disappointing to me. However, I’m fine with countering that in raw processing, provided it does not create other problems (noise, artifacts). Realizing that I will have to sharpen the raw files hard, I have decided to expose “to the right” with this camera to avoid noise problems with underexposed images that are then exacerbated by hard sharpening.

Last week I used the 50D on a Canon 500 f/4, 80% of the time of a 1.4x teleconverter, to shoot sea otters (Enhydra lutris) from a boat. I also shot with a 1DsII, same lens setup. I shot about 2800 images with the 50D, and about 400-500 with the 1DsII. My plan was to use the 50D to get a little extra reach, and more “pixels on the subject”, than I could get with the 1DsII. I used ISO from 200 to 1000 on the 50D (200 to 320 on the IDsII).

I shot the 50D using servo AF, IS stabilizing mode 2, single focus point was typically upper right, upper left or center. I always have it in high speed drive (something like 6 or 6.5 fps I think?).

A) the 50D images taken **without** a teleconverter look pretty good. I’m happy with the sharpness of those, given I exposed to the right (just getting the tiniest of blinkies on the highlights of the animals) and then sharpened hard in the raw.

B) the 50D images shot with the 1.4x teleconverter and 500 are soft, more than I expected. I’d say about 1 in 10 passes my critical sharpness threshold. Now, shooting an equivalent 1200mm on a boat (albeit a stable, flat bottom boat) is tough. I know motion blur and lens shake softness (having shot of lot of that over the years!). And I know that a teleconverter can cut sharpness even when stopped down to f/8 or f/11. Its a subjective thing and I think I am more concerned with sharpness than others. Eliminating images that suffered from motion blur or lens shake — i.e., considering only images where the animals was essentially static and posing, the servo AF had a chance to lock on and the IS on the lens had a chance to settle — I still found most of the images shot with 50D/500/1.4x were soft. Just too soft for my liking. I think I kept about 30 images with the 50D/500/1.4x combo, and those were for the most part images where the behavior is enough to warrant keeping the image, or the pose of the otter is just too cute that it must be kept in spite of softness. I did have some shot with that combo that showed critical sharpness, scattered among the bunch, so I am encouraged and perhaps with more rigorous technique I can get that number up in the future. I should add that when I shot the 1DsII/500/1.4x combo, my rate of images passing my personal sharpness threshold was about 30% or so, but that may reflect my experience using that body.

I have a few conclusions, again just one Canon 50D body and one shoot, but this is what I am thinking on this camera:

1) ISO up to 1000 looks good! I did not try higher than 1000, but I like what I see up to 1000. The images I have do not suffer from any noise that I can see. I did expose them to the right somewhat.

2) I will NOT use a teleconverter on this body if I can help it, including at Bosque. I sense that I will be happier about the sharpness if I just leave it off and accept the subject being smaller in the frame. I will NOT crop to compensate. Sharpness is more important to me than distance to subject. (I do not have this same reservation about teleconverter use with a full frame body.)

3) I have not shot this on subjects that are moving fast, so I do not know what to expect trying cranes and geese for the first time in a month. I will try to use center point AF when shooting servo. I know some guys are shooting birds in flight with the Canon 50D and sound happy with it. But if it does not lock on, I won’t hesitate to put out the Canon 1DIIN and use that instead next month.

4) I do not like how limited the 9 AF points are. OK, granted, this is a differentiation between 1-series and others, and given the crop nature of the body it probably does not make sense squeezing 45 points in there. Regardless, more points to select from would have helped. I found it tough to keep the otters eye where I wanted it in the frame with just the 9 points. The 45 points of the 1DsII are much better in this regard, which is why the 1DsII is still my favorite body.

5) I believe the AF was working well, although at times the AF seemed to lock on to, say, the whiskers rather than the eye of the subject. I think it may have to do with how large an area each AF sensor actually covers, and also the “assistance” of the 6 “assist” sensors. I may look into turning those off (if it is possible) if necessary in the future.

6) I have not seen a single ERR99, or any other problem for that matter, with this camera. I have firmware 1.0.2. I got about 1400 frames per battery, one is a brand new 50D battery and another is a little-used 5D battery about 1.5 years old.

7) Finally: when the subject is near enough that I can use my 1DsII, I will choose that over the 50D. I do not really need frame rate. (I’ve always been happy with the rate of the 1DsII.) So I view the 50D as a special purpose camera, for now, for situations where I want some extra reach beyond what I can get with the 1DsII, and where low light levels suggest the 50D (with its higher ISO capability) would be helpful.

8) I am also looking into housing this camera for use shooting surf, replacing a 1DIIN. The frame rate of the 50D is high enough to shoot action situations like that, and the smaller and lighter package would make handling the camera in surf much easier. The higher ISO would make early morning and sunset shoots more successful. The downside is that with the 1.6x crop factor, my 15mm fisheye (a favorite for shooting waves) loses a lot of its cool look. If I get there I’ll post something about it.

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