Q. from a friend: E-3 or D700? (!!!)

sojournerphoto said:
It will be interesting to see how good the high iso performance of the 7D is. It doesn't really appeal to me, but when the 50D was launched the fanfare suggested that it would outperform the old hack 5D, but the sample pictures were les convincing in my view. Does this tally with your experience?

I have to say that the 5D looks outstanding value these days - available at a reasonable cost with 5,000 to 150,000 actuations.

For the original poster it depends on what your friend wants and does. If it's just a business decision and he can live with something not the odlest a 5D and 24-105L or 28-70 2.8L will deliver great image quality and leave plenty of change ofr a couple of primes. I like the 50 1.4 as a good start.

Mike
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I've not much used my 50D for high-ISO shooting, beyond a few test shots. It somewhat out-performs my old 30D at ISO1600 (or 3200) when downsized to the same pixel dimensions but, IMO, isn't anywhere near as good as my 5D at either setting. The 50D has "expansion" high-ISO sensitivities of 6400 and 12,800. However, unless you're into surveillance photos they're not very useful. I strongly suspect they are "marketing" settings, designed to tick boxes in comparisons with Nikon offerings, despite being not nearly as good as the latest Nikons at those settings.

I agree with you about the original 5D being good value these days. I bought mine at an excellent price, from someone urgently wanting to upgrade to the mkII. I had thought of just turning it around on eBay for a quick profit but found that it works so well with some of my EF primes that I never quite parted with it. In fact (and despite the lens size) it works so well with the 50/1.2L that they seem almost welded together.

...Mike
 
I'd say get the D700. It's extremely well built, and has amazing performance, especially at high iso sensitivities. The Sony looks like a nice 35mm size camera for the price, but I'd be afraid of getting root kitted. Olympus film cameras rock. But I just don't get a solid feeling when I snap one of their dslr's.

Either way your friend goes though, the camera will work well, and provide excellent digital images.
 
Events, weddings pretty means a 5D mark 1 and EF 24-70/2.8 if you want to keep within the $2500- budget. Switch to a Tamron 28-75/2.8 and you'll be well ahead of the budget and have $$$ for a flash.

OTOH, a D700 + Tamron 28-75/2.8 is very likely possible as well but will require a bit more patience. Just make sure he doesn't try to mount a Pre-AI lens on the D700, otherwise he'll be in for an expensive repair job.
 
Once again thanks for the input. All the considerations are of course sound, I think in fact that my friend has sort of almost decided.

Just for conversation I have to say however that many of the comments did not really apply to his situation because he was not looking for a camera to which to attach interesting lenses, or a small camera to carry on to the office. He needed a camera to try to move from amateur which does some work to full pro and needed a reliable tool, a jack-of-all-trades zoom and one or two bright lenses for a given price. Also he might want to expand his system in the future (that's what helped him decide...I guess you know what).

GLF
 
Chris101 said:
Either way your friend goes though, the camera will work well, and provide excellent digital images.
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You know, that's exactly what we were noticing while reading: in a way we live in a great time, even "crappy" gear is great, so it is really impossible to make a completely wrong move.

The bad news is that there are no excuses for bad pictures!

GLF
 
mfunnell said:
At least with digital you can delete those. I try to avoid showing people my scanned equivalents of contact sheets from film 😱

...Mike
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Yep, I meant "there is no excuse to have no good pictures", I don't care to throw away a 1000 pictures (negatives or files) if I have some good ones but sometimes I must confess to myself that the best I have are not quite to the level I'd like them to be and it has never happened to me that I had to say "if only I had another camera that would not have happened!". Sometimes I said this about lights, tables, reflectors but never with a about a camera or a lens unless the change was from a camera which does not allow movements to a view camera but this was not what we were discussing here.

GLF
 
stupid leica said:
Merkin, i would like to buy you a beer and sit and chat about this stuff. This is EXACTLY the reason i sold my canon system and bought a D700. I wanted to use great Nikon lenses on a great camera, and i have been very VERY happy with it.
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I was going through several photographers portfolios last week and could spot the Nikon yellow color shift easily from the first few pictures. Skin tones on any digital Nikon look plain wrong.

I have owned some digital cameras by now, including the D700 and D2H. The best color reproduction I have seen was with the EOS 5D.
 
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