Exploring The History of Innovation: The Canon EOS 5 Series

[Hector1970]

Lovely article. It brought back memories. Nice to see the Canon 5 film camera mentioned. It was quite good. I’ve had fun with the 5 series. I still have a 5DSR, 5DIV and R5 on the go. I’m tempted by the R5 II. The R5 has been so good I haven’t a compelling desire to change. After photographing puffins last week I could do with better autofocus tracking. My 5DIII is a paperweight at home. A reminder of the dangers of seascape photography. I was completely knocked over by a rogue wave. The 70-200mm that was on it is still perfect but the 5DIII didn’t survive. It has a nice bit of corrosion from the seawater. I use it to show people the inside of a mirrored camera for a beginners class.

 

[briangus]

In 2018, I bought an early EOS R model, hoping for a very new camera to be quite reliable, after an EOS 5D III and and EOS 5D IV. My expectations in terms of an identical reliability were not one single time exaggerated.
In 7 years, not one single freezing or mechanical failure.

I got the R on release day and shortly afterwards it crashed.
Presumed it might have been an issue the battery grip, but started to crash without it.
Maybe I was tempting fate using a combo of my initials and RF
BA + RF, because it barfed quite frequently
After 9 months and 200k clicks on the R, I sold the MKIV and bought a 2nd R
My second R has never had an issue

 

[bf]

It inspired me to remember memories of the digital vs negative era! I agree with the key statement: Canon was the 1st to offer a full-frame prosumer DSLR in the $3K range. All other competitors entered that domain a few years later. The pricing remained consistent for the life of 5D.

 

[vladk]

5 series made me Canon fan forever. I owned 5DII, 5DIV, R5, and own R5II. All cameras delivered pretty much everything I could dream of at that time. As a result, I never seriously considered switching to Nikon (D8xx were amazing, but not amazing enough to switch), and to SONY (I tried it before R5 was released, but SONY ergonomics put me away).
As I am 60+, R5II might be my last camera to own unless something truly extraordinary comes to light.

 

[snapshot]

5 series made me Canon fan forever. I owned 5DII, 5DIV, R5, and own R5II. All cameras delivered pretty much everything I could dream of at that time. As a result, I never seriously considered switching to Nikon (D8xx were amazing, but not amazing enough to switch), and to SONY (I tried it before R5 was released, but SONY ergonomics put me away).
As I am 60+, R5II might be my last camera to own unless something truly extraordinary comes to light.

i have the same collection! I did think about A9 when it came out, at the time lots of folks were talking about adapting EF lenses, but I wasnt really clear that the AF performance was really there. The diving reason for every upgrade past 5d2 was speed for sports, though I have to say the R5 does a nice job in poorly lit situations.

 

[GMCPhotographics]

I had an original 5D about a month after it was launched. I had a pair of 5DII's as soon as I could. Same with the mk III's. I never bothered with a mk4, it was a nice camera but the mkIII were still going strong and I was happy with the results. I tried an EOS R and didn't get on with it. It was too immature as a product. However I'm loving the R8 and R6ii. I'm not seeing much benefit (to me) of the R5/R5II over my R6ii.

 

[Loswr]

The 5DII was my first FF camera, which I used alongside a 7D. Great combination, but I replaced both with the 1D X that was my primary camera until the R3 came along.

 

[Sporgon]

My digital Canon journey is 5D to 5DII to 5DS. Still using the S as my main landscape camera. As long as you nail the highlights where you want them and don’t over sharpen I haven’t yet found a mirrorless camera that’s made me want to change. The Hasselblad X2D might ;-)
I have the same feeling as some (many ?) others do regarding the colour quality from the older models. When exposed optimally at 100 ISO the quality of the 5DII was appealing. I look back at some of my old files from that camera and wonder if my R6 would be the same.

 

[roby17269]

I went 350D -> 20D -> 5D -> 5D mkII -> 1D X -> R5 -> ?
The first 3 upgrades happened fairly quickly and my crop life ended pretty soon. FF forever!
I will always remember how amazing it was to look through the 5D's viewfinder after the narrow tunnels of crop cameras... I still have a number of photos I love from the 5D - I agree the colors were great.
I remember the resolution jump of the 5D mkII (I have never been much into video so the mkII's credentials in video did not mean much to me).
I chose the 1D X over the 5D mkIII since I liked the body and the viewfinder better.
The R5 is my current camera and when I had it at the beginning I remember being in awe of the AF. The R5 is so good that I don't need the R5 mkII... will be waiting for the mkIII (or, even better, for a high res R1)

I bought the H5X while I had the 1D X but that's a different story altogether.

 

[Jon741]

I went 20D, 5D2, 5Dsr, R5ii...

I think people wildly underestimate the 5Dsr, especially the AF, which was a step up from the 5D3 as it used colour when tracking which the "3" did not... Also if you really optimise the AF carefully it is just great. Oh and surprisingly more detail vs. the R5ii than what I had expected (which was a small gain for the "sr"), so it will be my film scanning camera for the duration... Plus finally for some reason or other the 1080p video was really good (as I had a bit of an argument with EOSHD on which people eventually agreed with me). Okay, I had a Panasonic m43 camera that could shoot a really nice 4k, so not a big concern, but it was a surprise compared to what people were saying...

Canon 5DS takes a backwards step for video - severe rolling shutter, moire and lack of uncompressed HDMI

www.eoshd.com

Oh and the detail:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/62189807

AF tricks:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/57783315

 

[HJN]

What a great article.
These personal historical flashbacks, from people that actually used the cameras, are always a delight to read.
Gives such a different view on the cameras, than you get when you just read a contemporary review of the camera.

 

[drmikeinpdx]

I had a love/hate relationship with my 5D Classic. The autofocus system sucked so badly that I could never really do good shallow depth of field work with large aperture lenses. I skipped the 5D Mark 2 because it apparently had the same autofocus system. The 5D Mark 3 was the first digital camera I really loved and I used it heavily. It really propelled my photography business and my enjoyment. I admit that I spent way too much time doing focus calibration on all of my lenses in an attempt to get perfect autofocus. I upgraded to the Mark 4 on general principle, but didn't get much increase in functionality. Now I'm an R6 guy and feel very fortunate to have both a good sensor and virtually perfect autofocus in the same camera.

 

[Exploreshootshare]

Why are the comments closed with all new articles? This is one of the very few threads where I can comment.

 

[koenkooi]

Why are the comments closed with all new articles? This is one of the very few threads where I can comment.

I have no knowledge of CR internals, but during previous updates to the site, Craig has said that having this forum and the frontpage tied together and accounts in sync is a lot of work. The sync has been broken before and fixed/reactivated later. I suspect this is an effect of the maintenance this week. I don't know if it was an intended effect, though.

 

[Exploreshootshare]

I have no knowledge of CR internals, but during previous updates to the site, Craig has said that having this forum and the frontpage tied together and accounts in sync is a lot of work. The sync has been broken before and fixed/reactivated later. I suspect this is an effect of the maintenance this week. I don't know if it was an intended effect, though.

Thx for the explanation. Makes sense, hope they can fix it soon.