sony a700 v canon 5dmk1

linearamp

linearamp

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Martin
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i have a Sony A700 with 1 G lens and various minolta glass , im looking to change cameras ,i cannot afford to get a Sony a900 FF .

So have been reading and looking at the Canon 5d Mk1.Seems like a good camera for its age ,and can get one for reasonable prices .
Also the quality of the shots taken with the 5d mk1 seem to be allot better than my a700 or am i imagining things.

Would the change to a 5d mk1 be a sideways / backward move or a upgrade to my Sony. I realise i would have to get canon lenses etc .i would be selling my 700 and all the glass that comes with it for a total change.

I photo basically anything .i have not got one subject that i take more shots of .

So basically im asking is it it worth the change and selling my gear to fund a 5d mk1 and get some decent glass for it..

thanks in advance,

Martin

Ps i dont want to start a war/arguments over this as i know whatever cameras each and everyone you own wether it be canon , nikon , sony ,olympus .this always causes arguments and sometimes snobbery
 
The A700 is getting a bit old now. I'd wait for the A77 which is due for release soon. Check out the A55 and the A580 which both have decent resolution and will give decent results. Image quality should be better than the A700 but build quality isn't as good with the a580 certainly. Think the A700 is weather proof isn't it??

What exactly is the issue with the A700 and what lenses do you have for it?
 
linearamp said:
i have a Sony A700 with 1 G lens and various minolta glass , im looking to change cameras
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why? what aren't you happy with on the A700?
The 5D is a 2 year older design than the A700.
The only obvious advantages imo to a 5D are those related to there being no 1.5x crop factor (e.g. shallower DoF) , bigger & brighter viewfinder & possibly a bit better high ISO. It's probably the better landscape camera.
However, again imo the A700 makes the better sports/wildlife camera.
 
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heidfirst said:
why? what aren't you happy with on the A700?
The 5D is a 2 year older design than the A700.
The only obvious advantages imo to a 5D are those related to there being no 1.5x crop factor (e.g. shallower DoF)
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As well as much better sharpness, a much larger second hand lens market, lower apparent CA and wider accessory support e.g. flashguns. The 1100D is a six years newer design than the 5DC, I know which one I'd rather have.
 
Ksanti said:
As well as much better sharpness, a much larger second hand lens market, lower apparent CA and wider accessory support e.g. flashguns.
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in your opinion, others may not agree.
Sharpness & CA I've never had a problem with & of course the A700 has a higher Mp/unit area allowing further cropping in than a 5D.
The fact that there are more s/h Canon lenses is tempered by the fact that there are more Canon users looking so it balances out.
Similarly if you have enough accessory support do you need more?
Thing is we really don't know atm what the OP's reasons for wanting to change are - the above may or may not be relevant.
The 1100D is a six years newer design than the 5DC, I know which one I'd rather have.
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many 5Ds have been used professionally & many have had e.g. mirror problems - sometimes a warranty is a nice thing to have ;) & there are jobs I daresay that the 1100D is more suited to than a 5D.
I know that for my needs I wouldn't trade my A700 for a 5D MkI (I probably wouldn't for a MkII either) but my needs & yours as well as being different may well not be the OP's either.
 
Sony is moving to an SLT design - if you don't like that (and why should you?) then its time to move.

5D has very impressive IQ and nice lovely large viewfinder. This is enough. The old vs new argument is pointless. My 7-year old 1DsII trashes just about every new-ish camera with a little exception of 1dsIII and D3x and perhaps a couple others. I wouldn't touch 1100D with a barge pole for what it offers. I'd say get 1DsII but that's because I like one.
 
daugirdas said:
Sony is moving to an SLT design - if you don't like that (and why should you?)
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because it has it's pros as well as cons so some people may favour it.
but I'm back to saying again that we don't have enough idea of what the OP's wants/needs are to give much relevant input.

The A700 is still a very capable camera as is your IDsII.
When Sony announces the A77 on the 24th I'll be watching with interest but I feel no compelling need to rush out & change mine as it still does the job.
 
Ksanti said:
As well as much better sharpness, a much larger second hand lens market, lower apparent CA and wider accessory support e.g. flashguns. The 1100D is a six years newer design than the 5DC, I know which one I'd rather have.
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Sharpness is down to the lens, not the body!.

And so is CA.
 
odd jim said:
Sharpness is down to the lens, not the body!.

And so is CA.
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Only when you're dealing with the same sized sensors. When you go full frame it changes as you're magnifying the images by different amounts for every time you display it. Unless you display every image from the crop at 1.5 times smaller than the 5D image, you'll find the sharpness does change. The sharpness of the displayed image is only the same if you crop every single shot from the 5D down by 1.5 times.


I'll try and explain:

If a lens can focus light accurately, lets say on average, to 0.02mm across. We shall refer to this unit as light pixels
On a 35mm full frame sensor, that would give (35/0.02) light pixels horizontally, or 1750LP
On a Sony ASP-C sensor, that would give (25/0.02) light pixels horizontally, or 1250LP.

Now at the level of the sensor, yes, the sharpness is the same, however like I said before, you don't display an image according to the sensor size, you put it to a convenient size e.g. 800 pixels across. Now, from the full frame image, you would get 1750LP over an 800 pixel image, giving apparent sharpness of roughly 2.2LP per pixel. For the same display size from a crop image, you would have 1250LP over an 800 pixel image, you'd have an apparent sharpness of 1.6LP per pixel.

Make sense?

EDIT: The same applies for CA - if the lens keeps horizontal CA down to 0.02mm at maximum, that length of CA would cover 1/1750th of a full frame image, but 1/1250th of a crop image.
 
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Ksanti said:
Only when you're dealing with the same sized sensors. When you go full frame it changes as you're magnifying the images by different amounts for every time you display it. Unless you display every image from the crop at 1.5 times smaller than the 5D image, you'll find the sharpness does change. The sharpness of the displayed image is only the same if you crop every single shot from the 5D down by 1.5 times.

I'll try and explain:

If a lens can focus light accurately, lets say on average, to 0.02mm across. We shall refer to this unit as light pixels
On a 35mm full frame sensor, that would give (35/0.02) light pixels horizontally, or 1750LP
On a Sony ASP-C sensor, that would give (25/0.02) light pixels horizontally, or 1250LP.

Now at the level of the sensor, yes, the sensor is the same, however like I said before, you don't display an image according to the sensor size, you put it to a convenient size e.g. 800 pixels across. Now, from the full frame image, you would get 1750LP over an 800 pixel image, giving apparent sharpness of roughly 2.2LP per pixel. For the same display size from a crop image, you would have 1250LP over an 800 pixel image, you'd have an apparent sharpness of 1.6LP per pixel.

Make sense?

EDIT: The same applies for CA - if the lens keeps horizontal CA down to 0.02mm at maximum, that length of CA would cover 1/1750th of a full frame image, but 1/1250th of a crop image.
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Hmmm. Not sure I understand that!
 
I'll give it a whack, ms paint style, back in a second :D
 
Okay here it is, maybe this helps? The main idea is that the lens can only focus light /so/ accurately. Obviously it doesn't actually focus in separate 'pixels' but that simplification makes the whole concept a lot easier. The lens's imaging circle only contains so many of these 'light pixels', a 35mm frame captures more of them, which means when displaying the image, each light pixel is magnified less than it is from a smaller sensor

9alMT.jpg


Think about it, if sensor size didn't matter, then for subjects like fashion billboards you wouldn't need medium format Hassleblads etc., you'd just need a really high MP small sensor camera.

Apologies for my awful diagram skills and recycled patterns from totally unrelated projects :D
 
I kind of see where you're coming from but still not 100% on it. Nice use of diagram though!
 
You're right in that the sensor makes no difference to the sharpness coming from the lens (except AA filters but that doesn't matter too much), it's purely the sensor size.

Think about it like this; take an image with your 50D at ISO 100 ETTR etc. so you keep noise as low as possible. Now if you crop in on that image, it'll become softer. Not just because of noise, but because the lens is only so sharp, so if you take a picture from a smaller part of the sensor, you then magnify the softness in the lens. Using a smaller sensor is essentially the same as cropping in on an image, which is why full frame images are pretty much always sharper than a crop image, regardless of lenses used (I think Uncle Ken did an article on it a while ago), and an ASP-C is always sharper than a micro 4/3s, then a compact, then a phone etc.
 
daugirdas said:
Sony is moving to an SLT design - if you don't like that (and why should you?) then its time to move.
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Why should you indeed? After all, who would want class-leading AF, very high frame rates, in-camera HDR, panoramas and multi-frame NR, the best LV on the market, Zeiss lenses with AF and video with PDAF?
 
...you forgot the EVF.

Yuck!
 
odd jim said:
...you forgot the EVF.

Yuck!
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I prefer it to the OVF in my a850. Not as pretty, for sure, but much better functionally.
 
Johnd2000 said:
I prefer it to the OVF in my a850. Not as pretty, for sure, but much better functionally.
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Really? I still don't like EVFs, not even the new ones.
 
Johnd2000 said:
Why should you indeed? After all, who would want class-leading AF, very high frame rates, in-camera HDR, panoramas and multi-frame NR, the best LV on the market, Zeiss lenses with AF and video with PDAF?
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Class leading AF? Not true. Maybe in video but other than that it's nothing special considering the phase detect AF only gets 30% of the light it would in other cameras which makes hunting way more common.

Frame rates are made less useful by the inability to track subjects

HDR is by and large useless and tacky, and to do it without it seeming as such requires thought anyway.

Panoramas are all well and good but if I'm doing a panorama I'd rather do it myself, eliminate stitching errors, still have the RAW files to play with etc.

Multi-frame NR is next to useless from what I've seen.

Zeiss lenses are all well and good but with the exception of the 135 f/1.8, there's nothing that stands above Canon's L or Nikon's high-end lenses, and even the 135 has worthy rivals in the cheap Canon 135 f/2L and Nikon 135 f/2 DC.

Video with PDAF is great for home use, but serious cinematography generally warrants manual focus as the PDAF locks on to the background and switches back and forth half the time.


Obviously the above are still advantages of SLT designs, for the most part, but the way you came across, you made them sound like they were game changers, which they're not.
 
Ksanti said:
Class leading AF? Not true. Maybe in video but other than that it's nothing special considering the phase detect AF only gets 30% of the light it would in other cameras which makes hunting way more common.

Frame rates are made less useful by the inability to track subjects

HDR is by and large useless and tacky, and to do it without it seeming as such requires thought anyway.

Panoramas are all well and good but if I'm doing a panorama I'd rather do it myself, eliminate stitching errors, still have the RAW files to play with etc.

Multi-frame NR is next to useless from what I've seen.

Zeiss lenses are all well and good but with the exception of the 135 f/1.8, there's nothing that stands above Canon's L or Nikon's high-end lenses, and even the 135 has worthy rivals in the cheap Canon 135 f/2L and Nikon 135 f/2 DC.

Video with PDAF is great for home use, but serious cinematography generally warrants manual focus as the PDAF locks on to the background and switches back and forth half the time.

Obviously the above are still advantages of SLT designs, for the most part, but the way you came across, you made them sound like they were game changers, which they're not.
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I can only conclude you've never used one. Poor AF tracking? You couldn't be more wrong.
 
Out of interest I'd genuinely like to know who states the AF is class leading?
 
Ksanti said:
Class leading AF? Not true. Maybe in video but other than that it's nothing special considering the phase detect AF only gets 30% of the light it would in other cameras which makes hunting way more common.
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remember that the current SLTs are £5-600 cameras & as such are competing with similarly priced Canons & Nikons. At that level their AF very probably is class leading - some pros who have used both have compared it to the 7D (considerably dearer).
the PD sensors in OVF bodies don't get 100% of the light either - if they did you wouldn't have an image in your OVF.

Frame rates are made less useful by the inability to track subjects
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1 of the advantages of the SLT design is that af is continuous & uninterrupted unlike on OVF designs

Multi-frame NR is next to useless from what I've seen.
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I think that the majority would disagree with you albeit it's no good if your subject is moving.

Zeiss lenses are all well and good but with the exception of the 135 f/1.8, there's nothing that stands above Canon's L or Nikon's high-end lenses, and even the 135 has worthy rivals in the cheap Canon 135 f/2L and Nikon 135 f/2 DC.
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There are several Sony lenses that are best in class in measurement but there is also no doubt that some qualities are not measurable by instrument such as the "look" of a lens. Apart from the Zeiss you also have the like of the 35/1.4 G which measure poorly but has an ethereal quality to it's images (bit of a marmite lens, you either love it or hate it). & remember that all of them (incl. the f1.4s) are stabilised ...

As for sensors there are obviously pros & cons for both crop & FF according to usage otherwise Canon & Nikon wouldn't both still make professional bodies in both formats.
Bottomline there is no 1 do-it-all body & (unless you have the funding to buy them all) you choose according to what best suits your usage.
 
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...still want to know which publication said it was class leading?
 
I don't know (DPR said "very good for class") but it's at least on par with 40D/50D/5D mkII or better.
 
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Im just curious as it's obviously aimed at sports shooters, but I can't see how the EVF can keep up with fast indoor sports?
 
odd jim said:
Im just curious as it's obviously aimed at sports shooters, but I can't see how the EVF can keep up with fast indoor sports?
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I'm not sure that it is just that with the mirror removed it meant a jump in fps for the class was easily achievable.
On the A55 the EVF can keep up with 6fps but not the headline 9/10fps (& how much do you have to pay to get 9fps on an OVF model?).
Having said that users say that with familiarity you can work with it.

btw there are rumours that Sony may yet introduce another OVF FF model in 2012.
 
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