Recommendation for second body: Canon 5d mk1 or Canon 1d mk2

darragh o meara

Ok as per title I'm looking to pick up a spare body to have on the bag, I'm gonna be buying one second hand and will be using it purely for photos.

The two I've been looking at are:

Canon 5d mk1
Canon 1d mk2 N

Both are in aroun the same money second hand and in my eyes are great value now.

Which would be your choice or recommendation?

Ballyman

Well if it's only for photos and not mixing cement then for a second body I would probably go for the 5D as it's a smaller handier camera to carry around.

It also would depend on what you were interested in too of course, sport and wildlife would probably benefit more from the 1D Mkii high fps but everything else would be fine with the 5D.

bigjoe

I have both and they are great at what they do. It depends on what sort of pictures you are talking about taking.

For sport or anything fast the 5D won't cut it you than need the 1D but for anything else the 5D is the way to go.

You didn't say what it will be a second camera too. If you dont have a full frame than the 5D.

darragh o meara

Sorry should have been more specific, I currently have a 7d and a 60d ( which Im selling to fund a better body )

I dont have any particular area of use, But I do on occasion take pics at car rallys so I suppose the extra speed of the 1d might make a difference ( not that Ive had major problems before ) I suppose a lot of my problem is that Id prefer a Pro spec camera to play about with as well as the 7d.

In saying that i was offered a 1d mk3 for the right money this afternoon which has really got me thinking, But first I wanna check if its full frame or not as I was foolishly under the impression that the 1d line were all full frame...

1D is 1.3 crop. But EF-S lenses wont fit it.

I use a 7D and 60D myself. Can I ask where you feel the 60 is letting you down? I haven't used it much so far (bought it for the tilt-swivel screen mostly as it was a feature the 7D didnt have, but i wanted) but i find it good when i am using it.

One thing i'd say is be careful of MP count. I thought it'd make little difference using two cameras of different MP count, but after using a 7D and 20D side by side, i began to notice it more and more (not that the 20D is a bad camera; it's excellent, but the two different sizes from one event was bugging me. A little OCD or something perhaps, but still).

bigjoe

darragh o meara wrote: »

In saying that i was offered a 1d mk3 for the right money this afternoon which has really got me thinking,

If it is a good one it is a better camera than the MKllN but check it out. The early MKlll had a lot of problems with focusing at speed and the only way to test it is at speed. A list serial numbers between 501001 and 546561 were said to have the problem but I have been told some of the cameras after the later numbers had the problem too. There was a fix and again I know of some of these that still had the problem after the fix. In fact A friend of mine got the fix done but still had the problem and they gave him a new one. These later one had a blue dot on the box and became know as a 1DMKlll Blue Dot.

darragh o meara

Thanks for the info lads. After carefully mulling it over I'm gonna hold out and get me a 5d mk2 and have sourced a great deal on an eos 1d mk2 for the Motorsport pics.

As regard to the question on the 60d, this is a great camera and I never had a single problem with it. I'm 100% happy but if I was to sell one to upgrade it was more logical to sell the lesser of the two bodies.

Again thanks for all the info