Nature Photographers Network
This is the preserved archive of the original Nature Photographers Network. The community continues at naturephotographers.network.
Forums · NPN Discussion

5d mark II and sigma 300-800

Discussion

4 replies
Posted by huseyin Yilmaz on March 23, 2009 at 3:04 PM
Hi I am new in bird photography, I got a secon hand sigma 300-800 at a price 4300 USD.
one of my friend (serious bird photographer currently using canon 500mm) suggested to me to combine sigma with 5d Mark II. I currently have canon 50d. I want to know whether there could be any advantage of or what would be the advantage of using 5d mark II. Although I will get rid of 1.6* would it be better in face of sharpnes etc. Any suggestions are welcome.
Posted by Keith Bauer on March 23, 2009 at 4:04 PM
If you use your 300-800 with a 5d Mark II, the effective angle of view and cropping will remain at 300-800mm. If you use the 300-800 with a 50D which has a crop factor of 1.6, your angle of view will look like a 480-1280mm lens. Great for smaller subjects like birds. There is no advantage in terms of sharpness with either body. With the 5d Mark II you have more pixels to deal with so cropping an image might still leave you with more information. I haven't done the math to figure out where the break even point is between cropping an image with the 5d Mark II using the 50D. The 50D has a higher frame rate so depending on your subjects, that may prove useful.
Posted by David Chauvin on March 23, 2009 at 5:04 PM
Continuous autofocus tracking performance won't be as good and frame rate will be lower on the 5DII compared to the 50D. This would be a deal breaker for me for bird flight photography. The 5DII will give you video if that is important.
Posted by huseyin Yilmaz on March 23, 2009 at 5:24 PM
I think I had better to keep shooting with 50d. Some says that even cropping with 5d mark II would produce similar results with great detail. Now I do not have any interest about video and birds.

thanks for your replies.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 24, 2009 at 11:04 AM
I own the 5D MKII and am a huge fan of the full frame viewfinder and sensor. But for birding I see no advantage at all, the 50D to me wins there: same gorgeous LCD, 1.6x crop factor, 15MP (and the cells on the sensor are virtually gapless), and cross hairs on ALL the AF points. I don't own a 50D, but if I took up birding that 50D would be my main choice. Don't worry about the lack of video, I'm not sure you could get rock solid video at 800mm with a 1.6x crop factor unless you cemented the camera to a building!