50D and 5D mk1 head to head?

In the UK here these are similar prices on ebay. I want to upgrade from a 20D. I've read all the posts and searched the info, but I'd really like to benefit from user-experience here.

I have a collection of legacy manual lenses, M42s, and some Contax and Leica R. May consider upgrading the screen for manual lenses, and anyway shooting with manual lenses will be a priority.

So, in a straight head-to-head, which would you buy and why?

5d for picture quality. 50d for speed. Whichever suits your bigger requirement.

Definitely the 5D here. You don't need the AF of the 50D since you're using MF lenses, and the focal lengths of MF lenses are far more suited to the 5D.

By the way you described how you will be using the camera, the 5d would be much better suited for your purposes.

If you have old tele lens like 300-400mm - 50D.
If you plan to use 50mm and wider - 5Dc.

So picture quality on 12MP full frame is better than 15MP cropped? How much better - general sharpness or just low light performance?

les24preludes wrote in post #15344710
In the UK here these are similar prices on ebay. I want to upgrade from a 20D. I've read all the posts and searched the info, but I'd really like to benefit from user-experience here.

I have a collection of legacy manual lenses, M42s, and some Contax and Leica R. May consider upgrading the screen for manual lenses, and anyway shooting with manual lenses will be a priority.

So, in a straight head-to-head, which would you buy and why?

50D purely because of live view.

How is the 5d better IQ wise? The 50d is imo a poor hi iso performer and has intermittent metering which meant I often had to add exposure in post adding to the noise. To be fair it was fast and accurate and rather than mislead you I have a 1ds opposed to a 5dc. The 1ds produces far more natural looking photographs than my 50d did. I have yet to see a review that favours the 1ds over the 5dc IQ wise so can only assume from this that the 5dc is even better again

les24preludes wrote in post #15345198
So picture quality on 12MP full frame is better than 15MP cropped? How much better - general sharpness or just low light performance?

jaomul wrote in post #15345493
How is the 5d better IQ wise? The 50d is imo a poor hi iso performer and has intermittent metering which meant I often had to add exposure in post adding to the noise. To be fair it was fast and accurate and rather than mislead you I have a 1ds opposed to a 5dc. The 1ds produces far more natural looking photographs than my 50d did. I have yet to see a review that favours the 1ds over the 5dc IQ wise so can only assume from this that the 5dc is even better again

I have a 7D 18mp and 5D 12mp to compare against one another. As much as I love the 7D the 5D does a better job of capturing the natural skin tones of my portrait subjects. The original 1DS and 5D classic are stellar performers when it comes to a natural look in your photo's.

Also think about how your nice manual focus lenses will be back at their original intended fields of view. You can actually get manual focus wide angles and fast normal primes for full frame cameras.

Get the 5D if you don't need speed

I have both and the 50D has the edge for sports only.
The 5D has much better IQ.
I choose the 5D for everything that doesn't move fast, even if it feels like a dinosaur.
Get the Canon ee-s screen or one of the ebay screens with prism for your legacy MF glass.

evilr00t wrote in post #15345385
50D purely because of live view.

You don't need live view, I can manually focus on my crop body through the tiny viewfinder just as easily as through my 35mm body that has a split screen. Just takes practice.

The 5DC has such great colors SOOC also.

I've used a 5D with EE-S screen as my main camera for the last 2.5 years despite owning a 60D. Using 35mm format lenses on full frame just works so well. I mostly use Contax lenses, but I love the Pentacon 135/2.8 preset and CZ Sonnar 135/3.5 too

One thing I'm thinking in favour of the 50D is that lenses end up much smaller with a cropped sensor. I wouldn't expect to be going above 150mm for average shooting. If I covered the range from 70 to 150 with some kind of zoom, it would be a lot smaller than a 70-210 zoom. I don't generally shoot very wide anyway, and I have a decent 24mm Yashica. I can see a smaller and lighter travelling kit with a 50D.