1d Mark IIn headed to Canon for a little work

About 8 months ago, while I was dreaming of the Mark III and then looking at my bank account, then looking at the Mark III (a vicious circle, I assure you) I jumped in on the 1d series bandwagon, along with a 12% then-live.cashback incentive, and got a 1d Mark IIn for shooting sports, birds, and other things of suitable motion, speed and distance. I bought it on ebay, the body appears well used, lots of little scratches and such on the LCD, but works good. 86k shutter clicks IIRC from my first 1d camcount trial on it.

In practice using this body, I had to do alot of post processing on these images to get them sharpened up to what I am used to receiving from the 5d. So, I did a test with my favorite long lens, the Sig(insert monster name here) 120-300. I thought crap, i've got a front/back focussing sigma again. Well, on the 5d, this thing rocked. Smack on focus and sharpee. Slap it on the 1dMk2n and i get that fuzzy look at the focal plane, even though its DOF will be great, with the same camera settings (which it was, I checked). SS up above 1/640 also...and rested on the ground, eliminates camera shake.

I know you're going to want to see the pics, but if I do, I'm afraid you'll just say...'hey, they look pretty close...sure, needs some sharpening, but acceptable'. I can just hear it.

I sent it off to Canon today, first for a good sensor cleaning, perhaps the original owner muffed an attempt and left a haze on the sensor. Then I also asked Canon to check for any other potential causes for soft images.

My question to those of you with similar experience, was I expecting too much from the 1d Mark IIn compared to the 5d? I know there's megapixel difference, but if all settings being equal, but sharpness should be on par with the best, correct? Am I the anal nay-sayer, or would you have shipped it off also?

My 2p
I have a 4 year old N which I bought brand new and its never missed a beat or locked up in all that time
the autofocus is way better than the 10d 20d 30d and 40d (by a looong way) and I can say hand on heart that it is without doubt the best camera I have ever owned bar none

1 series camera's 'mute' the in camera colours so that Raw shooters can get the maximum out of the images - sure the consumer models output more highly saturated images - the regular Joe's cant be bothered to put the extra effort into the PP to get the best out of there images

How come you sent it back to Canon for the sensor cleaning?? can you not do that yourself takes all of 5 minutes, plenty of help in that regard in the forum

Chris

Thanks Chris, in case it was a problem with the sensor, perhaps with the original owner, I did not want to take a chance on that. Yes, I pay someone to clean my sensors for me, its just one of those areas where one either feels comfortable or not.

Colors in the RAW images do appear a bit more muted than the same raws from the 5d. You didn't mention if your N had equally sharp images as say...the 40d. Can you comment on that? I would like someone to confirm for me that the 1dmkII, though a great camera in many functional aspects, can produce sharp images straight from the camera in controlled conditions, or do I accept a certain level of 'dull' from my images, and must PP to get them sharpened?