Wherein I ramble about color and an old 5D Mk 1
Canon 5D Mk1 + Canon 50/1.8
So, I’ve been sitting on an eBay gift card that I got for my birthday for the last couple months or so. At first I was leaning toward putting the money toward another M mount lens, but, in light of some recent epiphanies about focal lengths and how it generally doesn’t matter at all what you put on the front of your camera, the idea of buying other lenses just feels like a waste of time. If anything I’ve been selling them off. So lenses are out. Then I thought about the old Canon 5D I had way back in the day. I picked one up during the internet craze when everyone was talking about how magical and “film-like” the colors were. I don’t actually remember why I got rid of it, but, regardless, I was able to scoop one up for around $160.
I still have the Canon 6D which was initially purchased to scratch the occasional itch to shoot an SLR but Jess has long since adopted that camera as her own for when we go out on walks with cameras, so, picking up another 5D felt like a good use of the gift card. I also did always like the colors that came out of that camera. In that regard the hype was actually pretty spot on. Also, having transitioned to shooting a lot more color now, I was much more interested in the color capabilities than I was when I owned it in the past.
And I will say that working with the files for color work is amazing. The camera just seems to output really beautiful colors with very little post-production work necessary. I just apply a camera-matching profile and make basic tweaks to exposure, color temps, highlights and shadows, etc etc.. All that basic panel stuff, and that’s about it. Working on these files compared to working on the modern Canon files or even the Leica files is a walk in the park. It feels like it takes a lot of fiddling with both the modern Canon and Leica files to get the colors right. The Leica files are easier but neither are as good as the old 5D “classic” files.
All in all, so far pretty stoked to have this little camera back in the lineup