Right after I hit the ground in San Francisco to shoot the Web 2.0 Conference, I went over to a camera store to get a new camera strap and a few other accessories. As it happens, I didn't find what I wanted, but there on the shelf was something I didn't expect to see on October 4th: Canon's new EOS 5D full-frame digital SLR.

Since the announcement of the 5D in August, I've been reading the online forums and the excellent previews of the camera, including Michael Richmann's field report. But I had held off on actually placing an order. I knew that if I placed an order, odds were not high that I'd have it in time to shoot Web 2.0 as well as the European Open Source Convention two weeks later. So, I was going to let other people have the fun with the first batches and maybe join in later.

But there it was on the shelf. A rare item indeed, as mass shipments had reportedly only been happening for a week or so. The camera store had received five earlier that day. This was the last one. And I could have it. Right then. Right there. And I could shoot the Web 2.0 conference with it. Of course, I wasn't totally lost yet. I could have said no. But then I uttered those words that every photographer knows are deadly: "Sure, pull it down. I want to take a look at it."

It left the store with me, along with a $3,300 smoking hole in my pocket. Did you expect any other outcome? My wallet wasn't terribly thrilled with me, but it was consoled by the fact that the purchase was a tax-deductible business expense.

I then embarked on shooting the three days of the Web 2.0 conference with it, replacing my trusty Canon 20D. I was hesitant at first—it's always risky to go into an assignment without practicing with new gear first—but confidence in the new camera built quickly and then deepened into respect. Here are some of my impressions after shooting several-thousand frames.

Full-Frame Goodness

The first thing that's noticeable about the EOS 5D is that it is a full-frame camera. For those of you who haven't been keeping track of Digital SLRs over the last few years, most Digital SLRs come with a sensor that is considerably smaller than a full 35mm frame. Most, such as the popular Canon Digital Rebel and 20D, have a sensor about the size of an APS frame. The result is that a 50mm lens behaves like a 85mm lens. This is good if you want the telephoto-like effect that the cropping creates. It's bad, however, if you want to enjoy the full effect of your glass.

One of the first shots I took with my 5D was out of my hotel window with an EF 24-70 L zoom lens at 24mm. My reaction was, "So that's where my wide-angle has been hiding all these years."

As soon as I took the image, I pulled the card and loaded it onto the laptop to take a closer look at it, all 12 megapixels of it. When you hear that number in the abstract, it sounds big, but when you load it into Photoshop and start working with a 35MB file, you find out quickly just how big it is.

To give you an idea of how many pixels are there, here's a 100 percent detail of the shot above.

Now, and this is the part that will really rock your world, if you made a print of the entire image at the resolution of the crop above, it would be 5 feet wide and 3 1/2 feet tall. When you consider I took the above shot handheld through a dirty window and at f/4.5, that's just amazing. I have no doubt that a proper tripod setup without a window would produce even better results.

Of course, there's a dark side to this full-framed goodness. When you are shooting RAW format, each picture consumes around 12MB of space on your Compact Flash card and, later, on your hard drive. And the files are noticeably slower to work on in Photoshop than the files from a Canon 20D.

Another thing about using a full-frame sensor that you'll notice in the shot above is that our old friend vignetting is back. Luckily, if you are using better glass, this usually only affects zooms at their widest angle. It's also easy enough to correct in post-processing.

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