The original epic DSLR.

Continues to be my main DSLR. A revolution at its time. Still love it.

Interesting that DPR only looks at latitude and banding while pushing 5 stops. What they don't mention is how sharp those 12 megapixels really look even compared to the Nikon D750, D810 or the Sony A7R II. Comical indeed.

I still have my 5D. One thing that isn't mentioned much, is that at that time, the shits would be compared to 35m film. And the tones and colors where the one thing that camera couldn't fail at. It was designed to beat film once and forever for the educated enthusiast, and by the time it arrived a huge number of people on film did the transition. While 5D is in pristine condition, I have lost all the best shots to an unfortunate storage failure.

The camera that replaces this one for me will likely be a high dynamic range one. I am waiting to see if One with 16 EV appears next two years.

The reason I bought the 5D is because at that time, ANY photo with the kesser cameras woukd nit even closely resemble what I saw. I was traveling every weekend to remote places in Mexico. And this camera was the only thing that got close to what I saw, close enough that I would really remember the feeling and gorgeousness of it all. Thanks, 5D!

If 12.8 MP is ok for your print size i see no reason to ever upgrade ...so far the colors /skin tones and the general look of the photos from modern cameras don't seem as good to me
talking of print size the 5D will print bigger than the MP will suggest (or some hi MP cameras will print smaller than the MP cont will suggest )
When you have 12MP and at 100% it looks very crisp and sharp and you have 24MP that look a little soft at 100%...the resulting print size may be less different than you think

I picked up my 5D Classic earlier this year, fell in love with full frame right away. The 5D is a awesome way to get into full frame on a Rebel's budget!

I bought a 5D Classic about nine years ago and it's still my daily driver. I'm just still very pleased with it. When I do upgrade, it'll be because of low-light performance and dust, but I still don't feel an upgrade on the horizon yet. It's just a great feeling, using a camera that I've gotten to know so well over the past so long.

Nice to see 5D here again.

Is it my eyes or display but I could not see much difference in noise between newer 5Dx and this original. Both looked quite noisy. I can sometimes see noise at ISO 100 in my 5D Mark 1. Without better noise performance no Canon camera is worth its price.

By the way, This camera also over exposes large red areas or objects. So there is room for improvement. Perhaps Dpreview should test that too.

Cool to see this older camera in your studio test scene and ISO invariance test. The difference should be bigger with so many years between them :). Looking forward to a more and more complete camera database in your studio scenes. Keep it up :)

I still use 5D as my main camera. Sensor has some serious scratches but it's manageable. Kinda waiting for it to die. And yes it is pretty straightforward.
I bought Fuji X-T1 when it came out and I thought that it'll be my perfect camera.. but it wasn't! I loved the looks, ergonomics, dials, even EVF was ok-ish but it lacked image quality. Sharpness and all that. ISO performance was dreadful. Anything above 3200 was unusable. So I had to stick with my 5D.

curious the results of the "Studio Test Scene" in raw mode, if compared with the A7S II.

My 5D is still working - I still use it as a protest to otherwise having to replace one camera body with much the same thing every two years or so at $3,500 per body.

If mirrorless bodies were this expensive to upgrade then maybe there is a lesson there for Sony? Oh, sorry, they have already learned it.

Still some working 5D's out there? Yes, mine is one of them, Fantastic camera, I still use it regularly

Love the original 5d, and still use it on occasion, even though I have a Mk III.

If I remember correctly, it had a "relatively" weak AA filter, which contributed to its pixel level sharpness/micro contrast. Hoping the Mk IV has the same, but we'll have to wait & see, I have my doubts.

I have long looked at 5D's. This article has me thinking again. Well done.
I have owned a couple of the little brother 30D. Looking back of my shots, the 8 MP 30D still has some of the best looking images.

OK, for future Throwbacks, how about the Canon Pro 1? I still have one (it's #6). When brought out, the early review models had a number of problems that were mostly worked out over the next two years. Early ones had AF issues, fixed by the new firmware; the early ones vignette at certain combinations of focal length and aperture, and they eventually got that right. The differences between the earliest and last production is quite significant. Unfortunately nearly all the reviews were done on the earliest build and give a false picture of what a good one can do.
DPR, set the record straight with a re-review of a late production Pro 1.

While you can't get it repaired by Canon, there are tons of legit brick and mortar repair shops which will repair them, want any piece of the guts you need for repairs? Aliexpress is choke full of repair parts for the 5D classic.

I have an A7 II, 5D Mark II and the 5D classic and while both the A7II and 5D mk II have a set of more advanced features, in terms of IQ (mainly the color rendition specially skin) the 5D classic still is the king (much like the D700 had beautiful color rendition that I feel has been lost in the D750/D8x0 series)

I do wish Canon made a true 5 megapixel 5d version for wedding photographers who don't need 50mp. We want lower noise in the darker venues and I think that would be an ideal resolution with huge pixels capturing dim light. The megapixel race is stupid.

And there they are again, those perfectly balanced images in terms of pleasing colors. I don't know what Canon and Adobe did back then, but they sure made images look better from scratch. There was a warmer, almost filmlike Fuji-touch which is more obvious now when comparing with todays super-contrasty profiles and - to be honest - not always great colors.

Back in the day, I drooled over the 5Ds owned by the professionals I met. At that time, I still hadn't made the jump to large sensor cameras. I'd look at the 5D images on the internet, and dream of the day I'd go full frame. And yeah, I did. Canon 5D Mark II. Then the Leica M9. It was glorious.

Ironically, I now shoot mostly with m43 and aps-c sensor cameras like the Pana GM1 and Ricoh GR. Heck, I'm even toting the Pana LX7 with its tiny sensor all the time. Full frame cameras just aren't quite small enough for me yet.

I still remember the first time I looked into the 5D's viewfinder. Never mind the photos it took — coming from the 300D, that was enough to persuade me to buy one!

My only bad memory is the way it attracted dust.

I no longer have my original 5D — it was stolen from my checked luggage on an overseas flight. Lesson learned. All my gear goes in carry-on now.

A peerless, capable, gloriously simple imaging tool in its day. I could still use it for at least a third of what I shoot today. I had a 1DsII for a while and preferred the direct simplicity of the 5D. Wish I hadn't sold it for the 5DII, which I like far less and feel, below ISO 1600, actually has poorer image quality overall.

Maybe it's all in my head, but out of all the dozens of digital cameras I've owned and used, the original 5D gave me the files that I thought were the "prettiest" for lack of a better superlative. There have been plenty of cameras that measure better but there are no other images that give me a jaw drop reaction upon opening to full resolution as consistently as my 5D images.

Have a couple 2'x3' canvas prints from ye olde 5D hanging on the wall. 12MP goes a long way, and some of my personal favorites I took with that 5D. Good times.

Such a coincidence! Was hoping to see how the Canon EOS 5D would fare against it's successors (5D mkII, mkIII and 6D) in the RAW dynamic range studio test.
I still use the 5D and there's indeed a lot I can do with the pictures when exposed for the maximum amount of latitude with RAW image editing in Lightroom. The photos look very good to me, although when not exposed enough banding can be a problem when I want to preserve detail in the shadows.
Other than that I love it's rich colours and sharpness.
I like a camera that is just for shooting stills with no more bells and whistles than necessary, the 5D fits this bill while image quality is still really decent to get great results.

With our a doubt my favorite camera. It renders amazingly!

I got my 5D in Jan. 2006. Great image quality for the day and used it for all kinds of photography, portrait, scenic, real estate and photojournalism. By May, 2008, the shutter release button stopped working, it stopped auto focusing and there was a 2 second lag before the shutter would release. It had slightly over 8,000 frames on the shutter. I had 3 jobs to photograph and my Canon DRebel could not handle two of them because of the long shutter lag it had, a horse show and dance recital at night in an auditorium. Because I was a long time Minolta user, I bought the newly released Sony a300. It handled the 3 jobs superbly with a very short shutter lag, morning horse show, afternoon indoor high school 50th reunion and a night dance recital in a large auditorium. On the following Monday, I had a house to photograph for a real estate listing. With the 5D on a tripod I needed to to bend down to see the LCD screen but the 300 I had a flip up - flip down screen with made it easier.

Love throwback Thursday, and thanks for not calling the 5D a 'Mark 1'.

This DPReview article seems to be laughing at 5D image quality. But the 5D could already produce excellent A2 format prints. The noise performance up to ISO 1600 isn't even so much worse compared to the later 5D models. The typical quote was 2/3 to 1 stop difference. In fact, only in recent years APS-C has made it to this very same level.

I once met someone with 5D mk III and did an ad hoc ISO 3200 test: my 5D produced a way brighter image at the same exposure settings.

Those newer 5D models only produced a slightly bigger image/overall somewhat reduced noise and better features, kept the same DR. Banding was removed only in 2012 with the 5D III. The 5Dsr finally is a big step, but even my Fuji X-T1 has more DR...