EOS 50D ISO Test

EOS 50D was announced before Photokina 2008, it is available in shops now at around US$1300 to US$1400. We have 2 post about EOS 50D already :

• Canon EOS 50D announcement
• Canon EOS 50D gallery

So, you knew the features of EOS 50D and seen some nice sample photos produced by EOS 50D. Does it worth the money? Is it a good move to upgrade from EOS 30D / EOS 40D to EOS 50D ?

Reason to Upgrade to EOS 50D

There are quite a few features that worth to upgrade:

• 15 megapixel CMOS sensor
• ISO 100 to 3200, expendable to H1 (6400) and H2 (12800)
• 3 inch high resolution LCD monitor (920K dots)
• Lens fine tune feature (20 lenses profiles)

If you are currently using EOS 30D, you would find it is really attractive to upgrade. The effective pixels of EOS 50D sensor is almost double the one on EOS 30D (8 megapixel). Very good noise control at high ISO, the image from EOS 50D is much cleaner than 30D / 40D at the same ISO. The new 3 inch high resolution LCD monitor is a must have, it is more than 3 times higher resolution than the one find on 40D; 30D only has a 2.5 inch low resolution LCD.

One really new feature is the ability to fine tune the focus of your lenses. EOS 50D allow you to calibrate the focus for 20 lenses and store in the camera’s lenses profiles. It is quite useful for users who want to obtain the sharpest auto focus.

Reason for NOT upgrading to EOS 50D

EOS 50D come with very good features, however, there are still some very important features that 50D didn’t update.

• the same old 9 points AF
• slower continuous shooting
• large file size

One of the features that EOS 50D didn’t update is the auto focus. A lot of Canon users have stated that they would like to have a better auto focus, the 9 points AF on 40D is not accurate enough (especially for moving objects or under artificial lights). This is a bit disappointing that EOS 50D come with the same old auto focus.

On the other hand, the side effect of having a higher pixel count sensor is the larger file size; It also make the continuous shooting a little bit slower, it is not a real problem, but good to know that.

EOS 50D ISO test

One of the main step from EOS 30D / 40D is the new sensor. The new sensor promise to deliver higher pixel count and better high ISO noise control. It is common that noise control get worse as a side effect of higher pixel count, would 50D able to break through this technical limit? The following ISO test photos are taken with Noise Reduction features turned off.

100% crop photos at Position #1

ISO 100	ISO 200	ISO 400
ISO 800	ISO 1600	ISO 3200
ISO 6400	ISO 12800

100% crop photos at Position #2

ISO 100	ISO 200	ISO 400
ISO 800	ISO 1600	ISO 3200
ISO 6400	ISO 12800

100% crop photos at Position #3

ISO 100	ISO 200	ISO 400
ISO 800	ISO 1600	ISO 3200
ISO 6400	ISO 12800

EF-S 18-200 IS Test

EF-S 18-200 IS was announced at the same time with EOS 50D. Canon also offer a kit set of EOS 50D + EF-S 18-200 IS. However, this lens is a super-zoom lens that offer 11X zoom range; from our experience that super-zoom lenses often suffer from image quality problems. Moreover, EF-S 18-200 IS cost more than US$650, you can get a EF 17-40 L with the same amount of money! So, dose it worth the money? Would it be a good match with EOS 50D?

EF-S 18-200 IS test photo: wide end	wide end center 100% crop
Wide end corner 100% crop
EF-S 18-200 IS test photo: Tele end	Tele end center 100% crop

EF-S 18-200 IS offers 11X zoom which is very convenient for traveling. However, the photo quality from EF-S 18 -200 IS is far worse than EF 17-40 L which cost almost the same.

Conclusion

From the ISO test photos, we can see that EOS 50D did a very good job up to ISO 1600. The noise level at ISO 1600 for EOS 50D is as low as ISO 800 for 40D.

ISO 3200 photos from 50D is still quite clean and usable. Meanwhile, at ISO 6400 and ISO 12800 the noise level increase sharply, the photos are very noise and not really usable.

I am currently using EOS 30D, I find EOS 50D is a really great step up from 30D; it is really persuasive for me to upgrade to 50D.

Related Posts

• Canon EOS 50D gallery
• Canon EOS 50D announcement