Toronto Photography Meetup Group

I am currently shooting with an XSI body along with a Tamron 17-50 f2.8 and a Canon 70-200 f4.0L. I mainly shoot landscapes most of the time and some portraits occassionally. I want to give the FF a try and given my budget, i am looking at buying a used 5D classic body. Apparently, there are quiet a few available for sale at the moment in and around the GTA.

My question to you good folks is what to look for when making this purchase? I made a points list based on my reasearch online:

1. Prefer to have the Serial # start with 2 due to the LCD issues
2. Mirror has been reinforced/fixed by Canon
3. Internals/Sensor were regularly cleaned
4. Shutter Count (Apparently there is no way to confirm this...unless there is something i missed)
5. The body autofocuses correctly

Besides these, is there anything technical that i should be concerned about. Some articles suggested to replace the focusing screen inside the body. I have no idea how this can be accomplished.

Any help would be appreciated friends.

Thank you

Sal

If possible (good advice for any interchangeable lens body) test with a couple lenses and load the images onto your laptop to see if focus is good and you don't see any other abnormalities - like dead pixels, dirty sensor spots (which could be something else), etc.

Also check burst mode to see if the camera body can still shoot it's spec'd frames per second. I would also bring a canon flash and see if the body can still sync at it's rated flash sync speed without introducing blacking out part of the image (indication that it no longer can sync properly at the rated flash sync speed.)

Your Tamron 17-50 f2.8 won't be any good on the 5D. If you're going full frame, you better be able to afford the lenses too.

Thank you all. Those are some really good pointers that i will keep in mind.

I do know that the Tamron 17-50 wont work on the FF. I plan on using the 70-200 on the FF initially until i can save enough to get me a wide 17-40 f4L later on.

Its a bit annoying to see the 5D sellers not voluntarily giving the critical information when they sell their camera.....not until you ask questions about serial numbers, mirror fixes, cleaning etc etc.

I have a 5D with a serial number starting with a '3'. I received an email from Canon to bring it in for the mirror fix. The mirror fix was done according to the paper work.

just a completely side observations but would you guys say the majority of the people on here shoot canon DSLRs?

No.