Stop! Did you hear that sound?

It was soft, hard to hear. You had to be lis­ten­ing care­fully to have heard it at all. It was quick, ephemeral, but dis­tinc­tive. It was the sound of my 1D mark III shuf­fling to the num­ber 2 posi­tion. Still respected, still rel­e­vant, but no longer the top dog.

I just fin­ished read­ing Zack Arias’s review of the Fuji X-Pro1, a cam­era that was def­i­nitely on my radar and wish list. He loves his, but has some reser­va­tions about it. He also loves his x100–he says “my min­i­mal­ist heart still sings when I’m shoot­ing with the x100.” He loves the Fujis in spite of their quirks. They inspire him, enthuse him, ener­gize him. What does this have to do with me, with any­thing I’m writing?

Well. About that.

I have now had the 5D Mark III for about two weeks. In that two weeks, I used it for 80% or more of a wed­ding shoot, and have shot it in all the usual sit­u­a­tions in which I would usu­ally be shoot­ing a cam­era. I have used it at base ISO, I have used it at ISO 12,800 (I haven’t gone beyond that, though. Why? Because it’s #&%&^%#!! ISO 12,800, that’s why! I can’t SEE in less light than that). I have used it with on-camera flash. I have used it with off-camera flash. I have of course used it with no flash. And you know what? I LOVE THIS CAMERA. I loved my 5D  and the 1D Mark III as well, but never have I had a cam­era that gets so many things so right.

And no, I’m not going to parse it all out and tell you why this is great and why this isn’t great, etc. And I’m not going to say it’s per­fect, either. For one, the live view/movie but­ton is too close to my thumb. For another, I had some con­tin­u­ous aut­o­fo­cus issues while shoot­ing danc­ing at the wed­ding recep­tion in low light. For yet another, it’s harder now to see your selected aut­o­fo­cus point in the finder, which makes switch­ing between points sort of dif­fi­cult some­times in mar­ginal light.

On the other hand, I can tog­gle between aut­o­fo­cus points on a 5D and THEY WORK. No more cen­ter point focus and recom­pose and hope that your sub­ject or you haven’t moved too much dur­ing that time for focus to be off while using your fast primes with unfor­giv­ing depth of field. A lot less miss­ing things, period. And then there are the files. The color, the detail, the rich­ness. OMG.

Though I’ve been shoot­ing Canons for four years now, I didn’t expect to fall in love with this cam­era. I expected it to be com­pe­tent, excel­lent even. I expected it to be the tool I could rely on in vir­tu­ally any sit­u­a­tion and come out with accept­able results. I DIDN’T expect it to stir my soul, sing to me, col­lab­o­rate with me. I thought those duties would more likely be filled with some­thing like the OM-D, or an X-Pro1, or some other of the very excel­lent mir­ror­less cam­eras com­ing on the scene. I was done with DSLRs. Through. I was sup­posed to get the X-Pro1, shoot with it, fall in love, and renounce Canons and bulky DSLRs for­ever. But that hasn’t hap­pened. Just like an aging celebrity, the DSLR’s moment of fame may be over, but they’ve still got some mojo.

And so that brings me back to the 1D Mark III and how it came to be demoted. It’s still faster, tougher, big­ger, more macho. But it’s big­ger, heav­ier, more of a PITA. I have less aut­o­fo­cus points that I can choose (which is both good and bad), and impos­si­bly, its amaz­ing aut­o­fo­cus sud­denly feels pedes­trian. It’s still great, but it’s being out­shined by a more capa­ble and lithe new lit­tle brother.

And then there’s the old 5D, my first love. I was always charmed by its sim­plic­ity, its straight­for­ward­ness, its mag­i­cal image qual­ity. It had no need for 964 aut­o­fo­cus points, a vir­tual level, eleven­ty­bil­lion cross-type sen­sors, or Digiexspeed 9x++ pro­cess­ing. It is a cam­era with few frills, and still great image qual­ity. I will still love it, use it, take it on trips with me. But sud­denly, those ISO 1600 files lack some­thing. It’s not that they’re too noisy, or have band­ing, or any­thing like that. The pho­tos still look good. But there’s just some­thing that the 5D Mark III has that it’s grand­fa­ther does not. Part of it is the rich­ness of tones, and the col­ors all the way up into the stratos­phere. I don’t know. I’m no expert.

The bot­tom line is this: I devote a huge amount of time and space on this blog writ­ing about how the tools aren’t really that impor­tant in the grand scheme of things, and I’m in agree­ment with the legion folk who say that glass is far more impor­tant than bod­ies. But the tools that you do choose have to work with you, col­lab­o­rate with you, get out of your way when you need to see things. Sim­ple or com­pli­cated, they need to be intu­itive, and flex­i­ble. I still dream of the day that Fuji or Olym­pus or Pana­sonic (or, maybe even Canon!) will make some­thing like this 5D in a pack­age the size of the Xpro, because I’d love to give up that weight. But after shoot­ing with this cam­era for a few weeks, I will hap­pily shoul­der its extra bur­den a while longer. We are thick like thieves already, and I am pos­i­tively burst­ing with excite­ment as I think of all the mis­chief we can get into.