I LOVE the overall file quality and resolution of the 5D MII, but there’s no surprise there. If I had only one camera to pick, it would probably be that, overkill though it may be for many purposes.

I’m not really very impressed with the color work on the 7D or the 50D. Cameras within a model line that are so far apart in color rendering will make it pretty inconvenient and unnecessarily time-consuming for photographers shooting with both bodies. Seems to be an oversight.

We’ll see how Nikon fares, but the impression is that each manufacturer has a preferred “look”, much like film, but this doesn’t bode well for consistency within the middle ranks in the Canon line.

I’m going to preface this by saying, first, it’s hard to shoot with so many cameras at once, and second, I’m a man that loves a car radio with two knobs- Off/On Volume, and the Tuning knob. That said, I love the simplicity and ease of use of the 50D. Many of the features of the bigger cameras seem just extraneous, and turn out to be distracting. What can I say, I’m a simple man.

I LOVE the file quality of the 5D MII in ISO 800 work. Here’s where the big sensor makes up for the noise processing. Any time you process noise you sacrifice resolution, and if you have more to start with, you have more to throw out in the bathwater.

I think if I had the money and wanted two cameras I’d go with the 5D MII and the 50D as a “beater”. If I had to get only one, it would be the 5D MII. The 7D? I want to love it, and if you need the frame speed, that’s one thing, but I’d wait to see what they do with the processing- in particular the sharpening and the color mapping. With a little work, maybe I could fix it, but especially for higher-ISO work it’s a little underwhelming.