I've had several weeks to give this new body a good workout. Most recently, I've taken it to 11,000 feet altitude in sub-zero weather, including snow and fog at a Colorado Ski Resort (Breckinridge.)
During this most recent trip, I managed to test a few functions.
Autofocus: Using AI servo mode, I've been quite impressed with the 50D's performance. Most notably when tracking and photographing Bighorn Sheep and Skiers, using a 100-400L telephoto zoom lens. I'm not certain what Canon has done to the autofocus in this body compared to the EOS 40D, but compared to the EOS 30D, it's much more reliable, accurate and faster. This is no slouch of a camera with autofocus performance.
Sensor Cleaning: I wanted to find out how well the dust was being kept off the sensor on my trip, so I disabled the automatic cleaning for a few days and ran it manually each day before a shoot and at the end of the day. Compared to my Nikon D300, I don't think the Canon is doing as well a job of cleaning the sensor. As a matter of fact, in almost a year of shooting, I don't recall having seen any dust on the Nikon D300 images. The EOS 50D, however, accumulated dust in almost no time after a few lens swaps in the field. The dust blots I've seen on images are tiny and few though. Showing up mostly at f/14 or more closed apertures. I have three noticeable specs and the sensor cleaning mechanism isn't removing them. Still, not as bad as the 5D or 30D with dust accumulation, I'll have to clean the sensors by hand at some point. I give the edge to Nikon on this one. The Canon system may help keep dust spots down, but it's not going to keep your images dust spot free, I can tell you that for certain. I'd recommend turning on auto clean and leaving it there for best effect. Once your infected, it won't clean it totally. I haven't tested the "dust delete" function in the software provided with the camera, so no comment on that other than to say it isn't and will not be part of my post processing workflow.
Battery Life: I've found the battery life to be acceptable but not at the top of the charts. Live View seems to suck the batteries very quickly. Even with normal shooting not using the LCD screen, I'm eating through batteries at what I estimate to be a 400-600 shot rate. I didn't specifically try to drain one to get mileage, more of a seat-of-the-pants estimate here, but I have noticed that the charge time for a battery after a normal round of shooting seemed to be noticeably longer than with the 5D and the 30D (I used to have.) I would definitely recommend you keep spare batteries with you if you're going to be shooting for more than a few hours. Comparison wise, I'd say slightly worse than the Nikon D300 (which isn't great), way worse than the 5D and the 1DsMKII.
Battery Grip: Thinking that the battery life is not quite stellar, I purchased a battery grip the BG-E2N with improved weather sealing. This kept me running most of the day, but I quickly found one little design niggle using the battery grip. I had my camera configured to use the autofocus on/off button (left-most of the three on the top right side of the camera) to separate the autofocus from the shutter button. I do this with all my cameras, as I prefer to control the focus separate from the exposure and shutter. The grip doesn't have this button, so when I oriented my camera for portrait use, I couldn't autofocus the camera. I ended up changing it to the "-" button (center on the body, left on the grip), which disables the zoom out feature on image reviews. Canon needs to put the third button on the grip. Seems like a production/design decision to keep the grip compatible with older bodies, but don't get caught with your pants down. I quickly realized that adding the grip doesn't give you full functionality for the camera in a portrait orientation.
Image Quality: I've been quite impressed with the color, exposure, detail and overall quality of the images coming out of this camera. What I'm seeing, to give a subjective description, from the EOS 50D Raw Images is a very fine film grain look to high ISO images. The files look more like Nikon files than previous Canon files. With all the hoopla concerning noise levels compared to other cameras, the pure truth of the matter is, the noise looks different with this camera. The images have a fantastic film like quality and punch to them and I really like the prints I'm getting from it. It's a different animal. These files are chock-full of detail and any residual noise cleans up to virtually indistinguishable levels without losing any detail. Canon has done a very exceptional job getting this much detail and noise control on a 15 mpix APS-C sensor. Side by side, these files are blowing the D300 out of the water at a pixel peeping level.
One last note: I keep seeing this false assertion, and I've mentioned it before in this report, that the smaller pixel pitch and high pixel density in the 50D is going to make the camera more prone to camera shake. Well, after over a thousand images in virtually every shooting condition I can find, I'm here to tell you that anybody saying the camera is more prone to shake doesn't know their head from a hole in the ground. All the photographic rules still apply. My images are coming out crisp and clear and full of detail and I've managed to get hand held shots with a 400mm telephoto lens at shutter speeds down to 1/30th a second. The camera shake issue is a non-issue, fabricated in over-imaginative minds. Don't worry about it.
I've added a few more shots to the report, just so you'll know that I'm not a chart on the wall kind of guy and actually take my gear into the great outdoors and use it for real photographs.
With the EOS 50D in my kit, I'm a happy camper. You will be too.
