After years of joking back and forth with my best friend over this clip from VEEP, I finally did it. I bought a Canon EOS-1D - A Canon EOS-1D Mark ii. I managed to haggle one off eBay with a 50mm lens for about $150CAD shipped.

This is not a good camera by today’s standards. It’s an 8.2MP sensor. It has an extended ISO range of 50-3200, with a regular range of 100-1600. There’s no auto-ISO. It can only throw about 20 RAW files into the buffer, which isn’t a lot when it can slap along at 8.5fps. The screen sucks. Navigating the menus suck.

…But man, is it ever fun to shoot with. Here’s a few shots from a walk today.

For the lack of modern niceties, this close to 20 year old camera body was a pleasure to use. The focus is still fast, the shutter has a satisfying clunk to it, and the lack of features actually made me concentrate more on taking pictures rather than making sure I got the perfect shot. The sheer weight of the body makes it feel like a tool, rather than a toy. It’s just nice in a way you don’t get with smaller bodies.

I’m looking forward to making some images with this over the next while. I may even go out of my way to get some more glass for it. Until then though, I’ve gotta go - I’m taking hundreds of pictures of herons catching fish, afterall.