Canon 1Ds - Retro Review
This camera adds to my growing museum collection of retro digital. It has been nearly a quarter of a century since Canon launched their first full frame camera (2002). Although not technically the first, due to the Contax N Digital, they beat Nikon by five years, Sony by six and Pentax by FOURTEEN! After owning some Canon cameras in 2006 and not getting on with their ergonomics, I have largely ignored them since. Despite this one's weight, it's growing on me fast... and no, not just because of that 85mm glass... o.0
Canon 1Ds + EF 85mm f/1.2 L II
(Taken with: Sony A1 + Samyang 135mm f/1.8)
Key Specifiations
Date:
Cost (then/now):
Sensor:
Resolution:
Burst:
DR Stops:
Sync:
SS:
AF points:
Video:
Live-View:
ISO:
OVF:
LCD:
Memory:
Weight:
Battery:
2002 (September)
$7,999 ($14,200)
Full Frame CMOS
11mp
3fps / 10 RAW
8.5 (12bit)
1/250th
30s - 1/8,000th
45 (30%)
No
No
100 - 1,250
0.7x / 100%
2.0" / 120k / Fixed
CF (type II/III)
1,600g
1200 (NP-E3)
Design
I owned a Canon 40D and 5D back when they were new. I liked elements of those cameras, but not their ergonomics. They were nowhere near as comfy to hold as their Nikon counterparts to me. When I picked up the 1Ds, I was shocked at how nice it felt to hold, even with this insanely heavy lens. It does still have the typical Canon thumb bulge that houses some poorly placed buttons and kinda ruins the grip, but the rest of the ergonomics here are sublime!
It's cliché to say a pro DSLR feels like a tank, but this one especially does, and I say that as a Nikon fanboy. When people said you could hammer nails with pro camera bodies, I used to think "maybe" with the Nikon's, but I'll raise that to "almost certainly" for the Canon 1Ds. Maybe it helps that this thing weighs 1.6KG with the battery. That's almost as much as a Kodak "Franken-Camera".
I had hoped to get used to the button placement by now, but unfortunately they still feel rather "all over the place" and vaguely labelled. I still need to look up what each one does and remember which wheel changes the value when holding them down. The memory card door release is rather too serious just to stop it from being opened accidentally, but that's a minor nitpick.
Red Squirrel | EF 85mm f/1.2 L II
Image Quality
Hopefully these image samples show how well the image quality holds up today. Purely from a megapixel standpoint, there are cameras launched over the last year or two that are not much higher resolution. Although more video focused, cameras like the Sony A7III, ZV-E1 only have one more megapixel than this. You'll need to respect this sensor's extreme age when compared to modern ones and low-light scenarios, but for its time this holds up surprisingly well.
Like many early pro DSLRs, the 1Ds has a dedicated white balance sensor. If you're not familiar with these, it's probably because they are no longer used. For the last twenty years, camera manufacturers have found them unnecessary, but they make a lot of sense on paper. The idea is that you may not be able to trust the colours viewed through the lens. Imagine filling the frame with a green object. Since that's all your camera can see, auto white balance will add magenta to the image, assuming it's incorrect. You get this issue all the time when photographing foliage. The white balance sensor will detect a wider view of ambient light colour and tell the camera if it's being lied to by what it's seeing through the lens. Considering the reliability of auto white balance on the 1Ds vs modern cameras, I think we should strongly consider bringing them back.
Speaking of colours, the other reason for my interested in this camera is its colour reproduction. Last year, I went down the rabbit hole of comparing CCD cameras to the latest CMOS mirrorless. I learned that it is likely not the sensor technology that caused a fundamental shift in colours around 2010, but camera companies moving away from replicating the look of slide film. Some prefer the look of these older cameras in certain circumstances, and for me, this was hugely noticeable for red squirrels in summer foliage.
Having owned a Canon 5D, I was expecting to see a .cr2 raw file here, but the 1Ds uses a proprietary TIF format. Considering this, and how old this camera is, I was surprised that the files are supported in DxO pureRAW (the Fujifilm S2 Pro raws are not). This software did a great job at keeping the noise levels down and sharpening up the detail in a faithful way. Although the contrast was a little low on some of these images, it was easily fixed in post.
Red Squirrel | EF 85mm f/1.2 L II
Screens & Menus
The optical viewfinder of the 1Ds would have looked amazing back in 2002 for a digital camera, due to it being one of the very few full frame options around. However, comparing it to a tiny film camera viewfinder like the Pentax MX, would have been rather disappointing (0.7 vs 0.95x). Today it just looks OK as there are far bigger looking electronic viewfinders, even on crop sensor mirrorless cameras.
The top and rear LCD screen showing shooting information reminds me a lot of the professional Nikon DSLRs. One on top and another under the main screen. Also just like the Nikon's both are illuminated for night viewing. The main screen seems small today, but in 2002 it would have been pretty normal. Many other much cheaper cameras had them, and at pretty similar resolutions. The menus here were transitioning to something much better, so feel rather empty by cameras even a year or two later. As a Nikon shooter, I found it difficult to navigate these menus, however. Accessing and moving around is a series of button holds and the scroll wheel on the back of the camera. Not knowing it felt like the camera was broken, and now that I do it feels like a secret system to keep people out.
Autofocus
Compared to many other professional DLSRs of the time, the 1Ds has quite a lot of focus points (45) and they are spread over a useful area too. I haven't been able to find out how to switch between the points quickly yet, but there is a surprising amount of options in the menu for changing how to do that. The focus speed and ability was probably fantastic at the time, but this is the main way in which cameras have advanced over the last couple of decades, so is not something anyone from 2025 will be impressed by.
Red Squirrel | EF 85mm f/1.2 L II
Lenses
Canon EF lenses are probably the most common ones around and as people transition to mirrorless cameras the prices will continue to come down. You should not use EF-S lenses (which are for APS-C, 1.6x crop Canon cameras) here, as they could break the mirror on the back of the lens. I remember hearing that with the 5D, so it's probably true here too. All Canon EF lenses had focus motors in the lens, so there was no awkward and noisy focus drive screw on the camera body to think about (like Nikon, Sony and Pentax).
As a bokeh whore, I really love the 50mm, 85mm & 135mm "L" lenses. Being f/1.2 (or F/2.0 for the latter) they hold their price more than others, but have some gorgeous rendering. The 24-120mm f/4 L lens is a great versatile option and the 50mm f/1.8 is a great small and budget one, but there are so many great ones that it would be impossible for me to talk about them all here.
Being a relatively short flange distance (from sensor to mount) the Canon EF mount is able to adapt to several other DSLR lenses, including Nikon, Pentax and M42. Although you will lose autofocus, this is a great way to try lenses from other systems, or just have access to some fascinating and budget retro lenses. It's unfortunate, but old Canon FD lenses cannot be adapted.
Battery
The camera I bought came with one official Canon battery, which seemed fully charged when I got it, although there are only two notches on the battery indicator, so it's not easy to tell. After learning the menu and configuring the settings, I took the camera out the next day to shoot some squirrels. I shot 135 frames and the battery indicator did not move. The second day I shot 75 frames (raw + jpg this time) and the battery alternated between one bar and flashing. If this is an original battery, that doesn't seem too bad, but I need to do a lot more testing to get a good feel for its performance when idle and in use. I am charging it for round two now and have a spare 3rd party one on order.
These NiMH batteries are big and heavy, considering how long they last. They seem to last about as long as a small mirrorless camera running off a tiny battery, which is to say - not that well. Modern pro DSLRs on Li-ion batteries last much longer.
Charging these batteries requires plugging them into a cable connected to the charger, which is something I've only seen on the Nikon D1 cameras, from a similar period. Charging time seems quite long. Somebody told me that some 3rd party batteries won't work on the official Canon charger, but I will see when mine turns up...
Red Squirrel | EF 85mm f/1.2 L II
Speed
Eleven megapixels was a lot for 2002, which adversely affected the burst speed and buffer depth. Only three frames per second (for 10 frames) was rather lacklustre for a professional camera. Especially when the previous model could manage more than double that. This is why many cameras had a separate models for speed (sports) and resolution (Wildlife and landscape). Only recent stacked sensor mirrorless cameras have bucked that trend and been able to provide both at the same time. Considering how good this sensor is, this is the compromise that I would have taken, but the other angle to consider is that these models often demanded a higher sticker price. Adjusted for inflation, the 1Ds was more than double the price that the Sony A1 mkII is today!
Turning the camera on takes at least a second for the LCD displays to show any values, and that seems rather disappointing compared to other professional DSLRs of the time. I'd say that my modern mirrorless camera starts up quicker, which is saying something, but that's mostly decided by how modern it is rather than a sign of high-quality.
Competition
The only other full frame camera around at the time of the 1Ds' release was the Contax N Digital, which was teased for a while before the Canon, but only came out a couple of months earlier. With its obscure lens mount, questionable sensor, only slightly lower price, but much lower resolution, it was not a popular option and very difficult to find in good condition today. The Kodak DCS Pro 14n came out at a similar time to the Canon 1Ds, with a higher resolution and a much lower price. Allowing photographers to use Nikon lenses in full frame would not happen again for a long time, but this modified Nikon F80 film camera body was a huge disappointment. It ha some success, but would become Kodak's last ever DSLR and the company soon closed their digital camera division.
Nikon cameras avoided full frame sensors for another five years. In fact, Canon brought out the smaller and much cheaper 5D model two years before Nikon released their first full frame model (D3). It's not clear why Nikon waited so long. While it's true they mostly used CCD sensors until 2008, which were too costly for full frame, both the D2H (JFET) and D2X (CMOS) avoided CCD anyway. Nikon's issue with sensor size started way before this, however. The D1 was using smaller APS-C sensors (1.5x) when all of their competition (Kodak and Canon) were using the larger APS-H sensors (1.3x).
Red Squirrel | EF 85mm f/1.2 L II
Conclusion
The Canon 1Ds is a massive camera. However, over two decades later, it's also massively fun to use! I was expecting more retro image quality than this, but the full frame sensor provides results that rival my modern mirrorless cameras. Its resolution is not far off that of some new Sony models (A7III / ZV-E1) and yet, through early colour science and a retro white balance sensor, it produces some stunning colours that my modern cameras would be jealous of!
Weighing triple that of some new full frame Sony's (A7CR), the 1Ds is not for the faint of heart, but let's not kid ourselves, Nikon still makes cameras around this weight (Z9) for some reason (especially combined with their 85mm f/1.2 lens).
I don't think I would recommend this camera for someone just looking for a full frame bargain. Something like a Canon 5D mkII or Nikon D700 would probably make more sense and be easier to carry. Collectors of retro digital cameras might be a bit disappointed here as well. They are usually looking for more of a retro look from the images, or more of a challenge to use. The 1Ds is just a bit too good for that. I can't quite put my finger on why, but this has been one of my favourite retro digital cameras to use, however. I bought it with the idea of selling it once I had finished this review, but I don't think I will be able to let this one go.