Canon EOS 5D -

The 5D is worth it, and then some. I'd buy it again in a heartbeat. Visually it performs better than any other digital I've seen. It's starting to rival medium format cameras for sheer quality. It's not a cheap camera, but for what it offers, it's a bargain.

I'm VERY attached to 35mm and this camera either matches film (beautiful tones; sumptuous shadow detail) or outperforms film by a margin (flexibility, detail, the utter lack of noise at high ISO settings).

I shoot wide open a lot of the time because I dislike flash. You'll find me indoors on a dull day with the aperture set wide and the ISO cranked to 800 or higher. The low noise/high resolution sensor is perfect for this. It out-performs my 30D by a huge margin under such conditions. It out-performs film handily too.

Build quality? I hear the Nikons are better sealed, but the 5D feels neither cheap nor shoddy.

I use both the cheapy 50mm/f1.8 and the expensive 24-70 f2.8L series. They only time I've seen any vignetting is when shooting at 24mm under bright sunlight; f4.0 to f8; I see some light roll-off in the corners, but no softness. This phenomenon is simply not there at all with longer focal lengths.

This camera does not offer the same 5fps or higher performance that you see on some other cameras. It tops out at 3fps, which is not bad, but it clogs up the buffer on the flash memory pretty quickly. I prefer to use my faster 30D for sporting events where speed is of the essence.

I'm a semi-pro; I've been taking picture for over 20 years. I asked 5 full time professionals and a few gifted amateurs to recommend a camera before I made this purchase. Every one of them recommended the 5D - citing image quality - which is just beguiling. It gives probably three-quarters of the performance of the 1D at only one third of the price.