I have had my Canon 5D for just over a week now and have already taken over 2000 pictures - mostly my usual hockey and basketball stuff. I am excitedly waiting for the Subal housing which Ryan expects in February. That will go along with my existing 20D Subal rig. Some initial impressions and thoughts:
Being familiar with te 20D, operation of the camera is really quite easy.
The view is WIDE! Just like the old days! I am looking forward to have my WA lenses do what they were supposed to do ( particularly underwater). At the other end of the focal range I will miss the 1.6 crop factor. Have already decided that the 20D with 135mm lens will remain my hockey setup. Besides the 5D has a slower frame rate and I really dont need more pixels for these shots which are mostly intended for web use.
Not totally convinced about the noise being much better than the 20D. Had to do some basketball shots at ISO 1600 and they appear just as noisy to my eye. 800 seems fine. Real happy to have a ISO 50 setting - more success with UW sunbursts? Almost freaked at first when I couldnt find it! ( you have to customise the extended ISO range to be able to use it)
Best surprise was the C setting on the mode dial to register camera settings. Somehow I din't see this feature mentioned in any of the reviews I read so it came as a bonus. This is going to be great for me personally because I switch between manual and AV modes quite a bit. You could for instance store your typical setting for CFWA setup with all the parameters and camera settings ready with a simple change of the mode dial. Too bad they didn't let you store a few more setups!
The larger LCD is nice, I suppose, to see more and bigger information on it. Just find that there is more smudging of the screen fom your nose now! I Still can't tell accurate picture sharpness on the screen though. ( mind you I found that even images that looked quite sharp om my Epson P2000 storage device were not actually when viewed on a propper PC screen) The latest 5D firmware upgrade was straight foward and did increase the screen brightness.
I found that there is no way to open RAW files directly in Photosop CS. You have to upgrade to PSCS2 or open them in another application before transferring them to PSCS.
I am really excited about having the the 20D/5D combo available underwater. I have Sigma 15mm fisheye, Canon 17-40mm, Tamron 28-75mm, Canon 60mm EFS and Canon 100mm macro lenses that i use underwater. Between the two bodies I will have 9 possible choices ( the 60mm EFS does of course not fit the 5D ). Some long liveaboard dive trips are required to play wiyh the new toys!