What to look for when purchasing a USED Canon 5d?
In my view, the most important thing is how many shutter actuations the camera body has done. The 5D (I believe) is built to do around 100,000 shots (I may be wrong, it may be 150,000.. Best check on this). This is an awful amount of shooting and it can take a hell of a long time to build this amount up. When I bought my 40D it had 20,000 shots on it. I have owned it well over a year and at last count it had a little over 50,000 actuations on it, around half of it’s life expectancy. I personally would not buy a second hand DSLR with more than 30,000 shots on it. It’s like buying a car, you check the mileage. Don’t forget that when you have the 5D (and a fine upgrade it is by the way) then you will also need to purchase an external flash (I am sure that you already know this though).
Aside from shutter actuations, you obviously want to check for any scratches on the sensor along with dirt. The best way to do this is to bring a wide lens and shoot at something of a light color like white. Check all apertures especially the smaller ones like f/22. I would do like f/2.8, f/5.6, f/11, f/22 and then check the pictures closely one a computer screen preferably to see if any lines or dots show up. The wider angel lens the better because it will cover more of the sensor. However check keh.com they sell used cameras and have a number of 5D’s in stock at the moment. They sell good used products, I have ordered a camera and a lens from them and have been very satisfied. Try to get something EX grade or better though, preferably EX+ or LN(-) for cameras. Call them if you have questions about shutter actuations.
mirror fault is fairly common but easily fixed and not terminal. Overall signs of use, if it looks like its had a hard life then it probably has. Try any cam with a lens on it, check dof preview at small apertures, check range of shutter speeds, take a 0.8s exposure with the lens cap on, in m mode, set it up so it is well underexposed, zoom into the image and look for hot pixels. If these occur before then its worth looking elsewhere, the camera fixes hot pixels on long exposues over 1s. Remember that your EFs lenses (18-55 etc) will not work on a 5d, you need full frame EF mount lenses. Unless you need studio flash and really want full frame then the 5d isn’t all that much of an upgrade. The 400d has similar af and processing speed to 5d, I would hold off for the 500d, see if that picks up good reviews and spend your money on that instead. If you don’t need video (you don’t you are looking at a 5dmk1) then look at a 50d instead, faster buffer, a better jump up in resolution, faster fr
