The 1Ds is built to take the worst a professional photographer can throw at it and more, and still keep on going. Physically the camera weighs around 1.5kg without a lens, being made out of magnesium alloy and steel, thats understandable, and like canons other EOS 1 series the camera is heavily waterproofed, speaking to a photographer once who once, accidently of course, dropped his 1Ds into a river, retrieved it immediatly he found his lens damaged, but the camera shrugged it off, no marks or water damage. But what really makes people excited about this camera is it's CMOS sensor, using less power than a CCD, battery life is excellent, around 600-700 images. At just over 11 Megapixels the camera's resolution is among the highest on the market, almost 4 times the resolution of Nikons D1. The physical size of the sensor is the same as a 35mm negative, giving the extremely practical advantage of having no cropping, or teleconversion factor, like less expensive models, making this camera ideal for those interested in architecture and landscapes where wideangle views are important.
Being part of the EOS family it is compatible with every EF lens available, but anyone who is interested in this model must budget for an L series lens, or at the very least a Sigma EX series lens, otherwise you're not using the camera to it's full potential.
I do not recommend this for beginners, there are no preset program modes like portrait and action. Just the manual modes P, A, S and M. the thumb dial on the rear of the camera is a touch only seen on canons pro and semi-pro camera's, and will take some getting used to, but after a few shots it really does become second nature and hard to live without for quick adjustments.
Images are clean and for long expostures, a noise reduction algorithm can be activated, which can help detail in shadow areas, but can produce a very odd interlaced noise effect if there were large parts of the image without enough light, this is exagerrated as the shutter is left open longer, rarely occurs but still important to know. Noise again is eexagerrated with higher ISO speeds, which range fromm 50- 1250, 100 being the optimum, in good conditions, 100-400 will produce near flawless results, beyond that, neutral colours tend to have visable noise, but still none the less a decent image, better than what might be expected without a higher ISO.
Viewfinder has 100% coverage and is bright and clear.
Autofocus is quick, and with 45 points will always find a target, which most of the time is the your subject, but sometimes has a tendency to lock on to twigs, or grasses, tho in most cases this can be overcome by using the auto focus assist beam on the 550ex flash, however the camera is not compatible. Shooting with Autofocus in AI servo mode gives between 3-4.5 frames per second, depending on the conditions and subject movement etc
Due to the size of the files, a large- and to save battery power- fast CF card is a must, I would say for any professional, you will need around 4Gb, in either half gig or 1 gig cards in case of failure, personally I have 8Gb worth of Sandisk ultra 2's, but lexar also have a high speed rival, but a standard CF will slow you down and drain your battery.
In the box there is some canon professional software, allowing for downloading, editing and RAW file conversion- RAW being the unprocessed image from the sensor- and is very large, around 30Mb. However for downloading I would recommend using a card reader- the camera uses a Firewire interface, 12 times faster than USB1.1, and 3 times slower than USB 2.0, but firewire is still relatively unheard of, and if you don't have a firewire port in your machine, you will have to get it upgraded, or buy a USB card reader, at a fraction of the cost, also freeing you to continue shooting with another card, and save your battery for more important things. A nice touch however is the battery charger, which is capable of charging two batteries at once, so if after a long shoot, you need power quickly both batteries can be charged in around 2 hours. An AC adaptor is included in the box however, ideal for studio shoots.