Your Questions About Canon 1D – Answered By White-Cat

white-cat answers:

Check on ebay, to see what they are going for, craig's list is another place to check.

white-cat answers:

You should probably look at the Canon 15mm f/2.8. Interestingly, you will be able to check lens tests and reviews at http://ylovephoto.com/en/2008/11/26/web-sites-for-lens-tests/

white-cat answers:

Your Canon camera should have come with a Digital Solutions disk. The program EOS Utility does just what you are asking.

white-cat answers:

It's called tethering. Your camera should come have come with some software, although I don't know if it would be compatible with your mac. Check it out. You're going to want to use the Canon EOS Utility and the ZoomBrowser. That's what I used with my Canon Digital Rebel and I have it hooked up to a Sony Vaio Laptop.

white-cat answers:

It depends on the lenses.

The kit 18-55 is an EF-S lens and will not mount on a 1D series camera. Even if it were to mount it would vignette and be very soft at the edges as the 1D cameras are APS-H sensor cameras, slightly bigger than the APS-C sensors in the 350D etc, so the EF-S lenses, apart from anything else, won't cover the sensor completely.

Any other canon lenses could be either EF or EF-S, if they are EF then they will work, if they are EF-S they will not.

Any third party lens should work as nobody else licensed the EF-S mount, so Sigma, Tamron, Tokina etc will all mount, but because of the sensor size some may vignette. It will vary from lens to lens.

However you can crop the vignette in photoshop or similar.

The 1D mark2 is an okay camera, much better to find a '1D mk IIn' as it has a better screen and few internal tweaks and only costs a little more.

They are very different beasts from the consumer line, there are no PIC modes (that is easy portrait, easy macro, easy landscape etc) just P, Tv, Av, M etc, and the interface is totally different (no mode dial, rear command dial) and no built in flash.

Once you adapt they are a joy to use, they are also about 4 times the weight of the rebel and at least double the size. That is not to say don't do it, just get a shot of one first (any 1D series would be enough to give you the idea) and make sure its a road you want to go down.