My Mk1 is still churning happily for non-landscape shoots, and the 30D has been since upgraded.
Here's my thoughts for this classic.
1.) Sucks those NP-E3 dry quickly. I can squeeze 150-250 shots from a freshly charged. Workaround is to buy more NP-E3 and train your muscles :bsmilie:. You can get them pretty cheaply from Ebay, but do avoid those from Camera Devices (lame juice life, and unpredictable behaviour). Weather sealing advantage is probably gone, since these chiong NP-E3 sealant and build is no where near the original.
2.) Sensor produces obvious hotspots even at ISO200. Not a biggie to me. Adobe Lightroom solves them like wonder.
3.) Sensor produces obvious purple corners when you are exposing for more than 12 seconds. Not good for landscape stuffs.
4.) Greenish JPG outputs. Solution is to load in 'degreen' tone curves. Forget about shooting JPG, go with its RAW/TIF since the latter is so small, and with Lightroom, there's so much flexibilities.
5.) Filesystem. FAT16 only. So your 4GB CF card becomes 2GB
Not too sure it's a con or a pro, since, you can buy those 2GB CF lagi cheap nowadays.
6.) No Zoom for picture preview and the LCD is miserably small and pathetic. That is when those histograms are god send. Also gives you the kind of waiting for the films to be developed feeling haha.
7.) The AF system will amaze you if you are coming from the XXD/XXXD series. It's lightning fast and accurate, especially it's AI-Servo, which tracks like a homing missile. For low light, somehow the 40D center point works better.
8.) Accurate spot metering. Selectable AF points linked spot metering, and even multi spot metering.
9.) Ergonomics. It's just tad great!
10.) 8fps, paired with it's superb tracking and USM lenses = :devil:
11.) Significantly bigger viewfinder.
12.) E-TTL only.
13.) You need to learn how to clean the sensor yourself, since, the Mk1 is rather attractive to dust.
14.) Noise/banding. It's not tad clean by today's standards even at ISO200, but, i kinda love those characteristics. I prefer my photos not to be too clean.
15.) Not much room for post cropping. Kinda train you to compose heh.
16.) Wonderful sound it makes each time you pressed the button
17.) The user interface will turn you off big time at first, but, you will grow into it later.
18.) Built-in microphone for voice tagging haha.
OK, i biased towards the 1D. Sports/actions/press is what the Mk1 is built for.
It's a 1 Series, and, it's really different! The moment you handle it, physical and mentally, you will feel the difference... even it's tad old.
Lastly, the output this 4 megapixel classic produces never cease to amaze me! It has something magical to it.
Cheers!