This image was taken with the original Canon 1Ds, originally introduced in 2002.

If there was a candidate for a "classic" digital camera, the original 1Ds is it.
In fact, today people refer to it as the "1Ds Classic" :-)

That is true, and it is a digital classic, but the main reason people refer to it
as the "1Ds Classic" is to differentiate it from the couple of incarnations that came
after it, ie, the 1Ds Mark II, and the 1Ds Mark III.

The 1Ds was an 11mp Full-Frame Digital SLR that caused a huge impact at the time of its
introduction. It is often considered the camera that "killed" off film as the professional
photographer's medium of choice.

I remember back in 2002-2003, many photographers (myself included) were day-dreaming
about owning the 1Ds and imagining the detail possible with that "huge" 11 megapixel
resolution.

Swing over to 2013 and now we have cameras like the 5D Mark III with its 22mp's and the
Nikon D800 with those monstrous 36 megapixels. Take the lesson from the 1Ds that eventually
these "high" resolution numbers will seem like nothing :-)

I sold everything to buy my first 1Ds in 2005. Sold it in two weeks. Hated it!
Why? I was shocked at the noise in nearly all iso settings. Got a 5D afterwards
and was much happier.

But now in 2013, and having more experience with post-processing, as well as
appreciating "grain" I have come to love the 1Ds. Thanks to a light AA filter, it
produces images with great sharpness, and the noise can actually be used as
a creative part of the image.

To this day, there are people who swear the 1Ds can produce "magic" that few
cameras can. I'm not sure it can defy the laws of digital nature, but it certainly
is one of the few cameras out of the many that I have used, that has an undeniably
powerful aura about it.