Canon 5D Mark II
21MP, 3.9 FPS, Full-Frame, 3" LCD, 1080 HD. End of November, $2,699.
© 2008 KenRockwell.com. All rights reserved.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II and 24-105mm. enlarge. Adorama is already taking orders for the body, and Adorama also is taking orders for the kit with the 24-105 lens. Ritz is, too. Amazon is still figuring it out for the 5D Mk II body and 5D Mk II kit, which is why my order is already in at Adorama. It helps me keep adding to this site when you get yours from these links, thanks! Ken.

17 September 2008      More Canon Reviews

Introduction

To quote Canon, "The EOS 5D Mark II achieves the highest level of image quality of any EOS Digital SLR released to date."

This means that the 5D Mark II, with the same resolution as last year's 1Ds Mk III, is better than last year's 1Ds Mk III, if you don't need the durability or speed.

I've already ordered a 5D Mark II for myself an hour after I heard about it! Why? Simple: I prefer the way my Nikons handle for fast shooting, but I prefer the color rendition and fine detail of my old 5D over anything from Nikon for shooting landscapes. On my old 5D, the colors I get in JPGs with +3 and +4 saturation straight out of the camera just look incredible; see the example galleries linked from the old 5D review. My Nikons, in VIVID and +3 saturation look punchy, but they just don't have the delicate finesse along with the punchy colors I get from my Canons when cranked. My D3 isn't going back in its box for people and action shots, but the newspaper-bred D3 and D700 have probably just gotten knocked into the can by the 5D Mark II for serious landscape shooters.

I no longer have any interest in the 1Ds Mk III, because 5D Mark II also adds a far superior LCD. The LCD of the 1Ds Mk III has been an embarrassment. The 5D Mk II also adds some more of my favorite dial settings, and now has three complete camera-state memories which are called up instantly by the C1, C2 and C3 positions of the top dial. The Mark II adds an infra-red remote control, and a four-segment battery gauge. The Mark II adds a speaker, a microphone, and a light sensor to control the brightness of the rear LCD. The Mark II adds a critical dedicated Picture Style button, so I can free up my SET button for other things. The Mark II adds an AF ON button, which isn't too exciting to me unless I can program it to do other things. The Mark II adds a battery gauge, full-time ISO readout, and B&W and Highlight Control mode warnings in the finder.

This means, that unless you're a sports pro, it's time for all the landscape shooters to get their 1Ds Mk IIIs up on before the market for them at yesterday's price dries up. It will be fun to watch the values drop by the hour in the next few days.

Top. enlarge.

Canon 5D Mark II. enlarge.

Nikon has nothing competitive for landscape shooting, if resolution is important to you. Nikon's best as of this week, the D700 and D3, have only half the area resolution. The Nikons may or may not have better abilities to tame messy dynamic ranges, and you will prefer the color rendition and settability of one or the other according to your on personal style, but the 5D Mk II and 1Ds Mk III completely swamp Nikon as far as resolution for huge (3 feet/1 meter wide) prints goes. As always, I expect that the Nikons are far faster and easier to use in the field, and that this inexpensive 5D Mk II just became the must-have camera for outdoor shooters who need the most resolution for huge digital prints.

The original 5D now tops the pile in the digital dumpster of history. I won't shed any tears when mine drops into the blue collection bin at my local Goodwill. The images from the original 5D are extraordinary, especially for color, cleanliness and detail, but the old LCD was atrocious. Shooting the old 5D was like shooting film: the results are awesome, but you can't use the LCD to help see what you got before you get home.

I doubt the extra resolution means anything and the extended ISO may actually hurt image quality. I bought the new 5D Mark II for its LCD and extra C2 and C3 presets on the control dial, just I as I was hoping Canon would add. Auto ISO may also have been added, which in itself would be reason enough to swap 5Ds at the $2,699 price. You can get about $1,500 for the old 5D on

eBay

today.

The AF system seems the same as the old 5D, which was excellent. The old 5D was super-fast and usually accurate. Remember, the 5D is a camera for still subjects, not for news or sports. Precision is more important than speed or a zillion sensors on the 5D Mark II. When I shoot my old 5D, I set it to All Sensors, shoot, and get great results.

Specifications with Comments

Finder: 98% coverage, 0.71x magnification at 50mm. 21mm eyepoint.

AF Points: 9, just like 50D and 5D. There are 6 hidden AF points as well, just like the other cameras. There's fine-tuning for AF offset, new to the Mark II version of the 5D. Here are Canon's guides to what sensor is doing what. Remember, we only see and can control nine of them; the other six in red below are invisible to us.

And here are which points are sensitive in what directions and with lenses of what minimum speed:

Meter: 35-zone evaluative, center-weighted, 9% loose spot and 3.5% spot. Like all Canons, the 5D Mark II's meter can't see color or distance.

Shutter: 1/8,000 to 30 sec., Bulb.

Maximum Shutter Speed with Flash (sync): 1/200. (probably faster in trick modes).

Sensor: 24.0 x 36.0 mm, 21.1 MP. It's the same size and resolution as the 1Ds Mk III. A new output amplifier and a "more advanced color filter that improves light transmission while retaining excellent color reproduction" allows faster ISOs

Those are Canon's words. I'm scared by the "while retaining"" weasel words. This means that color reproduction is not improved, and could be very slightly worse. What Canon is saying is that they reduced the ability of the color filter to reject and select among colors as does the original 5D so that more light forces its way through the R, G and B filters of the sensor. Letting more light barge through improves noise and ISO, but the precise selective abilities of that filter are what define the subtle ways that real colors colors are rendered into R, G and B space, and any lack of performance of this filter can not be replaced by color profiles and color matrices. If Canon compromised the filter's selectivity, and therefore the color rendition and beauty that the 5D has always had just to get some bragging rights for high ISO that real 5D users don't need anyway, this could mean that the 5D Mk II could make worse images than the 5D. I doubt it, but I'll be making some very careful comparisons.

Image Size: 5,616 x 3,744 pixels, native. Also 4,080 x 3,744 and 2,784 x 1,856 pixels in JPG, and 3,861 x 2,574 and 2,784 x 1,856 in raw.

Color Spaces: sRGB, the world's standard, and Adobe RGB.

ISO: 50 to ISO 25,600. ISO 100 through ISO 6,400 come up in 1/3-stops, and the crazy ISOs come up as L1 (ISO 50), H1 (ISO 12,800) and H2 (ISO 25,600). The biggest news may be the presence of an AUTO position in the ISO menu. This feature has kept Canon in the dark ages compared to Nikon.

I'm predicting that the super high ISOs will be soft and nasty. When I get my hands on a 5D Mark II, I expect that the D700 will outdo it. I predict the D700 handles much better for shooting moving subjects in the dark, as well as being a little cleaner. We'll see.

ISO Comparison among 5D, 5D Mark II and 1Ds Mark II.

Frame Rate: 3.9 FPS.

Buffer Depth: Unlimited in JPG. Only 14 raw, using a UDMA CF card.

Shutter Death: 150,000 cycle "durability." Canon does not define their use of the word durability.

LCD: 3.0," 640x480 resolution (920,000 RGB dots).

LP-B6 Battery.

LC-E6 Charger.

Power: LP-E6 battery (CR1616 for clock backup) and LC-E6 charger. They are not interchangeable with the BP-511A battery and charger of the original 5D.

Storage: CF card, one slot.

Data: USB.

Size: 6.0 x 4.5 x 3.0" (152.0 x 113.5 x 75.0mm).

Weight: 28.6 oz. (810g), stripped like it was left out in the Bronx overnight.

Announced: 17 September 2008.

Available: End of November 2008.

Canon Item Number: 2764B003.

Price: $2,699 at introduction. Also look for it in a kit with the 24-105mm f/4L IS for $3,499.

Canon 5D Mark II Finder Readouts.

Guide to the front of the 5D Mark II.

Guide to the rear of the 5D Mark II.

Video and HD

1920 x 1080 (16:9 HD) at 30 FPS, and 640 x 480 pixels (VGA) at 30 FPS. Warning: broadcast TV is not 640x480; that's a computer standard. NTSC broadcast TV, when digitized, is 720 x 483 non-square pixels at 59.94 interlaced fields per second, not 30 sequential frames per second.

The Nikon D90's 24 FPS rate is ideal for theatrical release; the Canon's 30-frame rate will look more like video while the D90's 24-frame rate will look more like film.

Video capture is part of Live View. You can choose the Picture Style set for Live View to adjust sharpness, contrast, color saturation and white balance.

The rear LCD can be matted with a semi-transparent border to match the aspect ratio you've chosen.

Maximum video clip size is 4GB. The file sizes vary with subject detail, and Canon says 4GB will get you about 12 minutes in HD or 24 minutes of regular definition. If you have less detail in your subject, you can run as long as 29 minutes and 59 seconds if you can do it without hitting 4GB first.

HDMI output.

.MOV format, MPEG-4 video compression.

Sound is recorded using linear PCM with no compression.

A mono mic is built in right below the "5D" label on the front, and there's an external stereo input!

Cutaway 5D Mark II. see everything.

Sales Fluff

Sensor

Sensor Cleaner, and fluorine coating on the low-pass filter for better dust resistance.

Math

DIGIC 4 Imaging Processor. 14-bit analog-to-digital conversion.

Live View

Quick, Live and Face Detection Live modes. In Live View, you can change AF mode (Quick, Live, Face Detection Live mode), drive mode, ISO speed, Picture style, White Balance, and more.

Quick mode automatically sets One-Shot AF using the regular AF system. It also allows users to select the AF point, even while the Live View image is displayed. Although the camera’s reflex mirror must be lowered briefly to take an AF measurement in Quick mode, it is the fastest way to set focus automatically when the 5D Mark II camera is set for Live View.

Live mode autofocuses from video off the sensor, just like point-and-shoots. Like Quick mode, you can change the AF point using the Multi-controller.

Face Detection Live mode is like Live mode, and recognizes human faces. When multiple faces are detected, the largest face closest to the center of the frame is targeted as the AF point.

Creative Auto Mode

New with the EOS 50D, Canon’s “CA” Creative Full Auto setting allows making adjustments like aperture and shutter speed through an easy-to-understand navigation screen on the camera’s LCD menu, with more sensible names like “blur the background” or “lighten or darken the image.”

Two Small Raw Formats - who cares?

You'd have to be a real idiot to care about smaller pixel size raw files. These give you lower resolution with larger file sizes than JPG!

Canon calls these dopey things "sRAW," and in the 5D Mark II, sRAW1 and sRAW2.

sRAW1 is 10 megapixels with a file size that is still at least 75% the size of a bloated regular raw image.

In sRAW2, resolution is piddly 5.2 megapixels, but still half the file size of a huge raw image.

Peripheral Illumination Correction

New in the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, it automatically fixes darkened corners when shooting JPG. Darkened corners are usually invisible unless you're shooting the sky at full aperture.

Adaptive Dynamic Range Optimization

Called "Auto Lighting Optimizer" by Canon, this is common in the newest generation of cameras from Nikon and Canon. It is a subtle and extremely important way to improve almost all images. It lightens shadows that get too dark, while holding the highlights.

High Tone Priority, which preserves highlights, only works between ISO 200 and ISO 1,600.

Sadly, Canon doesn't seem to have as all-encompassing a solution as Nikon's ADR, which handles highlights, shadows and everything all at once at all settings.

Stealth Modes

There are two Silent Shooting modes in Live View. This lets you shoot without appearing or sounding like you're taking pictures!

In Mode 1, the mechanical shutter is open at the beginning of the exposure, and instead uses the electronic 1st-curtain function of the CMOS sensor and a reduced shutter-cocking noise, allowing multiple shots to be taken with minimal noise.

In Mode 2, to minimize shutter noise during single frame photography, shutter cocking does not occur until the shutter button returns to the half-way position after shooting.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II and 50mm f/1.4. enlarge.

Recommendations

I love my original 5D. It's far clunkier to use than anything from Nikon, but its color rendition and detail have always been extraordinary.

New versions of the 5D come but once every three years, so I've already ordered my Mark II at Adorama. With any luck, it might be here in time for my October Workshops, but I doubt it.

The right time to order a new digital camera is when it's still new.

Seeing how the original 5D isn't much less expensive than the new 5D Mark II, I'd forget about the original 5D, and if you have an original 5D, get it up on while you still can.

More Information

Canon's teaser: The new 5D.

Canon USA's page on the 5D Mark II.

PLUG

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