Now to be honest with you all, I don’t consider myself a professional photographer, but rather it just a hobby of mine. I have read many of the reviews and many of the comparisons between other cameras and I have to say my 3 weeks of experience with this camera certainly lines well with the reviews. I have no real way to compare the 5D2 with any of the more interesting camera such as the Canon 50D, 1D3, or the Nikon D3. There are plenty of other reviews available that covers this angle of the 5D2 story. I have not seen much real life reviews of the camera, so I figure I take this opportunity to write a review based on real life conditions. To put things in the proper context, I am upgrading from the Canon EOS Rebel XT. I had considered upgrading to the 40D, but I felt that it was not enough bang for me to upgrade. The Canon 5D Mark II offered the bang I was looking to achieve and I truly believe it was worth every penny.

I view myself as a generalist and do not focus on one area of photography. I have one camera (new 5D2) and a bunch of L lenses for the camera. If there is a picture to take, I take it and so far, I found the Canon 5D Mark II to be able to handle just about any thing. The camera is not just for weddings!

In this review, I will share some photo I have taken so far as well as cover my favorite features of the camera. Most of my sample photos will be JPEG right from the camera with the NR set to standard. In the past, I would shoot RAW and I would post process my RAW with Bibble Pro 4.10. But at this time, Bibble does not support the 5D2 as of yet and the DPP is frankly too slow for me. I have recently considered changing to Photoshop, but I have decided that I rather buy a new L lense then pay for PhotoShop. I have a license for Bibble and it a great product and will just have to wait until Bibble can support the 5D2. Certainly, I have RAW versions of all my photos and plan on experimenting with Cropping and evaluating its NR capabilities with the 5D2 once Bibble Pro 5 comes out with 5D2 support. Lucky for me, the 5D2 is producing awesome JPEG pictures right out of the camera which is allowing me to wait.

First up is Indoor Basketball shoots. I have hundreds of them so far. This one was taken in bad lighting conditions in an old gym. I used my Canon 24-70 F2.8 Lens with an Exposure Time of 1/250Sec, F-Stop 2.8, and ISO 3200. This photo came right out of the camera with no adjustments. The white balance is great and the colors are perfect. It has some noise, but certainly this can easily be clean up.

Here is another shot in a gym where the lighting conditions where much better. I used my Canon 24-70 F2.8 Lens again with an Exposure Time of 1/320Sec, F-Stop 3.2, and ISO 1600. This photo came right out of the camera with no adjustments. The white balance is great and the colors are perfect. Interesting in this gym, I have the camera set to Tv Priority set at 1/320 and auto ISO enabled. What I like about the 5D2 is that the F-stop will float between 3.2 and 2.8 (not sure why) but more importantly, the ISO will adjust down and low as possible (which I like a lot). For this lighting condition, the ISO seems to float between 1000 and 2500. The lighting changes slightly depending on where I am sitting in the gym and how far I have zoomed in or out the lens.

This next shot I had the camera set to full automatic. I don’t always use full automatic, but I wanted to see what the 5D2 would do in this condition. The 5D2 use ISO 100, F-stop of 8, and Exposure of 1/640 Sec. I used my Canon 70-200 F4 IS lenses for this shoot.

DIGIC 4 imaging processor

Comparing the 5D2 with my old Canon EOS Rebel XT (350D), one of the first things you will notice is the imaging processor capabilities in the 5D2. It seemed that just about every picture I had taken with the Rebel XT, needed some adjustments to the photo and why I always shot RAW. I had to adjust the White Balance, noise for ISO 800 or 1600, and at times, even the color was not quite right. However with the new DIGIC 4 image processor, I am seeing the colors and the white balance more under control and even more exciting, it has a built in Noise Reduction capability. Unscientifically of course, if you compare the JPEG coming right out of the camera, you notice a major difference in over all quality.

Being a Full Frame camera, right off the bat, you will notice a 1 F-Stop advantage over a crop camera such as the Rebel XT in respect to controlling the Exposure Time. In addition, using DPP and reviewing RAW files and comparing old basketball photo I had at 1600 and comparing them with the new basketball photo I have with the 5D2, I can notice the difference right away. The 350D at 1600 was not always usable. It depended a lot on the lighting conditions. With the 5D2, I am finding that noise level to be very usable up through 6400. To be clear, I do not have formal comparisons (kinda hard to do that with low lighting indoor action sports), but certainly I have been able to clean up a few 6400 test shots I have taken that simply look great. Many times I struggled when using 1600 on the 350D.

The other problem I had with the 350D, is I would set Av priority to a F-Stop of 2.8 and set the ISO to 1600. Many times, I would get blurry pictures because at times, the Exposure Time would be under 1/160 Sec. I did experiment with the under exposing with result of even more noise to deal with. Hard to get a half way decent indoor basketball shoot with bad gym lighting conditions and getting undesirable Exposure Times. Trust me, been there, done that. The 5D2 now gives me the ability to take great shoots even when the lighting conditions are bad.

Wow, for me, one of the biggest things I noticed with the 5D2 is the battery life between charges. When I had my 350D, it had to always have a 2^nd battery with me especially when I used AI SERVO. With the 5D2 and using AI SERVO, I am taking hundreds of shots and coming home with my battery still having 70% or 80% battery power remaining. I could not be any happier here. I almost bought a 2^nd battery for the 5D2, but the sales guy was very honest and said that I may not need it based on why I had a second one for the 350D. He was correct. I appreciate the honesty I got from them at www.cameracompany.com.

In addition, the 5D2 offers the ability to give you Battery status information such as the percentage remaining and the number of shots remaining. The 350D did not have this ability. In respect to basketball photos I have been taking, I found the Auto Focus with AI SERVO enable to be really fast as compare to the 350D I am use too. Many times with the 350D, I would loose a shot because the Auto Focus was simply not ready and fast enough. For the 5D2, I have yet to miss a picture I wanted; always focused and ready to go.

For a guy like me who is over 40 now, the screen on the 350D was just becoming a problem for me. The 5D2 3” LCD Screen is not only much bigger, but it also very sharp. The two things you need when you’re over 40. So if your over 40, this screen is a must have. Similar to the 350D, it does offer the ability to zoom in and out when reviewing photos, but what different is that the photo remains sharp as you zoom in. Also, it has a very nice button that they call their multi-controller which allows mouse like ability to move your picture up and down or left to right, very easily.

Menu System

Bottom line, it is very easy and simple! Just the way I like it. In addition, I was able to customize my very own screen. The only negative I will say is when I took the Ski photo above, I discovered that the customize Screen is not available if you are in full auto mode. For me, I don’t use full Auto Mode very often, but I do think this is a ridiculous restriction that Canon should consider removing. In respect to the 350D, the menu system is a major improvement with the 5D2.

Continues Shooting

The 5D2 has the ability to take 3.9 Shots per second which is slightly faster then the 350D. The 50D can perform at 6.3 shots per second with the 40D slightly faster. Given that some of my pictures are indoor sports, I debated for some time if I should go with the 50D or the 5D2. At the end, I went with the 5D2 because of the much better sensor that can handle low lighting conditions much better then the 50D. Putting the sensor to the side, simply having the 1 stop advantage being a full frame camera means you can basically double your Exposure time which is important for indoor sports pictures. I have never tried using a 50D or a 40D, but so far, I have been able to get great actions shots without the 6.3 advantage.

Video

So far, it appears to be working very well. I felt it was important to mention it, but at this point in time, I have not spent a lot of time using it in some real world scene.

Black Dots

Given all of the buzz about black dots, I thought it was important to mention the situation. The 5D2 can produce black dots that can be seen when shooting in very low lighting and you are taking a picture of street lights or Christmas lights. Based on what I read, they can be seen when you crop the photo by 100%. If you look closely, you will see a black dot in the middle of the light. Good news is Canon has acknowledged the problem and plans a firmware upgrade at some point to address the problem. My personal view is I have never seen the issue with my camera but then again, I never had an opportunity to take pictures on the conditions required to see this problem.

Final Thoughts

I am sure you can tell that I am quite pleased with this camera. 5D2 is an awesome camera. I feel the 5D2 has a solid control of its noise performance up to ISO 6400. I now have the ability to take much improved indoor sport pictures. I am sure the Nikon D3 or 700 or the Canon 1D3 can take solid indoor sport pictures as well, but given the price point and where I am as a hobbyist today, the 5D2 is a create camera and great option for me.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Let’s answer the big question on everyone’s mind:

This is the best camera Canon has every built. Jim Rose

I got the opportunity to play with the 5D Mark II and photograph with it. Long story short: it is very much worth the wait. It may seem arrogant and perhaps even premature to say, but I do believe the new 5D Mark II will reestablish Canon as the market leader. This couldn’t have come at a better time after the focus issues with the 1D Mark III and 1Ds Mark III has caused a lot of headache and bad blood between Canon and Canon loyalists, but the 5D Mark II brings some light to what has been a very dark tunnel of despair.

On paper, the 5D Mark II sounds very impressive: 21.1 MP, UDMA support, 1080p HD video, ISO up to 25,600, a 3 inch LCD with 922,000 pixel resolution for about the same price as the 5D Mark I when it was first introduced. In my hands, it is very well constructed and feels quite solid, but not quite the same build quality and durability as the 1D/1Ds series bodies as others have mentioned.

Jim Rose was discussing how low noise is at ISO 6400 and when the staff photographers at San Francisco Chronicle (they have two on order BTW) saw the images at ISO 6400, their jaws dropped. Jim was discussing how even George Lepp (of the famous Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging) was very impressed and said that ISO 6400 on the 5D Mark II is very usable. That’s a very nice seal of approval. At ISO 12,800 things start getting a bit noisy, but not terribly bad. By ISO 25,600, things are quite noticeable noisy, but if this is the only way to get a shot, it is still usable. According to Jim (not Canon’s official stance), ISO 3200 on the 5D Mark II is comparable to ISO 800 on the 5D. I was allowed to fire off some shots on my memory card with the 5D Mark II and the images are very nice with very low noise. Unfortunately, despite being a production camera and not a prototype, I am not able to publicly post the pictures at the time (they are posted but password protected but I’ll remove the password after the 5D Mark II starts shipping).

The 1080p HD video feature of the 5D Mark II is very, very nice. You can record up to 12 minutes of video and take stills while recording. How that works is while you are recording, you just press the shutter button as you would if you were taking a picture and it will pause the recording, take the picture (or pictures) and then resume recording. You lose half a second of video for each photo taken during recording. So if you are recording a video and three minutes into recording, you snap a picture, half a second later the recording will resume resulting in a single file, and not split video files with the thirty second skip where the photograph was taken. Very cool! Also Canon recommends that you prefocus before you start recording although you can auto focus while recording (by pressing the AF-On button), it is very slow because it uses the Live View contrast detection auto focus. Another thing to note is that you can only record videos in Aperture priority mode. You select the aperture, the camera will select a shutter speed and auto set the ISO to maintain a constant consistent shutter speed. You can also dial exposure two stops up or down. You also need a UDMA card to take full advantage of the HD video recording.

The back LCD is stunning and breath taking. At 3.0 inches with 922,000 pixel resolution, checking for sharpness has become so much easier. The images displayed on the LCD are very stunning. Also the viewfinder has been redesigned and is definitely brighter than my Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II viewfinder.

Jim has been with Canon for more than eight years, since the start of megapixels (i.e. Canon D30) and this is the first camera that he is really excited about and believes that it is “going to re-energize Canon”. Jim also speculated on the 1D/1Ds line as it was asked about it’s future considering that Nikon has moved in full frame, which I won’t post as it is all speculation. Jim also mentioned the 5D Mark II should sell very, very well considering how many people want the ultimate in megapixels but couldn’t afford or justify the cost of the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III. This is certainly a good thing because I think the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III, while is a spectacular SLR, it is not worth $8,000. It’s worth $5,000 and that is where they are selling used for now (and in some cases even less). Once the new Nikon D3x is released and priced around $5,000, I’m sure Canon will no longer be able to justify pricing the 1Ds at $8,000.

So is it worth it? Yes. Am I getting one? No. I’m waiting for the the new Canon EOS 1Ds Mark IV. I love the ruggedness, durability, and auto focus. Adam Tow is thinking of downgrading from his Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II and Canon EOS 1D Mark II to two Canon EOS 5D Mark II because of the size and the HD video options.

Other little tidbits: there are seventy eight Explorers of Light and Printmasters, of which Vincent LaForet, Joe Buissink and George Lepp are members. Jim Rose does in fact read DPReview.com.

I also forgot to mention:

Adobe CS3 DOES NOT support Canon EOS 5D Mark II RAW files. It also appears that there will NOT be an update for CS3 to fix this and you have to either buy CS4 or convert the Canon RAW to DNG.

The shutter on the 5D Mark II is very, very quiet. I was quite shocked, it sounded almost 25% quieter than my 1Ds Mark II.

Political Photography Part II: Jared Polis

Adam and his wife, Rae, went to Colorado to photograph the last week of his high school friend’s campaign for Congressional seat in Colorado District 2 before the elections. Jared Polis is an internet entrepreneur having started Blue Mountain, ProFlowers, and Fuser which he sold all off during the height of the dot com boom making millions. Jared is also founder of the New America Charter Schools. Jared has been campaigning for a year and half for this two year term. Adam spent a week following Jared around as he campaigned at Park-N-Rides, Honk and Waves, Meetings, Halloween and Farmer’s Market, Canvassing, and finally Election Day.

Adam packed his Canon EOS 1D Mark II and Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II with the following other items: Canon EF 28-70mm f/2.8L USM, Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM, Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L USM, Canon 1.4x Extender, Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM, Canon Speedlite 550EX, and a Gary Fong Lightsphere. He found he was primarily using the 28-70mm on his 1Ds Mark II and 135mm on his 1D Mark II.

Adam’s daily workflow:

1. Shoot in the morning
2. Select, rate, process in Apple Aperture 2 and upload photos to SmugMug
3. Recharge batteries
4. Shoot in the evening
5. Repeat steps 2 and 3

Reason Adam does the post processing in the afternoon rather than the evening is he figured he wouldn’t do it in the evening.

Jared Polis won the Congressional District 2 seat with 60% of the vote. To see Adam’s pictures, you can visit his SmugMug here.

Gallery

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Political Photography

Mona T. Brooks had a lot of interesting stories about her recent photojournalism work: photographing the 2008 Democratic National Convention (DNC) and being DNC CEO of the DNC Committee Leah D. Daughtry’s personal photographer.

She discussed about the importance of being “pinned” (very specific press credentials), her run in with the Secret Service, ethics of photographing a sleeping politician (Howard Dean), and her experience overall.

It was pretty cool to hear her story.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

We had a lot of new people show up at COBA in anticipation of seeing a pre-production 5D Mark II. Unfortunately, one wasn’t available, but we did have an interesting discussion and watched the now infamous Reverie video by Vincent Laforet and the behind the scenes making.

The video is fantastic and I think the 5D Mark II will be a step towards restoring Canon’s damaged reputation.

2008 Photokina Wrapup

A lot of new products were introduced at the 2008 Photokina trade show and so Adam Tow kindly put together a nice slide show showing all the latest released cameras and some previews of what the new Adobe Photoshop CS4 has in store.

COBA Pictures

For a $4,000 difference between the 1D, the 1Ds emblems are gold plated

Sooo, if you’ve been following me on Twitter, you may have noticed my mention of a “new toy”. Well, the wait’s over, my new toy is a camera. Not any camera, but Canon’s top-top of the line, the much sought after and highly desired Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II. Up until August 2007, it had been the highest megapixel camera for a full frame (or even cropped sensors) 35mm digital sensor. Introduced in September 2004, it took the photography world by storm offering the most megapixel at the time in a full frame sensor. The Canon EOS 1Ds (mark I) was the first dSLR to feature a full frame sensor with the Kodak DCN-14n following suite.

All this for only eight thousand dollars ($8,000). So, yea. Quite out of reach even for many professionals photographers.

I already currently own a Canon EOS 1D Mark II, which up to this point served as my primary body with a Canon EOS 5D as my secondary/backup body. I’ve been itching for another 1D body, as it makes sense to have identical bodies when shooting fast paced events such as wedding because all the controls, menu layout, and functionality are identical. So when an opportunity arose, I jumped, and now I’m a proud owner of a Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II.

Canon EOS 1D Mark II versus Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II

There are more similarities than differences between the 1D Mark II and 1Ds Mark II. Here’s a quick comparison:

The biggest differences are: sensor size, resolution/megapixels, crop factor, and continous drive. You can’t really compare these two SLRs to each other because they serve two entirely different functions. Obviously from the specs, the Canon EOS 1D Mark II is a sport/photojournalist photographer’s camera. At the sacrifice of resolution (8.2 MP versus 16.7 MP), the Canon EOS 1D Mark II can burst up to 8.5 frames-per-second, which was the fastest dSLR until the Nikon D3 and Canon EOS 1D Mark III were introduced. The 1D Mark II also can store more images in it’s buffer (40 versus 32), most likely due to the resolution differences. On the issue of crop factor, it has been my experience, that sport and to some degree, most photojournalists, enjoy the crop factor because of the perceived “reach”. But on the other hand, having a full frame sensor allows all lenses attached to the 1Ds Mark II to utilize it’s native focal length, so 16mm is really 16mm and not an equivalent to 20mm.

So if the 1D Mark II is primarily for sports and photojournalism, then what is the 1Ds Mark II’s primary role? Obviously photojournalism is one area where you need the use of wide angle and super wide angle lenses. That’s one of the reasons why the Nikon D3 is popular among photojournalist: speed, full frame, high ISO capabilities, and in my opinion the Nikkor AF-S 14-24mm f/2.8G ED N lens (the sharpest wide angle lens currently). Landscape photography is another great use. Although the Canon EOS 5D is used by a lot of landscape photographers and cost considerably less, there are a number of landscape photographers who need or want the extra four million megapixels along with superior weather sealing. But I think one of the biggest selling point for the 1Ds Mark II is portrait photography. The images produced by the 1Ds Mark II when used in portrait photography is nothing less than spectacular. Just look at the images on Flickr taken by the 1Ds Mark II. This isn’t to say you can’t use a 1Ds Mark II for sports photography, but it’s like you wouldn’t use a chain saw to cut carrots. It works, but not quite exactly the right tool for the job.

Conclusion

So how will the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II serve me? Well for wedding photography, the Canon EOS 1D Mark II will be for fast paced action scenes such as bouquet toss, garter toss, first kiss, ring exchange, the dances (father/daughter, mother/son, first dance) and anything else where I might need the 8.5 fps burst speed. The 1Ds Mark II will be for the formal portraits, tender moments, etc. Most likely I’ll be using my Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM on the 1D Mark II because I usually don’t need super wide angle and the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM on the 1Ds Mark II because I generally don’t need super reach, but I do like the bokeh produced by using a telephoto zoom lens on a full frame body.

The biggest advantage of shooting with a 1D Mark II and 1Ds Mark II is that the menu and camera functionality, for the most part, are identical. Switching ISO is the same exact two buttons. Reviewing images are the same buttons, changing focus, etc. Plus both the Mark II’s use the same NP-E3 Ni-MH batteries which mean I only have to lug around one charger. Also both the Mark II’s use dual memory storage for images so I can easily have a backup of all the images I take.

Be on the lookout for my 1D Mark II and 1Ds Mark II review with pictures coming soon.

• Full frame with 21.1 MP, certainly quite a bit of megapixels
• EOS Integrated Cleaning System
• Digic 4 with 14 bit A/D conversion
• Max JPEG sizes of 5616 x 3744
• 9-point TTL CMOS AF sensor with 6 “Invisible Assist points” (a bit disappointing that they didn’t roll the 45 point AF sensor into the new 5D Mark II)
• ISO 100-6400 with 50, 12800, and 25,600 with expansion (YES!)
• 3.0″ TFT LCD with 920,000 pixels
• Live View with 30 fps
• Movie recording capabilities of 1920 x 1080 at 30 fps
• No built in flash (I’m sure a lot of people are disappointed given that Nikon did it in the D700)
• 3.9 frames-per-second continuous burst for 78 frames (310 with UDMA card)

So Canon has certainly heard Nikon’s challenge (but not apparently heard it loud enough), but is this enough to win back some of the pro who switched? I’m not sure. Some of the biggest draw back for photographers who shoot in low light (wedding photography) and/or sports (and the likes) is the weak auto focus (seems like the same exact AF as the 5D) and weak frame rate (3.9). Certainly for landscape photography, 9 auto focus points is usually fine. Also being able to shoot at ISO 25,600 is certainly very, very appealing. I’m not as impressed as I thought I would be and at this point, I don’t think I would purchase the new 5D Mark II. But once we start seeing some actual production model images, who knows. A lot of us are still waiting for a 1D series that actually works right, perhaps this is one of the reasons why it has the older generation auto focus? Read more about the 5D Mark II with sample videos and specs at DPReview.com. You can also read Canon’s press release here.

Also a new Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM lens was released.

Comparison Chart

Looking at the side-by-side comparison, the 5D Mark II certainly looks promising, but can it compete or even beat the Nikon D700? It’s got more megapixels, which isn’t always a good thing. The viewfinder is bigger, which is always nice, but it’s still not quite like the 1Ds Mark III and D3. It can do video, which I’m not sure is a good thing. Only time will tell.