This is an ongoing review of the new Canon 5D Mark II digital camera.
Article by Matt Suess
December 24, 2008
I received my Canon 5D Mark II two days ago. A 21 megapixel DSLR, this camera will be replacing my nearly 13 MB Canon 5D camera that has been my main camera for over 3 years now. The 5DII has been getting great reviews on its high resolution and low noise – two areas of particular interest to me. If you are unfamiliar with my work, I love to print big – I sell many fine art pieces in the 6 to 10 foot range, so the more megapixels the better. I am anticipating even larger pieces now with the new 5DII.
I had been on a wait list with my camera dealer since the camera was first announced. I was initially hesitant to take delivery of one after hearing about a quality issue with the images – notably a “black spot” problem that was causing black spots to appear along the right side of point light sources. Once Canon finally acknowledged a few days ago that there is a problem and that they are working on a solution by providing correction firmware I decided it was safe enough to receive the camera. I plan on testing to see if my camera has the “black dot” problem (I am sure it does) and will re-test when Canon comes up with a solution.
When I opened up the box late Monday night my wife Marci and I immediately started comparing the physical characteristics of the 5DII with my original 5D. Some refinements I liked a lot, and some I didn’t. I will end up doing a comparison between the two in the near future so keep on checking back to this diary. But first let us just get started with the image quality.
The light was fairly nice yesterday so I took the 5DII with my usual gear (tripod, cable release, ND filters) along a short hike near my home. The images you see below have all been processed from a RAW file using Lightroom v2.2. These are not “straight from the camera” samples, rather they have been (quickly) fully processed in LR just like I would process any RAW file – adjustments made to exposure, contrast, saturation, sharpening, and more. Like I did in my G10 diary, I am not really interested in seeing the images straight from the camera. I am ultimately interested in how they shape up after processing. My normal workflow also contains further processing in Photoshop – but the photos shown below have only received the LR treatment.
On to the photos:
Below is one of the first photos taken with the 5DII – my very first photo was of my wife and puppy – isn’t that the case with every photographer 
It was photographed in RAW at ISO 100, at 1/50th at f16 using my 24-70mm f2.8L lens, tripod mounted with cable release, and the use of an ND filter for the sky. The photo was cropped slightly to fix a crooked horizon (I always change out the focusing screen of any camera I buy with a grid screen to help keep horizons level – everyone currently has the grid screen for the 5DII out of stock – and the screen from the 5D is not compatible). You can see in the two 100% crops the great detail and smooth diagonal lines in the branches. Quite an impressive first photo.
100% crop taken from the above image
100% crop taken from the above image
In this second photo (below) I was marveling at the detail when looking at a zoomed-in area in Lightroom when I noticed something that blew me away – the photo was taken at ISO 1250!! Wow!! What a surprise. I knew when I photographed it that I had jumped up the ISO, but forgot and didn’t see a difference when I started looking at this series of images. ISO 1250!! I don’t recall using my original 5D at anything much higher than ISO 400. You can see for yourself how impressive this ISO range is in the 100% crop. While I did add sharpening in LR I did not adjust any noise reduction settings. The image was photographed handheld at 1/250s at f10 using my 24-70mm f2.8L lens.
100% crop of above photo taken just to right of center. No sharpening has been applied outside of what I did in LR, and no noise reduction was preformed on this ISO 1250 image.
Results so far (not even 100 images shot yet) seem very promising – a nice upgrade from my original 5D. In my next report I will talk about some cosmetic differences between the 5D and the 5DII and I will also soon investigate the “black spot” problem.
