The Canon EOS 5D Mark II Page
Using 5D Mark II with the 24mm-105mm f/4 IS USM L Kit Lens (and other L lenses)
by Robert S. Blum (a.k.a., sfwrtr)

1: First Impressions  2: DPP NR Better Than CS4 ACR 5.2?  3: BG-E6 (coming soon...)

First Impressions

Contact me at: (I will answer  you on this page.)

I am writing this having received my camera three days ago.  My previous camera was an Canon 20D, and after 4+ years of use and 60,000 images it seemed about time to update.  Now the 20D was no slouch.  I've made enlargements up to 20x30, and that was having used the kit lens that came with it.  Over all, the 20D gave stunning results.  What I loved about it (having bought it after years using a Minolta DiMage 7, arguably an excellent psuedo-SLR with RAW capability that was nevertheless unable to shoot about ISO 200) was that I could take pictures routinely at ISO 1600.  With the help of ACR noise reduction, I could shoot at  what seemed like near darkness with the help of my 85mm f/1.2 L or a 28 f/1.8.  I love low light photography, which attracted me initially to the promise of the 50D as a replacement.  But as that camera was announced, there was the buzz at www.canonrumors.com that there might be an update to the 5D.  If I was willing to pay $1400 for 1.6x crop camera, what would I be willing to pay for a more low-capable camera with full frame resolution?  How much for a camera that would allow me to use wide-angle lens again (I have shot film with Nikon, Canon, and Pentax SLRs) and have the freedom to crop and still print large?

I set a price of double, or $2800.  When I learned the specs for the 5D Mark II and that the price under what I thought would be reasonable, I knew with 24 hours that I had to buy one.  Well, if I the 20D allowed me to shoot good pictures at ISO 1600 with an f/1.2, what would I get shooting that same lens at ISO 6400?  

Now that I have the camera, I have shot at ISO 25,600 at f/1.2 at 1/15th of a second.  This is in reality too-dark-to- see.  Only using the live view at 10x magnification allowed me to focus at all.   And... I got a usable image.  Mind you, you really want to shoot with the intention of getting B&W, and then you want the chosen exposure to have plenty of texture or details and not to be too shadowy in order to hide the high ISO banding that results.  But, for those of you that remember what film was, and for those who know about high ISO B&W, push processing, and the result of that type of thing... well, this camera can give you simply astounding results with a bit of patience.

Drop back to ISO 6400 and properly expose a frame, apply appropriate noise reduction, and the result can be breathtaking.

Look, I am not comparing this camera to any other current model.  I am not comparing to what one of the new Nikons can capture, or to the 1D, 1Ds, or the original 5D.  I have no experience with those cameras.  Just the Minolta and 20D mention above, and before that, film.  I very much like what I see using the 5D Mark II and I know that I will be able to produce the type of art work that will captivate an audience.  It is simply a darn good digital camera.

As for the HD movie capability.  Yes, it's there.  I've taken a few 1080p clips.  I showed them to videographer friend of mine and now he's going to buy a 5D Mark II.  He says that his HD equipment cannot even come close to producing the quality and lack of noise that you can get with this camera.  As for me, it's nice that it's there, but really I am a still photographer.  For me, HD video is a toy that would require me to upgrade my computer.  Sure, I'll play with it.  That's the last I'll say about it, at least for now.

So, what are my first impressions?

1. Compared to the 20D, it ways a ton.  Really, like a brick.  And that's comparing to the 20D + the battery grip + 2 batteries + 17-85 IS kit lens attached.  That's to the 5D + battery without the lens.  Add the kit lens and it feels even heavier.  I am the type of photographer who uses a hand strap and walks around for hours with a 100-400 attached to my hand while I photograph a parade.  It isn't that the camera is too heavy.  No, just noticeably heavy -  and more solid, more brick-like.  It feels sturdy.  I have the BG-E6 in the mail, which will make the camera even heavier...
2. There isn't a flange to attach the hand strap on the 5D Mark II body.  Funny, but I just realized that DSLRs don't come with that as standard equipment.  It took me a moment to realize my 20D didn't have it either - it's on the battery grip.  Film SLRs the third flange, as I recall.  I am glad the battery grip will arrive next week.
3. The screen is BIG.  Take a look at the image below (taken with my wife's Nikon P&S, so the blown highlights are not my fault).  Notice the difference in brightness.  Notice that the color of the wood shown on the 5D Mark II screen.  It is about as close to what you see through the viewfinder as you could hope to get these days.

4. I can see again!  Honestly.  When I bought the 20D, I could read small print without the aid of reading glasses.  Until three days ago, I had progressed to the point that I could not read the print on the 20D monitor, and barely that on the top LCD.  By the same token, that meant that I could not really judge the quality of the captured image, even to guess whether it might be in focus.  I had to rely on the auto-focus getting it right, taking extra images when I could.  With the 5D Mark II, I can again read the monitor (the LCD is still blurry).  The print is large and legible.  The image is crisp.  Canon receives an A+.
5. It is true, you can magnify the captured image and judge if you got critical focus.  I don't know if Canon revealed the specifics, but I am pretty sure that the DIGIC 4 computer is reading the RAW image (I only capture RAW), actually magnifying that.  Life is good.  But, wait, that's not all.  You can enable AF point display during playback using a custom function.  A red dot displays on all active AF points.  Just zoom on the dot and you can know if you achieved critical focus.  (Hey Canon, what about a zoom 10x to the focus point as a custom function?)
6. The quick information screen makes the top LCD redundant and virtually obsolete.  A tap on the joy stick shows all your manually configurable settings in big easy to read print. You can use the joystick to move to each item and use the wheel to change the setting.  As you do so, help text tells you exactly what the setting is.  If you are like me and cannot remember which symbol is which, for example for metering, you can now read  "Evaluative metering", "partial metering", "spot metering", or "center-weighted average" by going through the selections.  This is a big help.  Click the SET button to display a dedicated screen for each setting.  The feature is very well executed and it makes the 20D UI look very old indeed.   You can also get to the screen by pressing INFO twice from shooting mode.  If you do that, the display does not go away until you dismiss it by pressing INFO.  Even if you take a picture (or the camera times out), the quick information screen shows up immediately upon resuming shooting mode.  Disconcerting.  If you tap the joystick to display initially display it, it goes away with a touch of the shutter button.
7. There is a camera bus connector on the bottom of the camera, probably for the wireless grip.  It is covered by a rubber stopper.  The first time I picked up the camera, I snagged it with a nail and it popped off on to the floor.  Bad design.  I suggest using electrical tape or you will swiftly have a moisture ingress point.
8. The viewfinder is big and bright.  The viewfinder information area has very tiny print, but it is brightly lit and legible even with my eyes.  Coming from the 20D, which did not have an ISO display, it is sure nice to see it displayed here.  Just remember where your ISO button is on the top deck, press it, and you can adjust it seeing the changes in the viewfinder. 
9. That said, I am pretty happy with this new auto-ISO setting.  It good for working in bright light.  The current ISO selection shows both in the viewfinder and on the quick information screen as the camera changes the ISO to intelligently prevent camera shake.  It appears to take in to account whether you have an IS lens mounted.  The feature is not good for low light photography for two reasons.  The first is that it won't go below ISO 3200 - yes, Canon understands that there is camera noise at higher ISOs.  Second, if you have a steady hand or a tripod, it will go to higher ISOs than you would select yourself understanding that you are using a tripod.
10. The highlight tone priority (which I think defaulted to Enabled) and shows as a D+ in the view finder, disables the high ISO settings (12,800 and 51,200) and ISO 100.  This surprised me, and confused me at first, since H1 and H2 were one of the first features I wanted to check.  The jury is out on whether it helps.  I'll do tests at some point.
11. Oh, yes, the camera is very quiet compared to the 20D.  The shutter sounds muted.  I tried out the silent shooting modes using live mode, and that should allow you to shoot during wedding ceremonies without anybody knowing the better.  Yes, silent shooting slows the camera down, but since the bride and groom aren't usually moving very fast, you should be able to manage with a bit more than a frame per second rate in silent mode.
12. Live mode: I think this is a very nice feature.  I won't use it all the time, but when you need critical focus, even hand-held, it is very useful.  Photojournalists we definitely use this feature.  When Canon says you have a 160 degree viewing angle, they are correct.  Use it to shoot over crowds.  No articulated monitor required.  Set the custom function to allow "exposure simulation" and live view becomes even more useful.  In live view, the INFO button adds to a full frame view first viewfinder status, then more info like RAW and Exp SIM, then a live histogram.  Yes, live.  Like a good P&S.  Press the magnify button and you can magnify the live view 5x or 10x.   Use the joystick to move the magnification area.  Nice.  Very nice.  Focus in live mode is best accomplished using the Quick Mode AF setting.  The other settings work, but are just kind of slow and annoying.  Speaking of annoying.  Pressing the menu button in Live mode takes you to the last menu item you selected.  Okay, it's nice that the menu remember where you last were, but Live mode for some weird reason is a big submenu that is in the wrench-with-2-dots menu.  In other words, it is buried.  It should have been a top level menu.
13. The menu remembers were you last were.  Very nice (except as stated above.)
14. The Auto-rotate option configuration allows me to set the proper rotation orientation of the image when download to the computer, but to not to rotate it on the display when pressing the play button.  This way I rotate the camera to see images in portrait mode at "full size."  The 20D did not have this.  Perhaps the 40D did.  Regardless, I could not be more pleased.
15. What's with the trash button being the button on the lower left?  When chimping, it's the easiest to find and press the trash button than the play button... and the trash button does nothing unless you want to delete the currently displayed image.  If you are chimping and viewing the image, you can see where the trash button and press it.  Since I usually press the play button before I actually look away from the scene, the play button should have had the prime position.  I don't like Canon's choice here.  It would have been nice if the trash button at least worked like the playback button if no image is displayed.  I have used the custom function to turn the SET button into a playback button.   I'll get used to it. 

Images

Well, that's about it for now [Oh no it isn't! Check below the images... -R].  Here are some sample images hosted on www.upload.mn; clicking one of the links will display a new window or tab at their web site.  These are full res JPEGs converted from RAW in DPP, transferred to Photoshop, and saved compressed.   

Picture 1: 490KB, RAW Capture, ISO 3200 B&W (monochrome picture style) with default settings in DPP.  Noise settings came up 7 of 20 for both luminance and chrominance.   Brightness adjustment was changed to 2 stop brighter (ISO 12,800 equivalent), which should make it easier to see the noise.  There is some faint banding in shadow areas, but not really noticeable.  This image is highly compressed.  High compression accentuates the noise in the image.  What is in the original image is much smaller, but I think you will agree that it looks pretty good.

Picture 2: 1257KB, RAW Capture, ISO 6400 Color.  Noise reduction is turned off.  Yes, you can see the noise, and to help you to see it, I have not compressed the image slightly less than before.  I think that the image would print just fine and on most ink jet printers and the noise would be indistinguishable from the droplet pattern.  My opinion, anyway.

Picture 3: 1300KB, RAW Capture, ISO 25,600, B&W (monochrome picture style) with default settings in DPP.  DPP auto-detects noise and it set the NR to 14 of 20 for both luminance and chrominance.  This is an example of what you can do in light you cannot even see clearly in.  Yes, it is noisy, yes, there is banding (but the wood pattern hides it).  But this is ISO 25,600!  Read-read the last sentence.  This was inconceivable in the days of film.  Here is the capture data, for grins:

Picture 4: 1271 KB, RAW Capture, 25,600 ISO, Color.  This image looks bad.  It was taken darkness (with twice-reflected distant light) with with my 85 f/1.2L at f/1.2 at 1/125th of a second, hand held.  I could not see the subject and resorted to live view.  With the simulated exposure setting and magnification of 10x, I came close to getting the subject in focus.  The DPP NR is 20 of 20, so I set it to zero, did white balancing, and exported to Photoshop.  There I ran Neat Image noise reduction.  I then used the history brush to restore parts of the image back to the very noisy starting image.  Pixel peep.  See the good, bad, and the ugly.   Frankly,  the image looks like an overgrown low-light cell phone picture.  Still...  Think about the ISO characteristics here, then stick to B&W, and be careful about the exposure and shadow areas.  (At 1/60th or 1/30th, the noise probably would have been better.)

16. Okay, I have to mention the supplied utilities.  The EOS utility, which allows you to run the camera tethered: Nice.  It does the job and does it relatively intuitively.  Digital Photo Professional: well, if you are a photo professional, you will use Photoshop CS4.  What Canon provides, works, but it is hard to use.  The noise reduction is slow.  The interface is not intuitive, especially zooming.  The image windows are on-top windows, which always float over the thumbnail browser, making it hard to display multiple images.  Basically, you don't want to use DPP unless you spent your last dime on the camera.  Well, maybe you did.  The ZoomBrowserEx: Doesn't suck.  It quickly allows you to navigate through your pictures, to see thumbnails and previews, to see information about a frame, and even to see the AF points in the preview.   Beware of the image importer.  If you ask it to automatically create a folder based on shoot date, it lies.  It uses the date of download instead.  A bug.  Best to pay to upgrade your Photoshop version, though in the mean time, it can send the converted image to Photoshop of any version.
17. File sizes for RAW are huge.  The 20D ranged from 7MB to 10MB.  The 5D Mark II RAW files range from 21MB to 37MB in size.
18. Canon provided HD that can record sound using a built in microphone.  It usually records USM noice, too, which is expected.  What it doesn't record is a voice memo.  Look, Canon, even P&S cameras have voice memos!  It's time to provide obvious features.  Reserving this feature for the 1D line looks very bad.
19. The kit lens is focusing slightly in front of where the AF indicator lit.  Guess I am going to have to try out the micro-adjustment feature!  Northlight Images (see links below) has a good article on how to use this feature on a 1Ds Mark III, applicable on the 5D Mark II.

You can ask me questions and tell me what you'd like me to post next.

MAIL BOX: Responses to Readers

To cr: Thanks for the link, too.  Your site rules!
To Dave: I have not noticed any black dot phenomenon.  See item 18.
To Stephan: I will do a night shot with stars next time we don't get socked in my a marine layer.  Expect film-like grain, such as in picture 1 which was taken at night at ISO 3200 and pushed two stops to make it brighter.  What I've seen so far looks mighty nice.
To JS:  I added a bad color image to show that H2 be pretty "awful", but as a comparison.  

I may be "doe-eyed" about the camera... Well, I will admit that I am exceptionally happy! I guess it shows in my writing. My brother now has my 20D rig.

I've been a photographer for 36 years. The only time I pixel-peep is when it affects the presentation of the picture (I share Micheal Reichmann's philosophy about this). I do it mostly to manage noise and sharpening artifacts. Okay, okay, I also pixel-peeped to assure myself the 5D Mark II would be substantially less noise than the 20D. OMG...

I have taken pictures all over the world (and at children's parties, weddings, science fiction conventions, etc.). I captured over 60,000 frames with the 20D. More than a third were taken at ISO 1600. Many were taken in poor light and under challenging conditions, with L glass. I do have experience with this. I know what would look good in print (and I only print 8x10 and above). Yes, there is banding in the H2 images if you gather too much shadow area, especially with smooth, featureless regions. You must make the image bright and provide texture to prevent the worst banding. Go ahead, pixel-peep my full-res 25,600 ISO example. The fourth example shows how bad H2 can be (but its not "a joke"). Color is really not an H2 option (its badly blotchy and video-like), and it is marginal on H1. But you can make H2 work.

For photojournalists willing to capture monochrome, H1 and H2 is workable. The point about my high ISO film comparison is that 5D Mark II frames far exceed what you can get from a dark room in quality, not just the ISO reach.

Will I make art-prints from H2 or H1 frames? <Stiff intake of breath.> Maybe, rarely... for special subject or captures. It depends on the image! Nice, contrasty, grainy, crunchy, B&W photos have their own special aesthetic. Think back about those you have seen. Some are iconic. I am certainly going to try to make some. 

I have no qualms about 3200, or 6400, though.   

LINKS: Good Places to Go for What's New

All that is new that involves Canon, both rumored and real, and usually the first to post: Canon Rumors (aka: cr)
http://www.canonrumors.com/index.php

A good camera tracking site, with rumor information, links to reviews, news, samples, etc: Northlight-Images
General: http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/
5D Mark II Page: http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/cameras/Canon_5d2_3d_7d.html
History from hope to just before the release: http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/cameras/Canon_5d2_archive3.html

Another good place for rumors and general camera news; Photography Bay
http://www.photographybay.com/
http://www.photographybay.com/2007/09/18/canon-5d-mark-ii/

A compendium of 5D Mark II links and tips can be found and The Planet 5D - Mark II Wiki:
http://planet5d.dyndns.org/~wikiuser/planet5d/index.php/Mark_ii

The photographer's blog that started 5D Mark II mania, especially for the HD video crowd: Vincent LaForet's Blog
Canon's #1 favorite (multi-million dollar generating) blog post: http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2008/09/20/
Worth reading all of September: http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2008/09/
The blog: http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/

Interested in fine art photography?  Go to the Luminous Landscape!
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/
Good info on the HD Video capability of the camera: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/5dmkiipre.shtml

Review Sites:

DPResource: (Preview) http://www.dpreview.com/previews/canoneos5dmarkII/
Imaging Resource: http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E5D2/E5D2A.HTM

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