Any Other 5D MKII Owners Feel A Bit Cheated?

[Daniel Browning]

Anybody else feel a bit cheated that Canon didn't include the new AF and other features (dual processors etc) that are in the 7D, into the 5D MKII?

No. On one level, I am a little annoyed that margins are all out of proportion with cost. (Nikon uses megapixels to justify a $3,000 premium of the D3X over the D3, where as Canon uses other features to justify a $3,500 premium of the 1Ds3 over the 5D2.) But even taking that into consideration, there isn't any grounds to feel cheated, because in order for me to have purchased it, I must have found the value sufficient.

If Canon claimed the 5D2 had an improved AF, dual digic, etc., and I later found out it wasn't true, then I would feel cheated. But I knew about its features before I bought it.

I don't know if they were too anxious to get the 5D MK II to the market or what,

I hope they were. It had been three years since the 5D, and I was sick of waiting. []

but personally, I wish they would have waited if they needed to in order to include the 7D's AF system, dual processors, artificial horizon etc, etc into the 5D MKII.

The 5D2 frame rate is limited by mechanics. Wear and tear is something like the cube of the speed of the two parts. If the 5D2 (4 FPS) was as fast as the 7D (8 FPS), that's 16 times more wear and tear. That means Canon would have to build it 16 times better, or it will break 16 times sooner.

Furthermore, the mechanical frame rate is affected by the size of the mirror. Vibration goes up with the fourth power of mirror height. That gives the 5D2 five times more vibration at the same frame rate, another source of engineering difficulty.

It would be nice if Canon came out with an answer to Nikon's D700, but it would be a real change in pricing strategy.