If anyone has a 5D M2 that they don't want, I will gladly take it off their hands with no complaints. I guess I am just a nice guy like that.
If anyone has a 5D M2 that they don't want, I will gladly take it off their hands with no complaints. I guess I am just a nice guy like that.
I think the 5dmk2 is absolutely flipping awesome. I loved the 5d and this model improves in every way. Plus it serves a very important need for me - simplicity. I tested out a 1dsmk3 a few weeks ago. No doubt someone really, truly NEEDS all the functionality of the 1-series camera but it just ain't me. There was too much stuff on that camera that got in the way of taking great photos. I do earn my entire living from photography and I photograph entirely on-location and I find the 5d line to be great - you can put it in Manual and it produces a huge, gorgeous file and I only need to worry about a few buttons. What more can I ask for - oh, and its cheaper than the mark1 was!
Really, I understand that everyone is different and we all like different things in our equipment. But are most pros really thinking about switching to whatever brand provides .02% better performance every month or so? Canon has always produced great stuff and whatever Nikon or Sony puts out doesn't change that. Certainly, folks can and should do what they like but I for one am blown away by the 5dmk2 and have no intereste or compelling reason to worry about what the other (admittedly great) companies are doing. I'd rather worry about growing my business!
If the d700, d3, 1dsmk3 and 5dmk2 all cost the same amount I'd personally go for the 5dmk2.
- trr
I read your blog. I, too, lament the quality issues around the black dots and banding, but am confident enough that Canon will fix them that I put in my order for the 5d2 early this week.
That said, I think you're worries about resolution and noise are misplaced. As Daniel points out in his response, it's the combination of resolution and noise that are important, not one or the other in isolation. You get a lot more flexibility with high resolution as an option. With the 5d2 you have so much resolution that you don't even need to rotate the camera to shoot 10 MP verticals! That's amazing and something I look forward to coming from the 30D. I frequently crop to 4:3 or square format. Having more resolution gives me more canvas.
When you compare the 5D and 5D2, you need to compare at the same resolution, not at 100%. That's comparing apples and oranges. If you compare the up-rezed and down-rezed images, you see that the 5D2 is better than the 5D by almost a full stop. Since the 5D put the bar so high, it's amazing to me that Canon could achieve so much.
I'll worry about Canon if they start giving us less for more. They've been giving us more for less for a long time now, although Nikon has been catching up fast and can finally match Canon but not at anything close to this price. If I were starting all over I'd still go with Canon for the lens selection if nothing else. Plus, there is no The-Digital-Picture for Nikon!
I will say in agreement of Karel's blog post that the 50D is a pretty clearly uninspiring camera and pretty unrevolutionary in the most negative way.
- trr
Todd Reichman:
I would like to know if the AF of the 5D2 is affecting you negatively at all. How do you use it? Only center point? In what shooting conditions? What kind of shoots? What is your opinion on the example of the fashion shooter and wedding shooter who got a lot of out of focus shots with the 5D2?
I respectfully disagree. For just 25% higher cost than the 40D you get a much nicer LCD, 50% more resolution, less read noise, slightly higher sensitivity (thanks to gapless microlenses), and other improvements.Originally Posted by Todd Reichman
It has received a lot of unfair criticism due to the misunderstanding of how noise scales with resolution, such as DPReview's incorrect conclusions about noise based on fallacious measurement methodology such as 100% crops and ACR. RAW comparisons at equal output sizes show that the 50D has all the resolution that is expected from a 50% increase as well as noise that's comparable to 40D at every equal resolution. For example:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/re...ssage=30412083
If only every Canon camera had as many improvements as the 50D.
For my shoots, the 1d Mark III provided much better AF than the 5d2.
With just the center point in good light with an f/2.8 lens and a high contrast target, the 5d2 is pretty fast and I get a good amount of keepers. I get poor results if I use a slow lens, non-center AF points, low light, or low-contrast target. In those circumstances I try to shoot burstmode and bracket focus with the 5d2. The 1d3 in the same circumstances excelled. (I did not tend to use the 1d3 in the ways that caused everyone else to have problems).
The kind of shoots where I use AF is event photography such as weddings. I think a 1D autofocus system works much better in those circumstances.
Ken Schwarz:
Daniel and I had a lenghty discussion on my blog about the resizing. I understand where he sees the benefit of resizing images and it works well for him.
But my point is this, you don't buy the higher MP cameras to make smaller images. You buy all that resolution so you can print larger with good quality, without having to upscale a small MP image. This is the primary benefit of more resolution, to print larger without quality loss, especially detail and sharpness. This is one of the benefits of medium format and those insanely highresolutions.
For this reason, 100% crops of the higher resolution sensor should look the same, or better, compared to the lower resolution sensor. Otherwise, if you expect to make bigger prints with the higher resolution files, you will be able to see the extra noise and lower quality of the image at the larger size.
Another example is when you crop. If the 21MP image has more noise per pixel than the 12MP image, when you crop the 21MP to a smaller size, you will end up with more noise compared to the 12MP image. If you would take a 12MP sample out of the 21MP image, comparing that with the other 12MP image, it would then be clear that the 12MP crop from the 21MP file contains more noise than the 12MP file.
For this reason, the 21MP image viewed at 100% should have the same amount of noise, or less, compared to the 12MP image viewed at 100%.
Well what you describe there is some of why I have a problem with the 5D2. The focus system is very poor. Unless you want to use the center point all the time, but that is a problem for a lot of shooting situations. And what's even worse, is that not only are the outer AF points not very good and accurate, when you use them, the 5D2 can actually give you a focus confirmation when in fact, nothing is in focus. So you go on shooting thinking you got focus, and later you see that most of the shots are ruined because of the bad focus. This is quite frankly unacceptable for a pro user. I can't begin to image what I would do if I had this problem during a paid shoot and discover it later.
And then I say, you can have all the megapixels in the world in your camera, but with such an AF system, it wouldn't matter at all.
You know, while the 50D may not be revolutionary, it's certainly not a bad camera (and at the lower price these days, certainly worth a look). I love mine...and I paid the initial release price for it (and feel it's been worth every penny). It may not be a game-changer, but it's a solid piece of equipment in my opinion.
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