There have been lots of great reviews on the much anticipated Canon 5Dmark2 camera that’s hitting shelves this month. Phil Holland’s review is particularly impressive. Since the 5D has been a favorite among a number of night photographers, I thought I’d post a few notes about the 5Dmark2 from a night photographer’s perspective. I am considering upgrading to the 5Dmark2 from the 5D myself and have had a little time to play with both cameras side-by-side. Here are a few, quick, night oriented observations:
Viewfinder - composition and focus are significantly improved with the bigger and brighter viewfinder
Live View – LV mode is *incredible* for focusing at night! You can see the image, nice and bright on the rear LCD while focusing. It’s very precise and will end the guesswork that we’ve all grown accustomed to. Regardless, one should keep that hyperfocal calculator handy :-]
Battery life seems excellent – the camera showed the battery at 100% after the first 2 hours of continual shooting
Black dots – I didn’t see any. See Canon’s response to this issue that not everyone is experiencing.
Vertical Banding Noise – I was shooting RAW and JPEG so I didn’t see any. Vertical banding noise is only an issue when the sRAW1 setting is used.
Noise reduction processing – as with the 5D, one can interrupt noise processing to continue shooting new images. The camera will buffer the noise processing and process when it’s not shooting. Improving on the 5D’s capabilities, the 5Dmark2 allows the user to view images on the rear LCD screen, browse the menus and adjust the exposure through the viewfinder during noise reduction processing.  If one turns off the camera during noise reduction, the LCD displays a progress wheel and this message: “Processing: images to process:#” listing the number of images in the queue. Like the 5D, the camera will shut itself down when processing is complete. This allows the photographers to switch to power switch to off at the end of the night (even though it may have lots of processing to perform), put the camera in it’s bag and get some sleep.
Quality – the 5Dmark2 certainly captures more shadow detail with less noise than the 5D. With this extra shadow detail, images can look less contrasty. From the side-by-side comparisons I’ve done thus far, I’m concerned about the sharpness on the 5Dmark2. The 5Dmark2 has the ability to fine tune each lens to the body. I didn’t do this fine tuning before shooting my comparisons and it could have made a difference. Fine tuning 1Dsmark3 bodies with lenses has shown, in some cases, significant improvements.
I’m cautiously hopeful about this 5D to 5Dmark2 upgrade but think a little more testing is warranted. Fine tuning each lens with the body could make all the difference in the world, and make this upgrade a slam dunk.
Happy Holidays! – Scot Martin