a fashion shooter

So this week I got a change to use the 5D2 for a real shoot, using daylight which is my favorite way to shoot. Unfortunately, for full body shots, I got many frames where the model is out of focus. I counted 50% of the shots out-of-focus using the outer AF points and my 85 1.2 on a tripod! A few were due to movement of the model, but mostly just due to misfocus with the outer AF points which were positioned over her face. Fortunately I noticed this fairly early on and switched to the center AF point, which worked fine.

A week prior I found that these outer AF points work like a charm with the 85 1.2 lens in fairly bright light outdoors, but they apparently are not stellar performers when it’s dim. This is very disappointing in a $3000 camera. You will definitely do better with the 1Ds2 or 1Ds3 if you are shooting dim available light as I often do.  However if you are in a situation where you can use the center point 100% of the time the 5D2 AF should work fine.

This was not nearly my most adventurous photography, but the exercise did show me that the 5D Mark II files look fine in low light (when focused correctly,) as the 1Ds3 files do. Though the bad AF is an issue, I think the main problem here is that the red focus indicator lights up as if the shot is in focus, when it’s not. The 5D2 seems not to work better than the original 5D in terms of low light AF using the outer AF points. But at least with the original, the AF point does not light up if the shot is not focused. For $3000 it should indeed be better. Too bad they didn’t have the nuts to put all cross-type sensors in this camera like the $1000 40D has!

here’s one example of the AF issue:

off-center-af-issue-5d2.

And here’s one which focused ok:

5D Mark II

Here is an older shot where the 5D Mark I focused effortlessly, even though it was darker:

5D Mark I

UPDATE 12-22-2008

OK, so I just combed through a bunch of old shoot using the original 5D in essentially identical situations as the aforementioned bad AF shoot with the 5D2.

Where the peripheral AF points were used on the old 5D, I counted 40 in focus shots, 10 out of focus in one example; 40 in focus vs. 7 out of focus in another; 20 in focus vs. 4  out of focus in a third shoot. The lenses used ranged from the 50 1.4, 70-200 2.8, 85 1.8 – all used in the neighborhood of 1/30 or so, ISO 200, around f 2.8 or 4, and all on tripods. These were all full body shots like the example posted earlier in this thread. Facial features were used as focus points.

As I suspected, the older camera was FAR better at achieving focus with the non cross-type AF points in non-bright situations. So either this particular camera is not right, or something went awry with the AF update in the new camera.

So, the internet seems to have exploded with “black dot syndrome” complaints about the Canon 5D Mark II.

As it happens I came across a 1Ds3 image from Paris last year – and wouldn’t you know, there are some artifacts similar to this “BDS.” And if you zoom in close enough, and tweak the levels enough, they will become more clear. This image is at a mere 100% view so you can not see them that clearly

1Ds3 lights, ACR conversion

Fact is, these 1Ds3 cameras have taken millions of images which have been published untold thousands of times, used for international advertising campaings, etc. And as far as I know, no one has complained about “black dots, lines, etc.” Why? I think it’s because pixel peeping at these levels (200%, 400%,) is not useful and has no purpose out here in the real world. After all, when looking even at a 100 percent view, you are effectively looking at what would be a 6.5 foot print (as rendered on your 72ppi screen) from 12 inches away and then complaining about the image quality. Have you ever looked at a print that large from that close? How’d it look?

Anyway, while Canon may try to fix this “problem,” I do not think any new technical flaw has been uncovered here. I think we are just witnessing a slew of new eyeballs using Photoshop to view images which are zoomed way in, exposures jacked up, over-sharpened, etc. to reveal digital characteristics which for the most part are not really relevant in the real world.

I encourage everyone to zoom their images back out to a proper viewing size, and get back to work. Your time is probably better spend working on improving your lighting skills :-O