Canon 5D Mark II, Take II

AFS — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:45:46 +0000

After some frustration and disappointment with the first one, I got a different 5D2 body a couple days ago, and strangely, the image quality is much improved over the first one – I think it may now rival my 1Ds3 image quality in some respects – including sharpness. Though the 1Ds3 images without a doubt still have more life and punch to them. They are just better, even with the same exact lenses. I will know more once I have done another proper shoot with models (next week.) Secondly, this newer body does not introduce banding when the Highlight Tone Priority is activated, which is good because I think HTP can really make some images have a beautiful, creamy quality in the highlights. Thirdly, the auto-focus seems to be better on this new one. Today I conduced a test in a similar situation to the model shoot posted below. I had a model standing in the same location with overcast daylight coming in the window at a similar light level, and the camera did much better at finding focus using the outer focus point. The First 5D2 got around 50% in focus images, and the test I did today got around 65% in focus. [This total was edited Jan 10, 2009] (I used the 85 1.8 lens, as it performed the best in terms of AF on the original 5D2 body.) Importantly, the camera was not as likely to illuminate the in-focus indicator when the camera had not achieved focused. This is still not nearly as good was what I get with the 1Ds3 in the same conditions using outer it’s AF points, but it’s not bad, and probably better than the 5D Mark I.

In any case, so far so good with the newer body, I am much relieved. Still, I wonder how many other people are going around with sub-par $3000 Mark IIs now…

For the record, they each have the same firmware version (1.0.6) and the serial numbers are:

(the bad one – bought sometime in Nov.)

Camera Body No. 0220105xxx

(the better one – bought Jan 5)

Camera Body No. 0320212xxx

Looks like Firmware 1.0.7 was just released tonight. We’ll see if that offers further improvement…

P.S. B+H finally had the S precision focusing screens today, and I got one for the 5D2, and it really makes a big difference. Leaves you with no doubt as to exactly what is and what is not in focus.

P.P.S. Going forward I intend to get back to talking more about photography and lighting and less about busted cameras…

Addendum 1/9/09

I recently read about the 5D2’s new sensor self-cleaning unit that includes a fluorine coating on the low-pass filter for better dust resistance. Perhaps this is responsible for taking some of the life out of the images as compared to the 1Ds3…

5D2 AF in dim light: :-(

AFS — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 21:41:04 +0000

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.

a fashion shooter » Canon 5D Mark II focusing

Canon 5D Mark II, Take II

5D2 AF in dim light: :-(