Canon EOS 5D MkII

Today, Canon announced that they will add 24 and 25 fps HD Movie recording to the Canon EOS 5D Mark II photo camera with firmware v2.0.3. It will be available as a free download from the middle of March.

photo credit: Javier Paredes

You have to admit that you would like to know if the first Sony SLR camera supposed to be a pro photo camera, the Sony Alpha 900, is really up to the real-life constraints of a pro camera. Some people would really test it: Michael Reichmann from Luminous Landscape, simply took a Sony Alpha 900, a Sony 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 G tele-zoom and 5 other lenses, for two weeks of photo travel in the Southernmost countries of this world. Result: A rather positive opinion, no real issue after submitting the photo camera to low temperatures and high humidity that were out of its normal operating range.

He also noted the incidents other cameras suffered around him (no less than 77 other photographers!). For example, the Canon EOS 5D MkII which did not survive in cold rain.

The Sony A900 test in Antartica.

Were you looking for the EOS 5D MkII instruction manual? It is available for free download. You can find it:

• EOS 5D Mark II Instruction Manual from Canon USA
• Manuel d’instructions du modèle EOS 5D Mark II en français depuis le site de Canon Canada

I usually do not comment about firmware upgrades for photo cameras. What about today?

Actually, this firmware is not from Canon. The Magic Lantern firmware has been designed by Trammell Hudson but it is usable on your Canon EOS 5D MkII.

I don’t know how he did that. I am sure that it voids your camera warranty. But, it brings impressive features, which are exactly what is missing from the Canon firmware and what serious film-makers needs from their camera.

• On-screen audio meters
• Disabled Automatic Gain Control (AGC)
• Manual gain control
• Zebra stripes (for over-exposed zones)
• Crop marks for 16:9, 2.35:1 and 4:3

Source : Magic Lantern firmware.

Canon has released firmware v1.1.0 for the EOS 5D Mark II. It enables manual control of ISO, aperture and shutter speed while the camera is set to capture video.

Canon EOS 5D Mk II video firmware

More information

• Links to download firmware v1.10
• PDF manual about how to use the new features in English/French/Spanish
• PDF manual about how to use the new features in Japanese/English/Chinese

Gizmodo, the gadget blog, sometimes has a few interesting posts about digital photography. Today, this is the case with their “Canon 5D Mark II vs. Nikon D700 Review Shoot-Out” which turned out to face the two digital cameras in real-life conditions of night photo (of course, they wanted to compare high-ISO pictures and noise).

Even if the Canon EOS 5D MkII received a warm weclome from the whole press (paper as well as Internet), there were a few discordant voices to be heard. They are worth listening to, even if only to be sure to know all the sides of this SLR camera or to understand its limitations, while this SLR photo camera stays a true reference in the EOS camera range from Canon as well as in the SLR camera market.

Canon EOS 5D MkII

• Karel Donk starts with an issue of autofocus precision. Essentially, it seems that after micro-adjusting the AF for each lens the camera may often have an issue with a very soft focus. Being slightly off-focus becomes quite an issue when you bring 21 mega-pixels to the user. What was acceptable on a 6MP camera becomes awful four years later on a state-of-the-art camera. And some photographers are troubled that this issue may be popping in more than a few cameras.
  This seems to be more visible in low light and low contrats situations (difficult for AF precision, of course). And most observers of this phenomenon tend to put the blame on a Canon AF sub-system that has been lacking in significant technology upgrades.
• Michael Reichmann, at Luminous Landscapes, had really bad experience(s) during an Antartica trip with repeated failures. Probably caused by some sensitivity to moisture and humidity.
• Some photographers observed significant vignetting associated to the LiveView mode. And this could be associated to some issues with white balance, which may be exarcerbated by Auto Lighting Optimizer.

As you can see, this is quite interesting. Not automatically reasons not to buy, but enough to stop being purely ecstatic about the Canon EOS 5D MkII.

I am quite impressed, I keep receiving more and more reviews for the Full Frame SLR cameras of this winter. It seems that the interest is very high. Currently:

• Nikon D3x: 15 reviews
• Canon EOS 5D Mk II: 21 reviews
• Sony Alpha 900: 21 reviews
• Nikon D700: 16 reviews

A lot of reading for those who are either ready to shell several grands on a Full Frame SLR camera or are still waiting to get a new camera in a few years from now.

Barrack Obama is the first American president who had his official portrait shot by a digital camera. Pete Souza, the newly-announced official White House photographer, shot the picture with a Canon EOS 5D MkII.

With the arrival of all these new digital photo cameras with a large sensor (Full Frame) in 2008, like the Sony Alpha 900 or the Canon EOS 5D MkII, it became difficult to find your own path. The more because their main advantage of these is photo cameras is to offer images of ultra-high quality at very high sensitivity. But how do you want to know this? The best is probably to compare. Many web sites published such comparisons, let’s try to find the best ones:

As could be expected was annonced here on YLovePhoto, Canon released a new firmware update for the Canon EOS 5D MkII, in order to fix the unpleasant issue of black dots and vertical banding noise that was discussed around the Internet.

Firmware Update Version 1.0.7.

For a few days already, the launch of the Canon EOS 5D MkII has been troubled by the relatively repeated observation (I say relatively because there are still very few of these cameras available on the market) of an unusual and unpleasant phenomenon: Black dots appearing on the right of every white zones.

The origin is still quite difficult to determine, but the fact that this is visible on the sRAW1 images suggests a hardware source. But it is still very hard to say, for now.

It took only a few days of Internet forum exchanges before Canon reacted. Today, in a press release that you will find hereafter, Canon admits the issue and tells us that they are working on it.

This is good news for several reasons:

• On the opposite of cases we will not repeat here again, Canon had a sane reaction and did not wait in strong denial state.
• The Canon EOS 5D MkII is not rendered useless, only a bit limited.
• The solution could appear quickly in the form of a firmware upgrade.

We still have to wait and be patient to see Canon’s next moves (supposing that you have a 5D MkII, of course).

(more…)

I had been showing you about the comparison of dSLR cameras by DXO Labs. They just added the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and the Pentax K200D cameras to their RAW measurement website.

As you already know, I list the tests and reviews of recent photo cameras in the database that I use to describe them (in the menu on the left). These last days, this is a deluge of new reviews that we received and listed for:

• Nikon D3x
• Canon EOS 5D MkII
• Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1

Ira Block, a long time National Geographic Photographer, wrote one of the very first real-life reviews available on the web by somebody actually using such a camera.

Reminder: Each of the camera descriptions appearing in the database in the menu on the left of these pages contain a list of interesting previews, reviews and tests. They are organized by language (usually, English, French and Spanish).

Sony Alpha 900

Comparing two SLR cameras with very very different prices is realy a tough task. So tough that it is often useless. In the Online Photographer, Michael Johnston still tries this daunting task of comparing the Sony Alpha 900 and the Nikon D3.

These are two cameras that are mostly linked by the fact that they have a 35mm Full Frame sensor. Their prices are not even in the same ballpark and the Sony is brand new, while the Nikon is on the market for more than a year now. However, I think that the comparison is quite interesting. To the point, that I invite you to read it from top to bottom.

There is no mere conclusion, but interesting comments that could be summarized by a few items:

1. The D3 is much faster in nearly all aspects; It’s also bigger and heavier.
2. Michael Johnston prefers the digital noise quality of higher ISOs from the Sony (but I think this is very subjective).
3. From the photos shown, I would say that the Sony Alpha 900 is helped by a better dynamic lighting optimization, but the added pixels are helping a lot images that need to be enlarged (or cropped) somewhat. Photoshop and DxO and other Raw file developers may compensate this, but shooting nearly right from the beginning is important.

Nikon D700

This kind of comparison is also quite interesting because it emphasizes the important differences that we can find between high-pixel count Full Frame cameras and high-ISO (low-pixel count) Full Frame cameras. If you stay at relatively small images sizes (or printouts up to A4/Letter size) the Nikon D3 and its sibbling Nikon D700 are very powerful beasts that will run to the darkest place a camera can shoot. And this can be amazingly dark.

But if you start shooting large images (or print more than A4/Letter-size, or intend to significantly crop your images; like for large panoramic photos), a larger pixel-count may become quite critical. Then, you start looking at the Sony Alpha 900 or the Canon EOS 5D MkII. It really depends on the kind of use you have.

The comments from Michael Johnston about the “shoot-to-carry ratio” (ratio between shooting time and effort, and carrying time and stress) are also quite interesting and a very urgent reminder for all people who may be tempted to follow the Full Frame madness. If you go from a relatively light-weight camera to one of the heavier models, you should really think about the impact on your photographic behaviour. If you keep the camera to the eye and/or shoot a lot, a heavy camera is not a critical issue (that’s for pros), but if you carry the camera around and shoot only sparsely the mere weight may become a burden (that’s for many amateurs, even enthusiasts).

Digital noise, this eternal ennemy of the photographer, is going to find a real opponent at its level: The 35mm Full Frame sensors of the new FF dSLR that just arrived on the market (or were there for a relatively longer time):

• Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III
• Canon EOS 5D
• Canon EOS 5D MkII
• Nikon D3
• Nikon D700
• Sony Alpha 900

As a matter of fact, this is a considerable advantage of the big/large sensors which can make use of pixels whose size is proportionnelly bigger and so apter to capture light without using the ammplification devices (usually generating or increasing noise image defects).

This is a good reason to find it interesting to go and check the images présented by DPreview in its Sony Alpha 900 test. They compare some of these cameras at sensitivity settings between 50 and 6400 ISO.

Think about what any other SLR camera would do at the same settings (ISO 3200, no less!): More or less colored blurred blotches.