New Canon 5D MKII arrived today!
Day 1
I've taken a few test photos and am quite impressed with the camera.
Day 2
Got home late from work so not much to report other than the hot pixel that is evident in the first few shots was removed by running the manual sensor clean.
Unfortunately, the old 5D issue of dust in the viewfinder has appeared in my 2 day old 5D II. It's not a big deal, just irritating.
Low ISO shots are stunning; 3200 is usable and SRAW1s of 6400 look great!
I plan to spend all of Friday fully testing the camera and comparing it to the older 5D
Day 3
Spent a few more minutes with the 5D II and it is exactly what I hoped for; a really good natural light camera. I’ve posted a few photos tonight taken of objects around the house and am beginning to understand the essence of the beast. The range and richness of these photos is very promising.
Day 4
I did some noise comparisons between the 5D and 5D MKII . It’s interesting that DPP sets default camera noise reduction and lighting optimization on by default for the 5DII. With the default settings on it appears that the 5DII beats the old 5D hands down, but when the DPP settings are equalized the differences are less obvious. The 5DII still wins by a narrow margin, which is amazing considering it is running at a much higher res. One other difference was that the cameras metered differently (1/180 for 5DII and 1/250th for 5D), sigh… I only noticed that afterwards and the light has changed so it’s too late to fix.
In conclusion, it appears the 5DII offers more resolution with slightly better noise levels at ISO 3200 and remains usable at ISO 6400.
Day 6
Took the camera outside in -10C weather to see how the highlight tone priority system worked with snow. While I didn’t get any great pictures, I am convinced that HTP will be quite useful. The other thing of note was that after half an hour in the cold the battery was still reading 97% charged (amazing).