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Canon D Mark 2 The Canon 5D was considered one of the most successful digital cameras ever – six months after the release of its long awaited replacement, the 5D Mark 2, Nick Rains looks at how it performs out in the real world...
History Dateline: August 22, 2005 - Canon announce a new full frame digital camera with a 12.7 megapixel sensor.
No that’s not a misprint – it really is almost 4 years since the original 5D was released. At the time it caused a bit of a sensation because at the time the only full frame DSLR on the market was the US$8,000 Canon 1DsMk2 with an 16.6 megapixel sensor. Not only was the new camera less than half the price, but the sensor was only barely behind in terms of pure resolution. In Australia the 1DsMk2 was selling for about AUD13000 whilst, if you could get your hands on one, the 5D was about AUD5000. Since then the 5D has been one of Canon’s best selling cameras in the DSLR range and many pros who did not need the admittedly excellent rugged build of the 1DsMk2, chose to use the 5D as a more economical option. I myself have been using a 5D since they first came out and it has been all over Australia and many parts of the wider world performing flawlessly and never letting me down. My images from this camera have appeared as double page spreads in Australian Geographic and
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Outback magazines, on large format calendars and as prints, so obviously the quality is up there with the best. So, a hard act to follow, and Canon teased us all with an ad campaign featuring a silhouette of a camera with a new image gradually revealing a bit more every few days. Canon fans were glued to their computers and speculation ran rife – much to the glee of the Canon marketing people. Me, I placed an order on the same day the final specs were announced and found out about the two main selling points of this new generation camera – 21 megapixels and full HD video capture. This review will not really dwell much on the technical specs of this camera – that information is well known now and there are plenty of websites that
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specialise in the fine details of new cameras. I prefer to look at how the camera has performed for me over the past 6 months, how the controls behave, what’s good, what’s not so good – in short a ‘road test’ not a ‘bench’ test.
In the Hand My first impression, and a very clear memory too, was taking the nice new camera out of its nice new box and thinking – ‘Oh, it’s the same as my old camera’. The Mark2 is indeed so very similar in shape, size and layout that it’s only when you see the more substantial black finish on the pentaprism and the subtle new arrangement of controls that you realise that it really is a new machine. Admittedly the bigger screen on the back is a dead giveaway but my first impression really was one of surprise. This is no bad thing either – it also felt reassuringly familiar and I knew it would be extremely easy to get shooting right away. That’s the outside – as far as the inside is concerned the most obvious change is the menu system which is much more like the 1DsMk3 with its tabbed layout making use of both the control dial on the rear and the control wheel on the grip to make selections. There are a huge number of choices to make but I found it easy to navigate through the options and I quickly set the camera to how I wanted it. One new (to this camera) feature is the My Menu section where you can register six option, from the rest of the menus. Once registered a menu item can be quickly accessed rather than having to remember which of the other eight tabs that particular item inhabits. I have mine set to Delete (quicker to delete all images on the card this way), Live View Function Set and Battery Info.
My Menu shows your most used menu items.
Another menu innovation taken from other Canon cameras like the 450D, is the menu summary view which shows the main camera settings on the rear screen in nice big text so old geezers like me don’t need their glasses. Most of the on-camera controls can be set here using the little joystick controller on the back and the two control wheels. One setting in particular proved to be very useful – the Exposure Compensation display has been combined with the Auto Bracket settings into a very intuitive display which shows the relationship between the two. For instance, if you want three exposures, one at -2, one at minus 1 and one at normal, you can set the overall exposure compensation to minus one using the read control wheel whilst at the same time using the front control wheel to set the bracketing to + and -1. This has always been possible using separate controls but now they can be set at the same time with the two scales
Exposure Compensation and Auto Bracket shown together for maximum clarity.
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Mk2 Live View
showing side by side in a graphical manner that makes the settings extremely clear. Full marks to Canon for this one. On the subject of Auto Bracketing, there is a nice refinement of the Live View function (discussed later) that allows the auto bracket to be performed with the mirror locking up before all three exposures are made in one operation. The trick is to set the Auto Bracket sequence, then set the self timer to 2 seconds. Now press the Live View button and hear the mirror flip up, then press the shutter button and you will hear the timer beeps followed by 3 small ‘snicks’ as the shutter fires three times. Very useful indeed, especially if you are planning on doing high dynamic range imaging or simply want to capture sky and foreground at different exposures. Still on the subject of menus and controls, Canon has been bombarded with feedback ever since the D30 about not having a single button for mirror lockup rather than having to delve into the Custom Functions to set it. They did have, and still do have, a single button for PictBridge (does anyone ever actually use this?) but no mirror up button. To date they have not actually resolved this, although they have almost got it right. Live View can certainly be used as a single button mirror lockup but there is another way with the new User Settings. On the Mode Dial, next to where you set Av, Tv and Manual etc, there are three User Settings which can be configured or registered in the menus. Quite simply you set the camera as you want it then register that as User Setting 1, 2 or 3. You could register one User Setting as, say, 2 second self timer and mirror up (Custom Function III / 6). Another User Setting could be 1600iso using shutter priority and servo focus for sport, and so on. All you do is select the appropriate User Setting if you want to use mirror lockup and self timer on a tripod, quite an elegant solution really.
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Canon 5D Mark 2
For me, Live View is worth the price of admission. When I first used it on the 1DsMk3 I instantly saw its usefulness so when it was added to the 5DMk2 I was a happy camper. Given that $200 compact cameras have had Live View for years, in fact they often have nothing else, it seems odd to make a fuss. But when you consider that those cameras have no mirror and such slow shutter lag times you begin to understand why it’s a big deal on a high-end DSLR. Live View turns the camera into a small 4x5 camera, at least in operation. You can set it up on a tripod and carefully frame the scene knowing exactly what you will capture. Nothing new there I hear you say, but how about this: • You can zoom in to x20 to check critical focus which is hard to do in the optical viewfinder, particularly with a wide angle lens. • You can move the focus point around the screen using the joystick control on the back. This works well tethered in the studio because the same view shows up on the workstation. • As we have seen you can take a sequence of bracketed shots without touching the camera. • You can see the effects of Grad filters much more clearly. It’s a great tool and one I use almost constantly when shooting landscapes – it’s just like using my old 4x5 Ebony field camera (well almost!).
Video Now we come to the most contentious feature of this camera, High Definition video capture. I say ‘contentious’ for one very good reason – on one hand the quality of the capture is sensational, particularly
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Still from Vincent Laforet’s video made on a prototype 5DMk2 and widely seen on the internet. This image is printed, with Vincent Laforet’s permission, directly from a single frame of the original video completely untouched and at full size - 1920x1080px.
in low light, and the cinematic effect of long lenses and limited depth of field is very strong indeed. BUT, and it’s a huge BUT, there are no meaningful controls over aperture, shutter speed and ISO. It’s all fully automatic and weird automatic too. Now there are some serious limitations on video capture with any camera, the most obvious one being that movies are generally shot at somewhere near 30fps using a shutter speed of 1/30th or 1/60th. Any faster and you lose that ‘cinematic look’. This limits the apertures you can use unless you put on strong neutral density filters – in full sunlight at 100iso you’d end up with about F16 which is a bit of a problem if you want shallow depth of field. ND filters are the tool of choice for movie makers and there is no getting away from that. The real problem lies in the fact that firstly there are only 4 apertures that the camera can select - F22, F16, F5.6 and wide open. Secondly, and this is the bit I cannot fathom, the exposure calculation seems to favour maximum depth of field over iso and pushes it up to 1600 or 3200 to get there. In modest light, maybe indoors on a bright day, you might see a setting of F16 at 1600iso. That would be fine if you could choose an alternative but you can’t. You should be able to trade off iso against aperture, just like on ‘auto’ or ‘program’ for stills shooting. In this case an acceptable alternative might be F4 at 100iso as opposed to F16 at 1600iso but there is no way to do this. What a pity.
There are a couple of tricks that people are using. One is to move the camera around until it shows a more suitable aperture and then de-couple the lens slightly. The other is to put your hand over the lens to force it to recalculate the exposure, then, when you take your hand away slowly, it will sometimes choose a better aperture and iso setting – hardly a professional solution. Let’s hope that Canon can come up with some sort of firmware changes but judging by the same video weaknesses being in the new 500D, released as we go to press, this seems unlikely. Here is a quote from Canon Australia when I enquired further: “Once in movie mode, the camera will control everything, including shutter speeds, aperture and ISO. Only exposure compensation is possible. When shooting video, aperture control is not possible in order to prevent the recording of aperture-related sounds. Because of this, exposure control uses a wide range of ISO and shutter speeds. The shutter speeds are also controlled in such way as to provide natural-looking, flicker-free movies. There is no firmware upgrade for this as we do not believe it is an issue”. Issues over controls aside, the results are really very good. There are a few examples on the Internet showing the camera’s capabilities, I recommend you look up
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the first movie by Vincent Laforet called ‘Reverie’ and download the full resolution clips: blog.vincentlaforet.com or vincentlaforet.com There are some other examples of Vincent’s video work with the 5DMk2 on this blog and I think you’ll agree that even with the shortcomings of the controls, the camera is capable of stunning and very creative results. Have a good look at the sample downloads, check out the low light stuff, this is where the 5DMk2 really comes into its own with clean, high iso images and a very cinematic feel to the depth of field. What also impressed me was the size of the video frames - I run two 22in monitors side by side and the image overflows one screen onto the next. It won’t even fit vertically either as my screen is 1050px high and the video capture is 1080 high. To those who have never done any video work it comes as a surprise to find out that good sound is at least as important as good images. In fact it’s fair to say that a video with professional sound but poor images can be perfectly effective, but the other way around will be a disaster. Luckily Canon have included a proper jack for an external mic so you could hook up something like a Rode VideoMic or Rode NGT2 shotgun mic to get a decent sound track. The video capability of the 5DMk2 is flawed in many ways but it is still able to capture some stunning images in ways that would be very difficult with traditional high-definition cameras. The pure quality of the captures is second to none and if you can work around, or live with, the control issues then you’ll be able to make very creative movies.
Image Quality Each new generation of camera has new processing algorithms, Canon now has the Digic 4 system which boasts even better low light performance. The 21Mp sensor, much the same as in the flagship 1DsMk3 improves on the resolution over the old 5D by almost 90 percent - if you were happy with A3 prints before, you’ll be equally happy with A2 prints now. The image opposite was shot as a normal Jpeg, something I don’t do very often. I made the image as Opposite: The fine details captured are remarkable. This image was sized up to 200% making a 240Mb file, 95cm high - the enlarged area is a life-size crop from this.
a sample shot for Kayell Qld and was impressed with the results. To see how far I could push the quality I up-sized the image to 200% in Photoshop CS4 using Bicubic Smoother making a 240Mb file 95 x 63cm @300dpi or 120 x 80cm @ 240dpi (my preferred inkjet resolution. That’s an A0 print size! The inset image is a crop from the 300dpi version (300dpi is used for offset printing in this magazine). So you are looking at a life-sized section of a 95 x 63cm image, not bad for a modestly priced DSLR. I feel another BUT coming on… BUT, you will also find that this sort of resolution really shows up the weaknesses of lenses. Only the finest Canon lenses, like the ‘L’ Series, will be able to resolve detail to match the sensor, and, even then, only when used at optimum apertures like F5.6 or F8. This image was made with a normal Canon 85F1.8 but it’s an excellent lens at F4 - F11 and is a good match for this camera. It’s the wide lenses that are the weakest link, my 17-40L is fine in the centre at F5.6 - F11 but the corners are appreciably soft at 17mm. I also have the 135F2L and the 300F2.8L and these lenses are utterly amazing with this camera, all I need is a good wide angle and I’ll be completely happy - maybe the new 17mm Tilt Shift will be the one.
High ISO The constant race for more megapixels is all very well, but when you have all you need then it’s the other aspects of image capture that become a priority. Noise is one characteristic of digital capture that concerns photographers – at what iso setting does the image become unusable? The day the 5DMk2 arrived I was due to go to a stadium concert so I took along the shiny new camera,
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Mk2 and its instruction book, to see how the video worked and how it performed in low light. I was quite impressed at the results. The shot below was taken at 3200iso on a 135F2L using F2.8 and 1/250th, handheld but braced on my knees. I chose to show this image, not for any particular artistic merit, but because the brightness range is extreme. The spotlit skaters and the TV screen are
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Canon 5D Mark 2
very bright, whilst in the deep shadows there are two footmen by the doors. The cropped images are life size sections of the full size image as it would natively print at 300dpi – A2 or 60 x 40cm. The full image is reproduced at one quarter its native size. It’s clear from the crops that the noise is very low, and that’s with minimal noise reduction in Adobe
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STOP PRESS At the last minute we received this Press Release from Canon: “Canon Enable Manual Exposure in Video on EOS 5D Mark II LONDON, UK, 27th May 2009: Canon announced today it will release a firmware update for the EOS 5D Mark II allowing users to manually control exposure when shooting video. The new firmware will be available for download from 2 June 2009 on Canon Europe’s support web site. Following the launch of the EOS 5D Mark II in September 2008, Canon’s Research and Development team has listened closely to customer feedback to develop additions to the camera’s movie recording functionality. Allowing EOS 5D Mark II owners to achieve even more stunning video results with the camera, the firmware update will include the following manual controls when shooting video: Full aperture selection ISO speed: Auto, 100 – 6400 and H1 Shutter speed: 1/30th – 1/4000th second The EOS 5D Mark II integrates full HD movie capability into a high-end 21.1 Megapixel camera; opening a multitude of newpossibilities for photojournalists and news photographers. Since its launch the camera has proved its appeal to professionals working in diverse fields, from studio and wedding to nature and travel. Now, following customer feedback, Canon has improved functionality for professional video users, further unleashing the potential of the EOS 5D Mark II for cinematographers and photographers alike.” Noosa River, 5DMk2, 17mm F11 / 60th 800iso, hand held.
camera RAW 5.2. The striking thing is the two figures in the shadows – certainly they look a bit ‘blobby’ but remember that they are in deep shadows and the shot was taken at 3200iso. I’d call this nothing short of amazing. At 400 you would be hard pushed to see any noise at all, at 800 its slight, at 1600 it’s there, but very acceptable, and at 3200 it’s still fine for reproduction. 6400 and 12500 I found to be too noisy to be usable. I’m led to believe that those two settings are simply in-camera amplification of the 3200 setting so it’s probably better to shoot at 3200 at minus one exposure compensation and correct the exposure in Adobe Camera RAW or Capture One Pro to where it needs to be. Given this remarkable performance, I no longer hesitate to go up the iso settings when needed. In film days you agonised over going to a fast film and tried all sorts of tricks to avoid doing so. Now, if I need 400 or 800 I just use it and the results are just fine.
Overall The 5D was a great camera, the Mark 2 is an even greater camera. I am extremely pleased with the results I have been getting and have no hesitation in recommending it highly. The alternative, the 1DsMk3 is certainly superior with its bomb-proof construction, faster autofocus, voice annotation etc but this all comes at a premium price. The 5DMk2 hits a kind of sweet spot of price vs capability and will appeal to those photographers who don’t need the 1DsMk3’s features, or maybe need two bodies. Certainly there is no compromise on quality; as we have seen the high-iso images are remarkably good with 3200 being a genuinely useful setting rather than a ‘just about good enough to get me out of trouble’ setting. I will be using this next time I go out photographing birds with the 300F2.8 and the doubler – 600F5.6 in low light, now that’s a nice thought.
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