I’ve made the decision on whether to pull together a 5D Mark II review. The quick answer is that I’m going to go ahead with it, although to save myself time while making it as comprehensive / useful as possible, I’m going to do this differently from the other equipment reviews I’ve done in the past. This time, I’m going to write the review as I go along – effectively writing it as a short series, letting it evolve as I discover more about the camera. I don’t have a structured plan on exactly what I will cover, or in what order – as this is going to depend significantly on subject availability, weather, time and so on – but along the way I definitely expect to write a significant amount on a number of subjects. Expect detailed thoughts on the camera’s ergonomics / controls / usage, image quality, RAW / JPG performance, AF, ISO performance and how it compares to other Canon’s, best lenses to use it with and a bunch of other areas. There’ll be lots of real world samples and reporting, and little in the way of lens charts.

So, as I don’t have a plan on exactly how I’m going to do this, I guess I’ll just start at the beginning. As for when this will end, I guess when I get tired of writing. I will NOT be proofing my posts – my intention is to spend under an hour on any given entry so if you see any typo’s, just circle past them.

Very first impressions

Even though it shouldn’t have, when  I unboxed it, the 5DMk2 surprised me at how similar it is to its predecessor.There are differences of courses and the first two I noticed first were how the right hand grip has become much more sturdy (the 5D had a hollow / creaky kind of feel to it around the battery compartment), with the other difference being that nice big, super sharp LCD on the back. I’ll come back to both points later on but on the whole the camera felt great. I guess I’ve gotten so used to handling the full size 1D series lately that I’d forgotten how convenient it is sometimes to have a smaller DSLR in your hands.

In the box were the usual manuals, strap (which says 5D Mark II on it) and Canon’s DPP RAW conversion software (which I tend to use as my primary RAW converter even if the interface / software itself isn’t great).

That was it for first impressions really. As I say, on the whole it feels and looks a lot like a better built version of the 5D (which is a good thing). The first thing I did with the camera itself was slap on my favourite 35mm f/1.4L lens, shoot some ISO 1600 pictures of my dog and then fumble around with the video. I suspect a very large percentage of new 5D owners will begin their experience in a somewhat similar fashion! Anyway, I’ll come back to controls and features (and movie / ISO later). As I’m liberated from having to write this like a traditional review, I’m going to jump straight into resolution and cropping

Resolution and cropping

This could also be titled as “what the hell do I do with 21MP”? Well, there are really only two answers as to why you’d ever (ever) want as many megapixels:

1. You want to print really, really large

2. You want to crop

Although I’ve had prints done bus stop sized in the past (using my previous 5D ), I rarely print *very* large (13” x 19” is the max I have on my walls at home). In fact, I’m often the last person to ever praise the addition of megapixels – thinking they have been far overemphasised in modern digital photography, often at the expense of real image quality. Megapixels should ALWAYS be secondary to IQ. However, if you can maintain (or even improve) quality output while increasing the amount of data captured – things can get pretty interesting. For instance, what is very appealing to me is the ability to crop during post processing. In fact, having good quality 21MP files during my Contender shoot would have been a god send as it would have allowed me to ditch the zoom I had to use and I could have shot almost everything with my 35mm f/1.4, taking advantage of its legendary resolving and contrast capabilities, while still being able to print to the 30” requirements we had. So today I ran an illustrative test of what latitude 21MP’s gives you in a real world scenario. This was the sample I shot:

Lens: Canon 24-70L f/2.8

Settings: ISO 200, 1/200s, f/4

Focal Length: 43mm

This is the original which was shot in RAW, processed slightly with a little levels adjustment but otherwise just resized:

Normally I would have framed this much tighter – I know the shot has too much whitespace above and around the tree. But sometimes that’s the reality of not having time to frame properly, not having the right lens on, or not having enough reach.

The question now is, what latitude do I have for cropping this image? Well, if I zoom in, I get to the following image. This is unmodified from the original above, with the exception is has been zoomed in heavily:

This resulting shot is a fraction under 6MP in size. As you can see, it gives a very different perspective, with the focus now being the two subjects in the bottom right with the tree cropped out of the way. At this level of detail, this 6MP print will be printable to at at least 10” x 15” (I’d probably be happy with it 13 x 19” actually). If I had started with 12MP image in the first place and had to crop this heavily, I’d be left with a far less usable 2MB – 3MB shot.

Alternatively, having this many pixels gives the opportunity to crop creatively. Here’s the same shot but with a landscape crop:

Again, same shot but with a different feel which also resulted in a fraction under 6MP’s. Having this much latitude definitely provides for some interesting post processing opportunities.

To give a feeling of the level of detail being captured, here is a 100% view of the image. This is a largely unmodified with a minor unsharp mask applied.

Opinions will vary on the amount of detail being captured here (particularly amongst those who have developed a skill for pixel peeping), but my opinion is that this is very good to excellent. Stopping down to a smaller aperture than F4 would have yielded a bit more detail as would a heavier sharpening pass, but if you check back at the original and then recall that at 100% we’re able to accurately make out individual clumps of pine needles, it’s impressive. I am certain this would look excellent in print way up to poster+ size. My initial conclusion is that this certainly met my expectations.

Just for completeness, this was the actual framing I preferred the most on this shot btw – and how I would have framed it in camera if shooting it to get it “right first time”.

I’ll leave with one more sample. This is not resolution related but it came off the same location (btw I hope you’re not going to get tired of dogs and snow – they’re two of the main subjects I have to work with at the moment). This was deliberately overexposed to wash out the snow – also shot with the 24-70 f/2.8:

OK so that covers Part 1. I’m sure this won’t be the last time I come back to resolution but it’s a start. I’ll try to get part 2 will be up before the weekend is out.