Lawrence Ripsher

Image Quality and the First One Thousand Clicks

Discussions of a camera’s ISO capabilities, resolution, AF and the like are all well and good but the truest test of any camera is what a photographer is capable of doing with it. This ultimately can be measured by only one thing – the resulting images.

Since I’ve had the 5D Mark II, I’ve had a few days opportunity to bring it with me around my new surroundings in Seattle, WA. In that time I’ve shot a wide variety of subjects but spent little time trying to set up anything special. Most of it has been spontaneous. The camera, on the whole, has been an absolute pleasure to use through this process.

Now, obviously a good photographer can take great images with any camera. The site which I run, Lost in Focus, is proof of that where the only thing that matters is the end result. It’s also a site where old medium format cameras, Canon G2’s, self developing of film, kit lenses and scratched glass all get more use and discussion than the pixel by pixel obsessions that rage the majority of forums. Having said that, the 5D Mark II is still a tool like any other, marketed by Canon as one of their best ever. So that assumption still raises an interesting question to test – and of course that’s what I attempt to do from my perspective in these reviews.

So image quality… how can that be defined? It’s a complex answer and certainly answering it in terms of purely resolution and noise is not sufficient. The ease of which I am able to produce good (better) images once focus is locked, is perhaps how I best define a camera’s capacity for image quality. And how does the 5D Mark II rank in my book? VERY highly. I still have a lot of shooting to do but so far, with the subjects I’ve been going after, I have been able to produce better images with less effort than with any other Canon I’ve used in the past (which most recently includes the 40D, 5D and 1D Mark III).

To be a little more specific:

• Excellent low light performance. The extent to which colour, contrast and dynamic range is retained at high ISO’s is just fabulous. I come from the usage of a 5D and 1D Mark III, with the latter being my previous high ISO benchmark. The 5D Mark II has been able to outstrip both in terms of high ISO quality when I rate it on the above criteria. Being able to expose an image for the highlights and then pull out the details in the shadows, while still retaining image quality, has been fantastic.
• Image quality on the whole has been fantastic. Resolution / sharpness is superb and the camera produces images the way they should be – large amount of detail but with room for sharpening. This provides the photographer with more options for post production (it’s a lot easier to add sharpening than remove noise). I’ve yet to see a single “black pixel” (although I haven’t spent a lot of time looking).

Areas where I’m still deciding on have been the image quality at very high ISO’s (6400+). It’s been impressive so far but it takes a lot of samples and experimentation (with different settings) to see what it means from a real world perspective. I’ll post findings on this tomorrow.

Anyway this post is already too many words, and not enough pictures. So, here are a dozen and a half or so shots from my wandering around over the past few days with the Canon 5D Mark II.

24mm f/1.4L lens. ISO 200, f/3.5, 1/200s

 

24mm f/1.4L lens, ISO 400, f/1.4, 1/50s

 

50mm f/1.4 lens, ISO 320, f/1.6, 1/320s

 

 

85mm f/1.8 lens, ISO 1250, f/2.8, 1/1000s

 

 

85mm f/1.8 lens, ISO 1250, f/2.8, 1/1000s

 

85mm f/1.8 lens, ISO 100, f/4, 1/160s

 

24mm f/1.4 L lens, ISO 1600, f/1.4, 1/13s

 

 

24mm f/1.4 L lens, ISO 200, f/1.4, 1/640s

 

50mm f/1.4 lens, ISO 320, f/1.8, 1/125s

 

 

50mm f/1.4 lens, ISO 250, f/4, 1/400s

 

35mm f/1.4 L lens, ISO 1600, f/2, 1/160s

 

50mm f/1.4 lens, ISO 1250, f/4, 1/100s

50mm f/1.4 lens, ISO 400, f/1.4, 1/60s

 

85mm f/1.8 lens, ISO 640, f/1.8, 1/100s

 

200mm f/2.8 L lens, ISO 1600, f/3.5, 1/500s

 

24-70mm f/2.8 L lens, ISO 640, f/2.8, 1/2000s

 

135mm f/2 L lens, ISO 6400, f/2, 1/80s

 

This last image is ISO 6400 – more on this subject tomorrow.

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