This post is primarily for fellow photographers that visit my blog. With that being said, I was pretty excited to get my hands on the new Canon 5D Mark II last night, while enjoying dinner with Rob Buettner and Ken Cravillion at Vinny’s Pizza & Pasta in Medina. Ken and I have begun to make Vinny’s a regular stop for us, for no other reason than good food, good people and good humor. And for those of ya’ll from Wisconsin, Vinny’s has the hands-down BEST pizza ever. Errrrr…. well, aside from Cranky Pat’s.

Ken sent me a message a few days back, saying he picked up the new 5D Mark II and he was going to bring it to Vinny’s for me to play with. Once we got together, he not only had one, but two Mark II’s. As I’ve jokingly said before, he is a camera nerd. (But a cool nerd, who takes amazing photos and rocks a kick-a$$ car, so we’ll let it slide.) Aside from gorging ourselves with pizza and Sprecher’s Root Beer, we planned to compare the 5D Mark II to my 1D Mark III head-to-head. I have been a 5D skeptic for some time now. I guess it’s because after owning a 1-series camera, it’s hard to go back to a smaller set-up.

As I have yet to buy a 5D Mark II for myself, I wanted to post my initial thoughts, some image comparisons and a sample video. I suppose I could go on and on about how the camera feels like a mini 1-series body in my hands complete with a new textured finish to the outer shell, about the tack-sharp crystal clear 3″ VGA LCD screen, the tons of new features and the ability it has to make me a Hollywood movie director, but I’ll spare you the trouble. I’m sure you have read up on all the Rob Galbraith, Ken Rockwell, Phil Askey and Vincent Laforet reviews spreading across the interweb like wildfire. Instead, I’m offering up a straight forward image comparison, as it is the biggest factor all photographers consider when upgrading to a new rig.

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IMAGE COMPARISON

Granted I didn’t have much time to shoot with the camera under varying lighting situations, Vinny’s provided the best scenario to shoot in while evaluating camera ISO noise; crappy yellow puke-fantastic incandescent lighting. I mean no disrespect to the ambiance that Chad (owner) from Vinny’s created, but photographers know about this image-ruining color (which I affectionately call ” SH*TLIGHT!”).

The lighting inside Vinny’s was extremely low, especially in the dining room where we were seated. I shot a series of images, using a 35mm 1.4L lens, switching between the 5DM2 and my 1D3. To do so, I placed a pocket wizard, a lens and lens cap on a table covered with a pizza-influenced red/white checkered table clothe. All images were shot in RAW on both cameras, manual mode only, adjusting the shutter speed and ISO with each exposure to maintain consistency. Aperture was consistently f/1.8.

Each of the below files are basically out-of camera, aside from being edited in Adobe Camera RAW CS4 for color temp and exposure. With each shot, I tuned down the color temp to 2850K (as more ISO noise becomes visible with cooler color temps) and increased the exposure by +0.5 EV to draw out more realistic noise.

ISO 800 on both cameras are clearly equivalent and relatively noise-free.

The 5D2 just barely beats the 1D3 in noise at ISO 1600.

5D2 is even better at 3200.

At 6400 ISO, the 5D2 is clearly a workhorse and makes this camera worth the money.

This is where the 5D2 would perform sufficiently well for a grainy black & white photograph.

Icky. You can really see the high-ISO banding in this image. Personally, I’d only use ISO 25,600 if I needed a MUST-HAVE photo and forgot a flash. Otherwise, it’s complete garbage.

It would seem that the 5D Mark II’s biggest strength is a very usable ISO 6400. It compares to the 1D Mark III’s ISO 2500 and is leaps ahead of anything I’ve seen so far. But I wanted to look at the same file, one out-of-camera as shot and one edited/color-corrected with the exposrue bumped to determine if 6400 would stand-up, especially when pushing the exposure.

Here’s a 100% crop of Ken’s eye at ISO 6400:

The higher the ISO, the less latitude the file has when increasing exposure in post-production. More noise, faster, than a lower ISO file.

Here it is in ACR:

Looks good to me! Even after pushing the shot by nearly one whole stop in ACR! So if it’s low noise at ISO 3200 & 6400 that you are after, the 5D Mark II does the job. In my opinion, ISO 12,800 and 25,600 are for use in an emergency only. Take it for what it’s worth..

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VIDEO

Alas, the 5D Mark II video! It’s the reason why everyone wants the camera, right? I mean, if Vincent Laforet made a amazing short film so easily, we all can!!! RIGHT!?!?!? We can all be big Hollywood filmmakers in no time..

I will preface this by saying the following;

I had the 5D Mark II in my hands for maybe 3 minutes before I began to use the HD video feature. I had no manual to use a a reference. I have no experience shooting video. I have no experience editing video or for that matter, I have never opened iMovie on my computer until now. This is brand new to me.

What some people fail to realize, is that Vincent Laforet has access to and used a full crew, specialized video grip-gear, spent $5000.00 in production costs and edited it using Apple’s Final Cut Pro in order to make the remarkable Reverie. I however, used pizza, root beer and my hands.

Again as I stated before, this was shot quite possibly in the WORST lighting available to do this sort of thing. It’s a whole different experience shooting video on a DSLR. The camera was set to Auto-ISO, in which the camera determines and records the exposure for you. Focus is all manual, which was very tricky to get use to. Maneuvering your hand around the focusing ring on the lens can be a pain in the arse, without looking like a goofball hunting for proper focus. The cool thing is that while shooting video, you can zoom in on the Live View LCD display by 5X and 10X, which makes pinpoint focusing a ton easier. But with video, 100% accurate focus isn’t nearly as important as with a still image.

The video displayed on the camera’s LCD is magnificent. Sharp, clean and true to color. The camera comes equipped with a built-in microphone, but the audio is pure garbage. In order to truly capture decent audio, you’d need to utilize an external mic set-up, either wireless or on a boom recorded seperately.

Conclusion: The video capabilities are amazing. But it’s not as easy as it looks. Trust me.

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All of the video I shot, was converted to .mov format straight out of camera from the raw files and pieced together in Apple’s iMovie. Have a look:

VINNY’S PIZZA & PASTA from David Jackson on Vimeo.

Thanks to Chad and his staff at Vinny’s Pizza & Pasta for letting me interrupt their dining room to shoot and to Ken for letting me play with his 5D Mark II. I have hopes to pick-up a Mark II, but in the meantime my 1D3 will do the job.

Enjoy!
~dave