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Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Digital Camera Review

Sep 23, 2008 - By Richard Baguley

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Auto Mode
Although it is not a point-and-shoot camera, the 5D Mark II has a fully automatic mode; just set the mode dial to the green rectangle and the camera takes over and makes all of the decisions, including focus mode, white balance, etc. A more commonly used mode will be the P mode, where the camera makes most of the decisions, but the user can step in and control aspects such as focus mode, metering mode, white balance setting, etc.

Movie Mode
Movie modes on SLRs is definitely one of the big trends we are seeing this year; Nikon got it out first on the D90, but the Canon 5D Mark II has a much wider set of features, and is more likely to actually prove to be useful. The movie mode is accessed by putting the camera into live view mode (by pressing the live view button), whereupon the camera shows a live video preview on the LCD screen. The two darker areas at the top and bottom of the screen show where the video will be cropped. One thing to note here is that it's not a question of shooting stills or video; both are available. Pressing the shutter button will take a photo, while pressing the set button will start a video recording.

Pressing the info button brings up more shooting info, such as the color mode, the video mode and the video autofocus mode.

Pressing the set button starts the video recording; a small red dot in the top right indicates that the recording is underway.

Focusing is a big issue with cameras in live mode, and this carries over to the video mode. Like all SLRs, the focus sensor is in the prism at the top of the camera, so it can't be used when the camera is in live view mode. This means that the camera has to either drop the mirror down to focus, or use the imaging sensor itself for focusing purposes..

The 5D Mark II offers three focusing modes for video: quick mode (where the mirror flips up to focus when you press the AF-On button), Live mode (which uses contrast detection focusing straight off the image sensor) and the oddly named Live :-) mode. This last one is a face detection mode; when the camera is in this mode, the imaging sensor will try and detect faces and focus on them, highlighting the faces with a small box. The technology is inherited from Canon's camcorders and it seemed to work reasonably well in our brief tests; it detected faces, highlighted them and kept them in focus. The other modes work less well; in the quick mode, you have to focus before you start shooting and then hope that the subject doesn't move; the camera won't refocus when shooting a video. The Live mode refocuses the camera when you press the AF-on button, but it is rather slow and didn't seem to work well in the rather dimly lit hall. It also added a very unpleasant flicker to the video, which was recorded. We also have concerns about noise; the SLR lens is somewhat noisy when it focuses, and this could be picked up by the microphone on the front of the camera.

The video that the 5D Mark II captures is high definition, shot at a 1920 x 1080 resolution. Canon did not specify if the video is shot interlaced (1080i) or progressive (1080p), but we think it is the former. Canon also has not released any information on the bitrate that the video is saved at. That is a critical bit of information. Higher bitrates mean less compression and (typically) higher quality video. The Canon rep on the stand told us that the maximum video length at the highest resolution is about 12 minutes, and that the maximum size of a single video file is 4 Gigabytes. From this, we can infer that the bitrate is somewhere around 5 Mbps, which is somewhat less than most dedicated camcorders. The video files are saved as QuickTime files using the high quality H.264 video codec. However, we will have to wait for a review unit before we can draw any real conclusions, as the Canon reps on the Photokina stand started shouting at us whenever we tried to use our own memory cards to capture a video to examine more closely, and we are sensitive people who don't like to be shouted at.

Basically, the video mode looks to be a useful addition to the camera, and appears to produce relatively decent quality video. However, the focusing looks to be an issue, and this may limit it to situations where you can focus, then shoot. With this limitation, the 5D Mark II won't work as a camcorder that you carry around, as you'd likely end up with a blurry mess. We'll have to do more real-world tests before we can decide if it is good enough to possibly replace a camcorder. Unfortunately, Canon would not allow us to take any video of our own with the camera, so we can't make any judgments on the quality of the video. Rest assured that we'll be giving the video features a full examination once the final units are ready for review.

Drive / Burst Mode
Canon claims that the 5D Mark II can capture 3.9 frames per second, and we found no reason to dispute this in our hands-on tests. We also see no reason to dispute Canon's claim of being able to capture 9 frames in a burst in RAW mode, and 78 when shooting JPEGs. We didn't count, but we could certainly keep shooting for a very long time at the full rate when shooting JPEGs. Both of these are very impressive figures, and will be welcomed by sports shooters in particular; that is easily a long enough burst to capture an entire football play and then pick out the best shots afterwards. However, it is worth remembering that there are many cameras that can shoot more frames per second if that is a critical feature. The unique Casio EX-F1 can shoot 60 frames a second, and the Nikon D700 can manage 5 frames per second.

Playback Mode
The playback mode of the 5D Mark II is flexible, but straightforward; you can view up to 9 images on the screen, and we found that we could quickly skip through large numbers of images, then zoom in on the best one. The two buttons on the back right corner of the camera allow you to zoom in up to 10x; plenty of magnification to make critical judgments on the focus of an image.

All of the usual suspects are also present for the information on photos; you can look at histograms of overall luminance and separate colors, review the shooting time and date, have image highlights flash on screen and survey many other bits of information. Basically, all of the tools that a pro shooter is likely to need about their photos are available, with the exception of next week's winning lottery numbers.

Custom Image Presets
If you're looking for scene modes on the 5D Mark II, you're looking at the wrong camera. High-end SLRs like this don't have scene modes. Instead, the camera offers three custom modes that allow you to save your own groups of settings. This is a useful tool; you could create one set of settings for indoor shooting, and another for outdoors, then quickly switch between them as you move from location to location.