Canon EOS 5D Mark II

	Playback Summary
• Image magnification to 10x, with browsing between images at the same magnification • Four levels of information detail available during playback • Software includes extensive RAW file editing, lens correction, remote control of camera shooting via USB • PictBridge direct printing offers extensive options, DPOF creation more limited
	Sample Photos	Page 8 of 21	Hardware

Playback Mode (8.00)

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During image playback, the photo display can be magnified up to 10x, in 15 steps. When a magnified image appears on screen, turning the Quick Control dial browses your photos one at a time at the same level of magnification and position, a very handy way to compare focus on a set of similar images. Another handy shortcut is the use of the Main Control dial to move rapidly through images. By default, turning this dial jumps 10 images forward or back. Through the second setup menu, this can be changed to move one or 100 images at a time, to browse by date or folder, and to bring up only stills or only movies. The convenience features that are missing are shortcuts to zoom instantly to full magnification, or back to full-screen display from a magnified image.

Zooming out from a full-screen display brings up a display of thumbnail images, first four photos, then nine, navigable using the Quick Command dial and selectable with the Set button.

When viewing movies shot with the camera, both standard-speed and slow-motion playback are available, along with frame-by-frame advance and the option to jump to the beginning or end of the file.  Playback volume can also be adjusted, via the Main Control dial. What's strangely missing, though, is fast forward.

The on-screen display in playback mode toggles between four configurations when you press the INFO button. The most basic screen shows a nearly-full-screen image with shutter, aperture and exposure compensation information superimposed in black on the top left, file name on the top right.  Pressing INFO adds image number and image size superimposed over the photo in the bottom left. Next up is a thumbnail display of the photo beside a luminance histogram, with full information on shooting mode, ISO, Picture Style, image size, color space and date and time added below. Finally, a fourth press displays both RGB and luminance histograms.

 

In-Camera Editing (0.50)

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Canon lets you rotate a vertical image. Period.

Well, OK, they'll cut you a little slack if you want to use the 5D Mark II for direct PictBridge printing. The Direct Print section allows the choice of standard, vivid or three flavors of black and white, brightness levels adjustment, backlighting correction and cropping.

Software (7.00)

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Software
	Digital Photo Professional is the core application provided with the 5D Mark II, used for RAW image processing, organizing and limited editing of JPEG and TIFF files, and printing. The interface is oriented toward users who understand tone curves and white balance temperatures. The tools for adjusting color, white balance and dynamic range offer a high degree of precision, and there’s a useful lens aberration correction utility that tackles peripheral illumination, distortion, chromatic aberration and color blur in RAW files for over 80 Canon lenses. Other than a hand dust removal tool, though, Digital Photo Professional is limited to full-image editing, so it won’t serve as a Photoshop replacement.
	ZoomBrowser EX, as the name implies, is used to view and organize images (including keyword tagging), along with JPEG image editing (brightness, color, contrast, sharpness, cropping, contrast and red-eye), stitching panoramas, playing movies, trimming them and grabbing still frames.
	EOS Utility handles downloading images from the camera, editing in-camera data (including appending a copyright notice to your photos), uploading peripheral lighting correction data for new lenses, creating and uploading Picture Style Settings, and shooting stills or movies remotely when the camera is connected via USB, with the Live View display recreated on your computer screen and images saved directly to the hard drive. A nice feature of the remote control software is the ability to program interval shooting for time-lapse sequences. Movies can be shot remotely as well, but unlike stills, they will be stored on the camera's memory card.
	While you can create a Picture Style right on the 5D, using Picture Style Editor on your computer is easier and more precise. The software lets you view a large on-screen image while making adjustments, then save the settings you create as a Picture Style for upload to the camera.
	Digital Photo Professional, EOS Utility and Picture Style Editor are all provided in fundamentally the same form for both Windows and Macintosh. Mac owners get a slightly different image browser utility in the artfully named ImageBrowser. Aside from interface differences, the other organizing and editing functions are equivalent to ZoomBrowser EX except for direct contrast adjustment and the option to unsharpen an image, which are mysteriously absent.

Direct Print Options (5.00)

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The 5D supports both direct output to a PictBridge-compatible printer connected via USB and creation of a DPOF (Direct Print Order Form) file for professional printing services.

Direct Print Options
	PictBridge The controls and options for printing directly from the camera are surprisingly extensive. In addition to the obvious choices (number of prints, paper size, bordered or borderless, etc.), photos can be cropped, image parameters adjusted (including vivid mode and three different black and white tones) and image noise reduced.
	DPOF DPOF options are more straightforward: select the number of prints per image, whether or not to imprint the date on the photos and choose to have thumbnail index pages output if desired.

Sample Photos Page 8 of 21 Hardware Canon EOS 5D Mark II Digital Camera Review Navigation