Quality & Size Options

The EOS 5D Mark II offers an unusual variety of picture size options, with three RAW sizes in addition to three JPEG formats. Each JPEG file size is available at two compression settings. Each of the RAW settings can be shot as RAW + JPEG, with any of the six available JPEG size/compression combinations attached.

Dynamic Range (8.31)

The Canon 5D Mark II proved the top performer in our dynamic range testing, including over a half stop expansion possible by shooting RAW. While dynamic range inevitably falls off as ISO increased, the 5D Mark II starts off quite high at well over seven stops for ISO 100 and 200, and falls off smoothly from there, maintaining over 4 and a half stops all the way to ISO 3200.

At low ISO settings, the Canon 5D Mark II manages a dynamic range of over 7 stops, and maintains over 6 stops through ISO 800. More on how we test dynamic range.

While the 5D Mark II lead the pack overall, at ISO 200 all the cameras performed similarly, and the Nikon D90 was slightly superior. The chart below visualizes the 5D Mark II’s dynamic range score across all ISOs against the competition. Higher scores indicate superior performance.

Image Stabilization (3.13)

The in-lens optical image stabilization that the Canon 5D Mark II uses did a decent job of compensating for hand shake, but it is far from perfect; at faster shutter speeds and with particularly bad hand shake, we found that it actually made things worse More on how we test image stabilization.

Our first test is for a low level of hand shake, such as when you are trying to hold the camera steady with two hands, or braced against a wall. In this situation, there is only a small amount of movement, but still enough to make a picture blurry, especially with a lower shutter speed. In our tests, we found that turning on the IS feature on the 24-105mm L USM lens that we used in this review made a significant improvement with horizontal motion (such as the camera shaking side to side); with a shutter speed of between 1/250 and 1/30 of a second, the images were much sharper. However, the IS feature had the opposite effect with shutter speeds at the ends of the range. At 1/500, 1/15 and 1/8th of a second, the images were less sharp with IS turned on; the correction that the camera is making is actually making the images a bit less sharp. To be fair, though; if you are shooting at 1/15 or 1/8 of a second hand held, you’re asking for trouble. We also found that the IS system had relatively little effect with the vertical shake; when the camera is moving up and down, there was very little difference between IS on and IS off.

Image Stabilization Comparison Table			Expand
	Low Shake IS Off	Low Shake IS On	High Shake IS Off	High Shake IS On
1/500
1/250
1/125
1/60
1/30
1/15
1/8

When compared with other SLR cameras, the 5D Mark II has middling performance. As the graph above (which shows the low shake, horizontal sharpness improvement for three cameras) shows, both the Sony A900 and Nikon D700 had significantly better performance. Both cameras were more consistent than the 5D Mark II, with improvements in sharpness at all of the shutter speeds we test at. The Canon 5D Mark II only beat the other cameras at 1/250 of a second; at all of the other speeds, the VR (Vibration Reduction) feature of the Nikon D700 and the SteadyShot feature of the Sony A900 did a more effective job in our tests.