Canon 5D mk II official owners/users thread, anything related to the 5D2

I use both sandisk/lexar 16gb UDMA cards, never had any probs with either

Andy
 
Forgive my ignorance ... is the 60gb the fastest ... ie does 60gb allow for the 5d's top burst speed ?

Roger
 
Morning everyone, late to the party but am now a 5Dii owner. Been shooting with a 30D for years and before that a 5 35mm (I miss eye controlled AF). Been keeping an eye on the 5Dii prices for a while whilst ferreting away the pennies. Had a bit of a panic when wex, calumet and co put it back up to £1670 a week or so ago so after a really good chat with a canon rep at focus yesterday I bit Jacobs hands off for one of their b grade models at £1300. If it goes cheaper then so be it but they're not going to let it get much closer to the 7 price are they.
 
I bought it from WEX at £1679 or something but I'm not worried about the price drops, things always go through peaks & troughs, managed to save pennies by going used for other things. I bought 16gig CF cards from 7dayshop, they have some Kingston ones in at the minute and they look & feel nice & sturdy but time will tell. Took it to church on Sunday for a family baptism & got to take advantage of the high iso
 
rogertb said:
Forgive my ignorance ... is the 60gb the fastest ... ie does 60gb allow for the 5d's top burst speed ?

Roger
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The speed of the card does not affect the burst speed in any way. The camera initially shoots to its own internal buffer (memory) and then copies the files out from the buffer to the card. When (if) the buffer becomes full then the speed of the card will affect how quickly the buffer can be emptied to make space for the next shot. It doesn't need to be fully emptied in order to continue shooting, just make enough room for the next file etc. etc.

Since the 5D2 is not typically used for rapid shooting the speed of the card is usually not much of a concern whilst shooting. The difference will be when it comes to dumping the card to your PC, when the time to dump may be reduced. I've been using a Transcend 32GB 133X card in my 5D2 for almost 2.5 years and the slow speed has not once created a problem for me when shooting full sized raw files. FWIW I have a matching card in my 7D and I don't have any problems there either - for my shooting style.

If you're the kind of person who regularly fills the buffer then you may well want a fast card, or maybe to review your shooting approach. :)
 
I have just discovered the bit in the display where the buffer counts its way back up, never would have thought i needed that but I think it could be quite a handy feature
 
@rogertb Sandisk 60MB/s Extreme 8GB CF Card works wonders for myself!
 
That's interesting thanks Tim, what about h/r video ... is the speed of significance (not that I shoot video very often) and Ashley ... that was the one I was looking at so thanks for the confirmation.

Roger
 
rogertb said:
That's interesting thanks Tim, what about h/r video ... is the speed of significance (not that I shoot video very often) and Ashley ... that was the one I was looking at so thanks for the confirmation.

Roger
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The manual says you should use a card with a sustained write speed of at least 8MB/s for Full HD Video (page 107). I'm not sure what that translates to in terms of an nnnX card speed, but it's a darned sight less than 60MB/s. I'm not interested in video but I have given it a try with my 133X cards on both the 5D2 and 7D and not run into any issues.

EDIT : I just checked Rob Galbraith's CF card test page - http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/camera_multi_page.asp?cid=6007-9784 - and found that my Transcend 133X card has a write rate of approx 11MB/s with the 5D2, so not blazingly fast but more than adequate for the job. However, that means it will only clear the buffer at a rate of approx one raw file every two seconds when shooting stills, so if/when I do hit the buffer limit my ability to shoot continuously will be slowed dramatically.

Here is an analysis and discussion of the performance of various card speeds used in a 7D, although the principles are going to be applicable to the 5D2 as well - http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=844881
 
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Thanks Tim ... don't have the camera yet so haven't read the manual just want a card in my hands before it arrives ! Should be pretty safe with a 60mbps then ... Roger
 
Room for another one? Mine popped through the door this morning, can't wait to have a good play around with it. Haven't been this excited in years :D
 
After an afternoon of giddily playing and fiddling with it, i've come to the conclusion that it's a jeffing great camera, bloody love it :love: Going to London tomorrow so ill give it a bit of a thrash with the 85mm f1.8 :D
 
robhooley167 said:
After an afternoon of giddily playing and fiddling with it, i've come to the conclusion that it's a jeffing great camera, bloody love it :love: Going to London tomorrow so ill give it a bit of a thrash with the 85mm f1.8 :D
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It's a cracking camera isn't it.

I'm still learning with mine in terms of how best to adjust settings 'on the fly' etc. but it's a great problem to have!

Just need to get out and shoot more!
 
Oh yes :) had me grinning from ear to ear when I was using it :) it has the same menus and pretty similar interface to my old 50D so it wasn't a very steep learning curve. Moving to full frame from crop is like having someone open up a pair of barn doors in front of you and takes some getting used to :D
 
Well it arrived this morning so I've had a good day messing about and look forward to posting at some time my first attempts. One thing (probably the first of many stupid questions) ... with my old 550d there seemed to be always something on the rear LCD but with the 5d it seems to be blank unless a button is pressed eg 'info' or the 'quick' button, is this normal or am i missing something ? Best Roger
 
@rogertb Usually by pressing the 'INFO' button the screen changes from blank to various information screens. Just leave it on the screen you'd usually use. It works almost identically to the 'DISPLAY' button on your 550D. I hope I'm making sense to you?
 
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Thanks ashley - I'm talking rubbish ... it was just going to sleep - I feel such a fool.

Strange that when we get a new bit of kit there's a period of criticism (or evaluation) that is quite stressful !

What do you mean by this Mathew:

Just downloaded some new picture styles giving me a little more dynamic range.
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Many thanks Roger
 
rogertb said:
Thanks ashley - I'm talking rubbish ... it was just going to sleep - I feel such a fool.

Strange that when we get a new bit of kit there's a period of criticism (or evaluation) that is quite stressful !
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Roger - if it makes you feel better.....
I've been using 5DII's since the black dot days, but still occasionally get stumped by what turns out to be a simple problem.
Here's a recent example where I started a forum thread to get help!
5DII - an annoying Live View puzzle
Duncan
 
You are able to download custom picture styles onto the camera. You know when you go into the settings that there is standard, landscape monochrome etc. there are three user defined ones. well you can put ones that businesses have made in those places. you can put ones like marvel cinestyle. They allow you to have a flatter image which gives slightly more dynamic range but also allows you to have more freedom in post production which can be very helpful!

Check this video out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPa6vNYFe-w

Also, this video is useful. Jump to about 24 seconds in to see the diffence between standard and two custom styles. These styles are there to allow you to have more room to manouver in post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuqEPTsvl0s
 
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The pokemon kid said:
You are able to download custom picture styles onto the camera.
...
These styles are there to allow you to have more room to manouver in post.
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But only if you shoot JPEG. The picture styles don't affect the raw image.
 
Yes, that is true. I do a fair amount of video work and it helps out a lot when you are using the video function on the camera... Being able to shoot flat helps so much!

Also at times I will shoot RAW + jpeg, if Im shooting something important. So I use shoot flat when these occasions pop up to get the most out of the jpeg if the RAW file fails.
 
tdodd said:
But you can apply the alternative picture styles to your raw files in DPP, if that sort of thing floats your boat.
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That's also true, but I'd guess most don't use DPP.
 
Thanks for the kind words Duncan ... and the link, that setting is worth me checking out !

Roger
 
Ok ... so on the picture styles front, having had a quick look it seems it's possible to create a picture styles in picture styles editor and add it as a style 'in-camera' - seems like fun but why not do it in post so you leave the basic 'shot' alone. Also Mathew what is 'flat' please ?
Being able to shoot flat helps so much!
Click to expand...
.
I use P/shop DPP and recently been trying to get my head around L/room ... so much to learn ... Roger
 
There are two separate topics which need to be understood - (a) shooting stills; (b) shooting video.

Flat means "low contrast" so you don't risk highlight or shadow clipping by having the camera apply a heavy S curve. When shooting video there is no "raw" mode in camera, so you must apply the picture style in camera at the time of shooting.

With stills, if you shoot raw you can choose to apply the picture style in camera or later on, using DPP. If you apply one picture style in camera you can easily switch to another one later on in DPP. If you shoot to JPEG then your chosen picture style is baked into the file before it is saved. If you plan to edit the file you might also want to use a flattish tone curve to preserve as much tonal range as possible. That's what the Neutral picture style is intended for, whereas Standard, Landscape etc. are intended for shots to be used SOOC without edits (or only modest ones).

If you shoot raw and use Photoshop or Lightroom for your processing then the choice of picture style is immaterial as it is ignored.
 
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So shooting in 'neutral' will give a flatter photograph? That's handy to know.
 
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IamAshlyRose said:
So shooting in 'neutral' will give a flatter photograph? That's handy to know.
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See what Canon says....

http://web.canon.jp/imaging/picturestyle/style/neutral.html

You can easily try it for yourself. Just shoot a single raw image and open it in DPP. Then you can switch through all the available picture styles and see how it alters the appearance.

But again, if you shoot raw and process in Photoshop or Lightroom then the picture style you shot with will have no impact since it does not affect the image data directly, it just sets a flag in the metadata, which DPP reads before rendering the visible image and Adobe software does not.

The biggest eye opener is when you shoot raw with the monochrome picture style set in the camera and then open the raw image in some software other than DPP and suddenly you see a full colour image reconstructed from the original raw data.
 
I shoot flat because when I do shoot jpeg, it allows me to put the contrast back into the image instead of the camera just putting it in for me. I just in general pefer it. I also pefer seeing my images on my camera in a flat format. I like to see the images without much contrast because at least then I know if something is actually blown out or too dark...

I will post up a comparison when I get home of a image shot in standard and marvel cine. You will see the difference in contrast. between the images.

The one problem with using the Canon picture style editor is that it is dull and boring. You end up pulling your hair out because of it. Its probably why they stopped using it. Also the ones you can download from marvel etc are really good and use mathmatic equations to give the best results.

I will agree it is suprising when you shoot in raw but have the picture style of monochrome that a black and white picture turn into colour :)
 
tdodd said:
See what Canon says....

http://web.canon.jp/imaging/picturestyle/style/neutral.html

You can easily try it for yourself. Just shoot a single raw image and open it in DPP. Then you can switch through all the available picture styles and see how it alters the appearance.

But again, if you shoot raw and process in Photoshop or Lightroom then the picture style you shot with will have no impact since it does not affect the image data directly, it just sets a flag in the metadata, which DPP reads before rendering the visible image and Adobe software does not.

The biggest eye opener is when you shoot raw with the monochrome picture style set in the camera and then open the raw image in some software other than DPP and suddenly you see a full colour image reconstructed from the original raw data.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the link. I think I may just have to try that altho I'm still learning to work with RAW shooting effectively. I usually shoot in 'Neutral' so it'll be interesting to see a difference with various Picture Styles. Thank you for your informative post.
 
Thought I would put my name down as a proud owner of a new 5dmkii. A bit of an impulse buy when I picked up a new lens but I've wanted one for about 6months now. So hi all.
 
Welcome to the fold Terry.

Did you px the 7D or are you the proud owner of two Canons?!
 
Phew!
After all the D800 hype, now we can relax....

DPReview just published their studio test comparator for the D800.
And broadly, the D800 images look like upscaled versions of the 5DII images.
The mighty 5DII is still right at the front of the pack.

However - this may be a DPReview problem - time will tell......
The Imaging Resource test results show considerably more fine detail in the D800 images and really make the D800 shine.
Looks to me like DPReview used a naff lens or a small aperture.
Since DPReview never publish the setting they use, this is impossible to confirm.

Another example of dodgy DPReview test results is the X10, the test results look awful and do not match my own experience. In the X10 case I think they used 12Mp DR400 and called it ISO 100.

If the problem really is with DPReview, the the Nikonites have enough clout to get DPReview to do something about it - like publish the settings that were used.
Gonna be interesting to watch the Nikon forums over the next week or two as I don't think they will be happy with this.
But if they do get changes made then in the long term we will all benefit. :)
 
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I have looked at there results and then looked at other stuff on the net and to be honest with you that revue sucks, with too many unanswered questions on how they shot it, saying that we will soon see in the next few days just how good it is, I personally will shoot some real life high ISO shots and will post here untouched and edited images for you all to see.

Thats if I get one in the first batch now that Nikon are saying they don't have the demand covered.....
 
No I kept the 7d, I bought the new lens to use on it when out and about, but I do a lot of portraits so the 5d has always been attractive. Thanks for the welcome buck :)
 
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