Yes ... i have tried the Canon 5D Mark II today :-)

[InTheSky]

Do i have told you that all my friend are Canon and Nikon shooter , and most of them Pro ...

Well ... , today, my friend on the same street as me, has received his Canon camera. I have passed by his house on this big Snow Storm and decided to take some time with the camera.

First, the grip was placed on it. The first thing you realized when you take the camera his Wow , the same screen as my A900, good things. He told me how now he love this big and high resolution screen.

Handling:
Very not good as the A900. This is probably why you need a grip with the 5D Mark II to really be comfortable (i have tried it with old M42 8mm fisheye, 35mm m42 tilt shift, 35 1.4 85 1.2, 135 2.0, 24-105 4.0 IS and 70-200 2.. With small and light weight lens this is ok ... but probably I'm now to friendly with my A900 grip. (on the A900 your thumb get the small rubber area instantly and fee like home. With some pain at home return, I'm almost able to shoot with my 300mm 2.8 only the camera body with the A900).

Focus speed :
- I have seen some review ... or people on Dpreview telling that the speed of focus of the 5D II is not good ... or as the 5D. I will tell that i have been really impress by the speed of focus of the camera with the 24-105 4.0 IS. Even in really low light scene. I have tried to focus in the Chrismas tree with no light open in the room (only the lights in the tree) and no problem at all.

Black dot, no problem:
- My friend looks like lucky ... or i don't know, but i have not been able to reproduced the problem on his camera (tried to take picture of Xmas lights outside on other house, or inside in the xmas tree).

Speed:
The camera look quick, the live view works good and there is nothing to say on that.

Shutter:
Really fast, no lag, and the sound is very quiet. and in live view you can has almost something near than silence ( good for TV photo, or drama theater )
Personal story: even in Classic concert this is good to have quiet shutter: where i was on the mezzanine shooting with my A700 at 5fps with the old Tamron MF 300m 2.8 to get a good picture and never realized that two microphones was there at 6 feet than me taking the sound, after the concert my friend told me: have you heard this strange machine gun during the solo of piano, in my head the same expression of Homer Simpson took place : DHO !.

The Video:
Ho my god that is crazy, he has this big 52 inches Sharp screen in is living room and he showed me some movies he have took. Great detail and beautiful depth of field. The manual focus is something that Point and shot and standard DSLR user will have difficulty to play with, but for a M42, and modified old Minolta lens on my A900, this was instantly to play with it.
SORRY for Canon user, and to Sonolta, in pass answer on the forum, i have made crisism on the fake that using video on DSLR is to much space or Memory card to handle. I will say that i have been impressed to learn that 12 minutes non stop of movie take 4 Gig only. (what he is telling 4 gig only ! ) For me, for the quality of picture i have seen on his TV, this 4 gig is really impressive. This means that with a 16 gig memory you can take up to 1 hour of Full HD movie, that is good.

Hey ! don't worry i love my A900

Do i have negative point to say on the camera, i will say almost nothing, this is a very good build camera and it respond very good. OK ... this is funny because between each shot i was thinking WHY THE SCREEN ON THE BACK IS OFF ! I CANNOT SEE MY CONTROL (probably David will comment on that too if he are to much using Sony body). But you just have to keep you eye up and you see this huge top lCD with all the information you need. One thing ... is that I'm now attached to the Viewfinder of the A900. Even with 35mm 1.4 on the Canon, everything in the room with only one tungsten light in the middle was dark and difficult to see (yes ... i think I'm now difficult on this).

I have just played about 1 hour with the camera. My friend is making is package to go to Vegas this week. We have discussed together about which lens to bring on the trip. And he have told me : yes i know your lens are smaller and you can bring more in your small back with you Sony. This is true. This is clear that his 35 1.5 can eat two time my 35 f2.0. And the 135 f2.0 (beautiful lens ! ) can eat almost two 135 2.8 too (but this is really not a fair comparison ).

When he will come back from his trip, we will play to take some shot together of the same event. Usually we are at the same party . Probably some landscape too, we will see.

If you have the chance, don't be afraid to try it, this is a good experience to play with other body,than us. We cannot to this with girl friend, why not do it with camera brand.

Regards,

Frank

[kysham]

If you have the chance, don't be afraid to try it, this is a good experience to play with other body,than us. We cannot to this with girl friend, why not do it with camera brand.

Regards,

Frank

We can't do that with girlfriends?! Darn!



Nice review of the 5D II, by the way.

[KevinBarrett]

That's a very fun read, thank you for your commentary! I have a friend awaiting his 5dmkII and I'm rather looking forward to visiting him some day, and maybe trying out his toys.

[dynaxfl]

Thanks Frank... that's a fun tryout on 5DII. I have both Sony & Canon, and I chose a900 to be the first new body to upgrade I am not really sure if I should get a 5D though, perhaps I will be waiting for a while. i have had 1D MKII for a while, but have stopped using it since I got a700, two main reasons that I didn't use Canon much were because a700's shuttle sound and 3.0 inch screen. The funny thing about both a700 and a900's shuttle sound, although they sound totally different, the more i shoot them, the more i like the sound.

[Mark K]

Thanks Frank
This is the first report from an A900 user.
Having lenses from three system, I have been always dreaming to have the three cameras all, A900, D700 and 5D.
As a 5D owner, I am still struggling to accept the image quality of 5D II. 5D II shows improvement in overall speed despite the minimal 0.9 fps quoted. It is lighter with a large LCD screen as my A700. The video shooting is exhausting, requiring tripod all the time unless you want to provoke seizure from your audience. As more and more people around me are getting 5D II, I will definitely do a more serious shoot out
Still difficult to pull my trigger for A900, because of the noise

[David Kilpatrick]

Be aware, as I have found, that the 5D MkII high ISO from 3200 up is not as good as it appears to be. I have streaks across skies and a pattern of vertical and horizontal lines is visible in plain dark tones at 3200-6400. I did not even try the boosted speeds to 25600 as the results from 6400 already had this kind of stuff appearing. But below 3200, the files look clean. Some users and claiming the patterns are there at lower speeds but you would need to abuse the camera by underexposing several stops and trying to correct the result, in order to see them. Just don't assume it's going to 6400+ elegantly!

David

[David Kilpatrick]

Here is an example with the Nikon at ISO 200 and the Canon at ISO 100, which gives the Canon an unfair advantage - drilling down to locate the source of the pattern noise present in Canon files, but not present in Nikon (or Sony):



It is worth the time to view the full size image:

http://www.pbase.com/davidkilpatrick/image/108176452

Some people will no doubt find the Nikon sky at ISO 200 unacceptably noisy, much like the Alpha 900. Yes, it is. Both cameras have much more obtrusive noise in low ISO blue sky tones than the Canon appears to have, but in reality the Canon firmware is processing out a considerable level of noise of a much worse kind, and still not managing to get rid of the traces.

David

[David Kilpatrick]

Well, I'm not knocking the Nikon - the blues have high levels of red channel noise, like the Alpha, and it's probably down to the filter set on the sensor - but overall the Nikon files stay very consistent and clean. In practice the Alpha files while pretty wild in terms of chroma noise next to Nikon are also surprisingly homogeneous. If anything I am knocking the Canon, but there's no doubt it delivered some superb low light shots with very little trouble.

Here's what I hit when cranking the 5D MkII up to 6400 - and this is also why I didn't even bother to experiment with the boosted settings (this picture was not needed, but most of the pix I was taking were for a commercial purpose or use in the local paper. I reverted to using ISO 1600 as a maximum with this camera, just the same as I would with the Alpha 900, but I honestly think this is some of the worst-looking noise I've seen from a current DSLR:



Again, the original really deserves a full size view. The uneven streaks and stuff are very clear. You can also see the asymmetric sharpening artefact which Canon users have been calling black dots, now removed by a firmware fix:

http://www.pbase.com/davidkilpatrick/image/108178023



This is a 100 per cent crop, edited the post because the reduced size hardly shows the effect.

I have the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 HSM for Alpha coming on Saturday. This lens is truly amazing - I had the Nikon version last weekend (still got it, they can go back together). I may see what I can do with high ISO on the 900 with the Sigma. My personal view is that Sony should have done what Nikon did, and rated the 900 as a 100-1600 camera not a 200-3200 camera.

David

[fastson]

Regarding the ugly noise banding in the 5D MkII, wasnt that fixed in the new firmware or did I dream that bit?

[David Kilpatrick]

I don't think the firmware fix has removed everything (my camera went back before the firmware upgrade was announced). The banding most users were complaining about was more obvious, and in a vertical direction in shadows, where what I found was almost a checkerboard pattern and affecting midtones as well. I'll have see whether Canon want to send a revised firmware body for a second look - or just some raw files.

David

[David Kilpatrick]

The difference is, Don, that the Canon produced consistent banding in all images and it was a type of pattern noise. We don't know if it had been fixed fully, users are divided on that. We do know that the A900 does not consistently produce banding artefacts and there's been no need to 'fix' them as they are not present. You have found one example, which also happens to be an example I put up for bad sky noise.

I'm interested in some of the work the Russians are doing (as reported by Iliah Borg) because it may reveal the reasons for Sony's high noise levels.

David

[David Kilpatrick]

At least you are admitting the high Sony noise levels.
-Sonolta

I'm not blind, as I said a while back!

But I would take the A900 with high noise levels over the 5D MkII any day. The D3X - if the sensor/processor was in an A900 body, I would prefer it, of course. It works better than Sony's version. But in the massive non-ergonomic lump it currently has for home, no thanks. I'd rather have the usable, portable, friendly A900.

David

[David Kilpatrick]

Try it in gloves. Nothing beats the A900 in ski gloves!

I can get along with most button, even the very small tightly spaced Canon ones, but the A900 is fantastic for my eyesight. Everything is so BIG that I do no need either to remove, or put on, specs. I can see it all blurred, even the top LCD. Now I can not view the Nikon top or lower LCDs on the D3X without exactly the right correction (specs). The Canon is midway. The Sony is just brilliant for anyone with poor accommodation. Another ten or twenty years down the line, you'll know what this is about. The A900 is a fantastic camera for senior citizens. I'm not there yet but I can see the difference it makes.

David

[InTheSky]

wow ! i come back from business travel and what happen ! eavy traffic of discussion in my first post .

Well, again a very good thanks for you David and all you analysis on those cameras.

I'm totally agree, for being a man living in Quebec, where we have real winter (now this week the temperature has not go higher than -20 (average of about -25c..) you understand what is a camera easy to use in very cold condition.

I will say too, that you can easily not remove you eye from the viewfinder and easily change the setting.

the joystick is working event with very big gloves in your hand.

I think Sony is the winner for that, and make them very attractive for professional wild life photograph .

The series of picture i have took with the Bigma Sigma was at -20 for about 1h30. Marching in heavy snow and big glove (yes my neighborhood will become to think, what is this guys ... )/

For the bandage I'm agree too. Even my best friend when he bought the Canon 5D in the past, was a little bit perplex with the bandage effect in the picture. Almost like if the sensor is doing kind of double scanning on the picture. Is it possible that canon is doing that ... processing in kind of interlacing the picture?

Regards,

Frank