A while ago I posted a question about 5DMKII and whether it was good enough for birding, since then I got my MKII and have snapped about two thousand shots with it, the quality is simply stunning, noise is as low as my D700 at full size while sharpness and detail is unmatched. When cropped to 1.6X FOV, MKII will deliver a very clean and detail 8.2 mpixel image, about the same size of a 20D but image quality easily beats my 40D despite having an extra 2 mega pixels, noise is about one stop better and the optical low pass filter (AA filter) is very weak resulting in very sharp detail, here is an example of how much detail a small portion of 5DII RAW file contains
full frame (400 f/5.6L ISO 400)
crop of Avocet's head 100%
this guy was digging in the mud for a while!
and here's a boring gull
head crop 100%
So on paper this body can easily retire my 40D, but how good is the tracking for in flight and actions shots? :D answer is good but not good enough. Unfortunately 5DII suffers from two issues for BIF and action shots.
1) servo lag, the AF servo lag is not short enough and thus it is very difficult to lock on erratic movements. This egret appeared suddenly and I immediately tried to track but by the time focus distance had changed to egret position the bird was went behind a tree and I lost line of sight, there was roughly a 1-2 second window. http://www.stanford.edu/~ahazeghi/Ph...gret%20oof.jpg
2) Despite having invisible assist points AF is still prone to grab BG foliage almost immediately, and sometimes even with uniform BG it fails to track faster moving birds, for example I was tracking this kestrel for a good 2 seconds before this snap but it came out OOF
So in short, it is very good camera for stationary birds but it is not good enough for BIF. I had really hoped Canon put pro AF in this amazing body, but I'll have to wait for 1DMKIV to retire my 40D.
Last edited by arash_hazeghi; 03-19-2009 at 09:20 PM.
Haven't use the new one but AF is the same as original. My biggest problems was the slow firing rate but I was able to cope with the AF !! It is not in the same league as the current 50D.... but sure must be nice having all those MP and clean ISO !!
I recently upgraded to the 5D MK II and love the amazing and sharp images it produces. However, for a lot of nature, what I don't like is the slower frame rate (3.9 fps), and the focusing points (same as 40d, etc.). However, as I've been a filmmaker for many decades, I love the HD video feature! I will still keep my 1D for nature, but traded in my 40D for tis one for everything else!
Al, it is slightly better than the original at about 4 fps!:D At least the buffer didn't run out!
Jim, Have you tried the video yet? what is your technique? I was trying a bunch of sandpipers, not bad but nothing special worth showing to other ppl. I figure I must have a good video head if I am to pan the camera, ball head is a bit jerkish motion. The main issue is AF during movie, contrast detect AF is plain slow hunting and irritating (cause you need to keep the AF-ON button pressed all the time:() and with manual it doesn't zoom into the AF frame when recording so it's kinda hard to eyeball perfect focus, guess the best way is to spot a sleeping bird or someone who is fully stationary and prefocus by distance..:p If only Canon puts this sensor and LCD in a 1DMKIII (With no AF issues:D) it will be a killer camera.
I have played around a bit with the video - but on alligators not birds. Yes, the camera is a bit awkward to use, especially for unpredictable wildlife, but the final video quality is outstanding. I generally lock in the exposure and manually adjust the focus - it takes a bit of practice. One problem that I have observed is that if there is any dust at all on the sensor, it doesn't show on still images, but shows up very clearly on the video. Back in the days when I shot 16mm and 35mm motion pictures, we had to do a gate check after each take to see if there was any hair or emulsion trapped in the gate which would ruin the shot. Seems like I may have to start doing that again for the 5D! I am getting into the habit of blowing out the sensor with an air squeeze bulb, and turning off the camera and back on to hopefully shake off any dust with the ultrasonic cleaner before shooting videos.
Yes, for any video, a fluid head would be highly recommended and our still camera zooms really were intended for zooming on video, so they can be a bit jerky as well. I try to avoid zooms.
EOS 5dMKII for Birding-my impressions
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